WATER GONE WILD
Coca-Cola and Pepsi whip out endorsements, new flavours to capitalize on bottled-water trend,
NEW YORK— Bottled water is starting to seem more like soda, and sometimes taste like it, too.
As bottled water surges in popularity, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other companies are using celebrity endorsements, stylish packaging and fancy filtration processes like “reverse osmosis” to sell people on expanding variations of what comes out of the tap. They’re also adding flourishes like bubbles, flavours or sweeteners that can blur the lines between what is water and what is soda.
For this year’s Super Bowl, PepsiCo even ran an ad for its new Lifewtr, promoting the drink in a spotlight typically reserved for sodas. Also running their first Super Bowl ads were Fiji and Bai Brands, which sell “enhanced waters” made with fruit juice and stevia sweetener.
Michael Simon, Bai’s chief marketing officer, says its drinks “give people that healthy profile they’re looking for, but now they no longer have to sacrifice on taste with the neutrality of water.”
Bottled water has been gaining ground for years, and overtook soda as the No. 1 drink in the U.S. by sales volume last year, industry tracker Beverage Marketing Corp. said.
Some of the fizzy, sweetened drinks are considered water by the companies or industry trackers in some cases, as the distinctions between them lose meaning. Companies aren’t as interested in the big, economy packs of plain bottled water that have been fuelling the growth, says Ali Dibaj, a Bernstein analyst who covers the industry, since those are less profitable than sodas and are a “horrible business to be in.”
So Coca-Cola and Pepsi are focusing on pricier options that compete with brands like Evian and Perrier.
And they’re introducing fizzy and fruity varieties to get a better foothold in an crowded marketplace where options like LaCroix and oth- ers are gaining popularity. Showing just how blurry the lines are getting, PepsiCo launched a drink last week that it describes as “sorta juice, sorta soda, sorta sparkling water.” Such options can capture people looking to cut back on sodas or juices, and may get people who might buy lower-priced waters to upgrade.
“You can get up the ladder in terms of water and get out of the categories that don’t drive a lot of value,” CocaCola’s incoming CEO James Quincey said in September.
Quincey cites Smartwater, which has enjoyed sales growth in North America, as a way for Coke to profitably expand its water business. The brand is billed as “vapour distilled” and features actress Jennifer Aniston in its ads.
He also said that in the crowded Chinese market, Coca-Cola is upgrading people to a water brand it markets as “socially responsible” with a different blend of minerals, which costs twice as much.
Julie McKnight, who lives in New York City, said the distinctions made by some bottled waters are not worth the extra price.
Mostly, McKnight she said uses reusable bottles that she fills with filtered tap water.
To help address people’s concerns about the environment as well as paying for a variation of what they could get from the faucet, companies like Nestle have been “light-weighting” the packaging to use less plastic and keep prices down.
In addition to the still, unflavoured versions, Coca-Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina have been rolling out sparkling and flavoured extensions. Such options make it trickier to define drinks that may be fizzy and sweet, yet marketed as water.