Water Fight
It’s Brita vs Fiji a prize fight matching two water titans in the endeavor to prove to the American public that one is more green than the other.
Brita comes from the left, urging people to leave the disposable bottles alone and instead refill a bottle with purified Brita filtered water.
Fiji is now countering with a right hook claim that, with Fiji, ‘every drop is green’.
For me, this provokes 2 questions:
First, I question the wisdom of this tagline for a bottled water company and fully expect to see it in Jay Leno’s Headlines by the end of the week.
Second, I question the ability of this company to live up to the claims of the push for greenness when their fundamental business is transporting a commodity, which this country has in abundance, thousands of miles, encasing it in plastic and selling it to those discerning Americans who thirst for a more exotic and colorful filtered water product.
With every company scrambling to put out a green message, we are starting to see a flow of eco-friendly claims that just aren’t believable no matter how loudly and emphatically they are proclaimed in the pages of Vanity Fair.
Who will be the green referees who point to the winner when the bell rings?
April 15th, 2008 at 10:26 am
The green referees will be consumers and I think I can already predict who the winner will be…
Fiji’s carbon negative/carbon footprint progress and recycling in Fiji may not make a huge impact. Brita’s strategy of challenging Americans to save the 38 billion water bottles they waste each year seems like the smarter approach. But then again, it doesn’t matter.
Brita wins the championship automatically, thanks to their heavyweight promotional parnters. Brita is sponsoring The Biggest Loser to rid the campus of waste, and is partnering with Nalgene, the master of reusable bottles.
A low, but brilliant blow. Brita may have a better green strategy, but in the end, more engaging marketing means an end to the water fight and automatic victory.
April 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
reinforces that wearing a green dress may be fashionable, but doesnt work for everyone. And, for the posers, its just trendy and therefore ridiculous. As Alison wisely reveals, Fiji’s lame attempt at being green only exposes how un-environmental they are. Shipping water just doesnt make sense. Sure does point to the need for legitimate strategy when navigating these waters (no pun intended).