Water water, everywhere
You may have heard about the viral “Stanley cup” — not the hockey trophy, but a water bottle that is perhaps equally coveted. Container brand Stanley 1913’s stainless steel tumbler, which has grown ubiquitous on social media, is a staple of the “clean girl aesthetic” trend and sells out instantly in stores. Stanley’s sudden cultural dominance is enough to make even the trendiest TikToker forget the last water bottle to take the internet by storm: Hydro Flask, a core part of a
2019 social media fad. And already, upstart competitors are looking to dethrone Stanley and become the newest “it” drinking vessel.
High-end water bottles have become part fashion statement, part status symbol. Humans have had the technology to carry drinking water since the Stone Age, but nowadays, marketing matters, too: The color, brand, and type of bottle can say a lot — about personal style, economic status, and general outlook on life.
Take Owala, whose flagship “FreeSip” model boasts funky colorways and gives water drinkers the option to either sip through a straw or tilt their heads back and chug. Here in Boston, the Utah-based company is trying to break into social media feeds, enlisting fashionable twenty-somethings to post about its products as they “go forth and carpe the diem — hydrated like a boss.”
“I just got this water bottle in the winter of 2022, and I became kind of obsessed with it,” said Sophie Lenz, a Northeastern University junior who now promotes Owala on TikTok in exchange for deals on its bottles, which cost as much as $38. “I just thought it was one of the best water bottles I’ve had.”
Lenz, like many young people, sees water bottles as more than a way to stay hydrated.
“It’s like your shoes, your purse, and your water bottle all have to match,” said Kim Donlan, a marketing professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.
The transformation of water bottles from functional vessels to fashion accessories is the “strangest thing,” she said. “It’s part of your fit,” she added, invoking the Gen Z slang for “outfit.”
But there could be more than fickle Gen Z consumerism behind the ebb and flow of water bottle trends, Donlan said — starting, for example, with a general push for sustainability and social pressure to ditch plastic water bottles.
High-end water bottles have become status symbols marketed on social media
At $38 a pop for the 40ounce Owala FreeSip and $45 for the same-sized Stanley Quencher, water bottles can become symbols of not only style, but status. And when it comes to sustainability, they can also act as indications of a sipper’s values, Donlan said. If you really care about the environment, consumer trends say, you’ve got a reusable bottle.
“It’s part of how you present to the world,” Donlan said. “People are making judgments about what you care about ... based on how you are consuming liquid.”
Owala knows this. In its quest to captivate a pool of thirsty consumers, the company focused on creating its own unique brand around its “remarkable drinking experience,” said Michael Sorenson, CEO of Owala parent company Trove Brands.
Owala marketers try to think “more like a fashion brand” than a water bottle company, Sorenson said, aiming to offer users a tool not just to drink water, but to express their personalities.
The success of brands like Stanley and Owala is also thanks to the marketing strategy of using social media influencers, or “ambassadors” like Lenz, to promote the brand.
This can be a powerful way of pushing an otherwise mundane product like a water bottle, said Renée Richardson Gosline, a senior lecturer and researcher in marketing at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Gosline’s 2017 research found that stories shared on social media from consumer to consumer can increase preference for a brand by 32 percent. These effects, which likely intensified with the pandemic, led people to spend more time online, and caused virtual networks to have an “outsized influence” on worldviews and preferences, Gosline said.
“If you can get the right influencer to talk about your stuff, you’ve got more targeted communications,” she said. “What people buy has started to replace a sense of social connection and identity that is missing for many people.”
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, an organization connecting brands and online personalities, companies spent an estimated $21.1 billion on social media influencers in 2023, up nearly 30 percent from 2022.
The constant turnover in popular water bottles also makes sense, Gosline said, with trends hopping between brands despite each rendition of the newest bottle being relatively similar in function and design to the last.
“Anything successful is going to lead to imitation,” she said.
But Sorenson said he views Owala bottles as different from, not just an iteration of, similar products.
“We continue to innovate in this space, not just copy others,” Sorenson said.
Although Owala seems to be on the rise, its efforts might not be enough to surpass top-dog Stanley quite yet. At the Urban Outfitters on Market Street in downtown Boston, manager
Ray Rodriguez said Stanley cups still fly off the shelves “instantly” after they’re stocked. Certain Owala bottles sell quickly, too, but less popular colors tend to sit on the shelves a while longer, according to Rodriguez.
“But Stanleys, no matter what color, they’re gone,” he said.