September 2009

Sure Tom won’t be pleased to see this, but like him I’m not a huge fan of “bottled water”. Do we really need it?

Anyway, despite this I wanted to share another bit of good PR/Online marketing from Evian. A company that’s really doing some cool marketing at the moment – remember this. Clearly a company with its backs against the wall today – bottled water isn’t in vogue – so they’ve really thought long and hard about its marketing approach. With many people questioning the real value of the bottle not to them but to the environment, it has a challenge.

So Evian has looked to bring a fresh look at the question of the value of the bottle and has partnered with Paul Smith to design a limited edition range for the brand. He’s a lifelong drinker of Evian (well so he says, but I’m sure the money he was paid had something to do with this) and put together a rather nicely designed bottle for them. The focus of the campaign, much like the Evian babies video, is about “feeling young” – a message that works, but I also think it could rub some people up the wrong way (i.e. it’s notion of live your life when you’re young and sod the rest of world when you die, they can deal with the problems you’ve caused). Anyway, skirting around this messaging issue – some nice work from the brand.

The PR’s have been smart and put together a nice (but probably low cost) video interview with Paul. This enables them to go further than a press release, or advertising campaign allowing the designer to speak in his own words, and create content that people will want to view/pass on. The agency did well, as Adverblog point out, by seeding the video on HypeBeast (really popular design/early adopter/opinion former new media and community site) which will ensure the right people see it and then pass it on.

I would quite like one of these bottles. Does that make me a bad person?