Sistine Chapel: God creates Adam

I’m at the Vatican and anyone in the advertising game will tell you that this is probably the last place you want to be potentially facing the wrath of God for all of your past sins stretching the truth and checking the Federal Trade Commission manual to make sure your spot doesn’t mislead consumers. Anyway, that’s a story for another day, but seriously, the Vatican, especially standing at the entrance/exit of St. Peter’s Basilica in the August/September with the sun reflecting off the limestone is no place to be without a bottle of cold water.

The Vatican Museums: Heed the Advice

Yet, there I was, baking in the sun as the Pope waxed poetic in Latin over the loudspeakers and my tour guide going on endlessly about how lucky we were it was a Wednesday and everyone is watching the Pope and we had early access to the Raphael Rooms, Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican itself. Meanwhile, all I could think about was my brain NOT exploding from the heat and when I could make a beeline for an eight Euro bottle of water with gas.

Blah blah blah, alright already…I need some water! Speaking of water, it’s become quite an industry, right? Give a nod if you remember water. You know, regular classic water where you turned open the knob and lifted the level to the very top? It was refreshing, divine, perfect; the ultimate drink that you enjoyed for pennies a glass. Now, water as we once knew it is dead swallowed by our obsession for what’s next…our mistaken ideal that everything could always be improved upon.

Water is now bottled water, spring water, artisan water, antioxidant water, flavored water, carbonated water, fizzy water, water with gas, flat water…jeez, I sound like a thirsty “Bubba” Benjamin Buford Blue…

Gustave Leven, Super Genius

All of these waters are simply capitalistic spins on original water with consumers in their sights because companies know that the gullible will drink it up. There are three things that should never cost money: sunshine, air, and water. Now you go into a fancy restaurant and they ask you if you want sparkling or flat water. If you ask for regular water, the server’s face grows into a passive aggressive sneer with a complimentary warning that it will come from the tap! Seems “free” is not really an option anymore.

Now one of the trendy waters is Norway’s artisan water Voss, you know that cylindrical bottle with the silver top? Well guess what? Norwegian television has reported that Voss has the very same sources as tap water from a municipal source, contrary from it’s snooty marketing and big price.

Many people think the designer trend started with Evian, which ironically is naive spelled backwards. But really, who convinced us that water should or could be sparkling you ask? Well I have the answer…

Meet Gustave Leven. He had a bold idea: Convince Americans that they wanted to drink Perrier, aka “Earth’s First Soft Drink.”

In the 1970s, you can imagine that Americans weren’t so open-minded about opening their wallets for water, instead openly laughing at paying astronomical markups for a liquid that flows freely, and usually safely, from their home taps.

That all began to change sometime in seventies, with a nutty idea from a Frenchman who peddled fizzy water in green glass bowling pin-shaped bottles. His company was Perrier, and its carefully constructed, impeccably timed advertisements paved the way for one of the greatest marketing scams this side of Barnum and Bailey.

Perrier’s campaign created a massive new market for the American beverage industry, and it still serves as a playbook for how to convince people to pay for water. At the same time, it does not fully account for what remains an even greater mystery: the enduring appeal of bottled water.

Whether they choose fizzy Perrier, flat Poland Spring, or a different label, Americans are guzzling more bottled water than ever before. And in an era defined by speed and convenience, they show no signs of slowing down.

Perrier’s American transformation began with television ads in the spring of 1977. They were straightforward, but eye-catching and ear-catching. The company spent somewhere between $2.5 million and $5 million on the groundbreaking campaign.

“More quenching, more refreshing, and a mixer par excellence,” intoned the rich baritone of Orson Welles in a Perrier advertisement dated 1979, as a bubbling stream cascaded from a green bottle and swirled into a clear goblet.

“Naturally sparkling, from the center of the earth,” the actor continued. He wrapped up the ad with a single word, the “r”’s perfectly French: “Perrier.”

Perrier’s advertising was selling a specific message, and it targeted a specific population: well-to-do baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1965, as they entered adulthood. It sought to assure them that those who partook of Perrier’s sparkling waters were sophisticated, classy, and conscientious. It conferred, in a word, status.

So capsulizes the story of Gustave Leven, Marketing Genius.

What seems abundantly clear, however, is that the powers of marketing are as limitless as the water we drink and the air we breathe. Last year, Vitality Air, a Canadian company started offering “fresh air,” in three and eight-liter bottles.

“Remember the day when people laughed off bottled water?” the company explains on its website. “The truth is we’ve begun to appreciate the clean, pure and refreshing taste of quality water.”

“Air,” it says, “is going the same way.”

The post You Can Lead A Horse to Water… appeared first on Media Guy Struggles.