“Water, like wine, gets its taste from the terrain that forms it. (Wine experts reverently speak of terroir.) FIJI Water comes from tropical rain filtered for hundreds of years through volcanic stone. You can taste the purity in every sip. You can also taste the unique mineral composition, because geology creates its own taste profile, distinctive as a fingerprint.”
Does anyone believe that?
Does everyone who buys Fiji Bottled Water think of the hundreds of years of volcanic filtration for purity sake, or is it the cool story behind them drinking 40% more expensive bottled water?
Probably the story.
A recent Amazon.com customer review of Fiji Bottled Water:
“I have tried alot of bottled water and usually go right back to drinking the water from my tap. Fiji is the first bottled water I have tried and will buy it again. It has the taste of refreshing water. The way it should be.”
It’s common marketing strategy to build a story and image behind a product to get emotional responses from consumers, although this person clearly doesn’t mind the taste.
For bachelors, it can boil down to this. If you’re spending 40% more on water, then to an observant (perhaps superficial) woman you’re successful. How many guys do you know that are on $12 an hour that are spending 5% of their income on bottled water?
I’m a huge fan of Fiji Water not just for the mere image, cool bottle, and conversational prop.
This happened to me recently.
I walked into 24 Hour Fitness to workout and a woman commented out of nowhere, “Oh yeah. I love how that water tastes. Good choice.” Weird. I didn’t think pure water was supposed to have a flavor. Although, try drinking Fiji Water for a few weeks and then go back to Arrowhead, or even worse, Sam’s Club brand. It’s all in the aftertaste…You’ll thank all those pig-farm ocean dumping Fijians for their volcanic purified water eventually.
Go order the $45, 24 pack of Fiji Bottled Water like I do, and be done with the notion of buying water… (like a band-aid, right off)
Popularity: 13%
11 responses so far ↓
1 anon // Jul 24, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Sometimes being a man has a lot to do with awareness of our world and the effect your lifestyle has on this planet and not just how you *appear* to others.
From fastcompany.com:
The label on a bottle of Fiji Water says “from the islands of Fiji.” Journey to the source of that water, and you realize just how extraordinary that promise is. From New York, for instance, it is an 18-hour plane ride west and south (via Los Angeles) almost to Australia, and then a four-hour drive along Fiji’s two-lane King’s Highway.
Every bottle of Fiji Water goes on its own version of this trip, in reverse, although by truck and ship. In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles’ journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation–which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.
That is not the only environmental cost embedded in each bottle of Fiji Water. The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity–something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from “one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth,” as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze (…)
Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html
2 Donovan // Jul 24, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Thanks Artie,
I like the way to put it in perspective. I have a subscription to Fast Company and read that recent article and it made me sick - to be honest.
Although… pollution in Fiji has been a problem for a long time, the link to the article I provided came out July 2007 (to my knowledge). Fiji Water, however, might provide a good leadership incentive for the economy to clean up their own local farming and industries.
I don’t think Fiji Water is to blame for the condition of the environment in Fiji. I think Fijians are to blame for it. Let’s hope they lead the way for a more eco-friendly/economic prosperous solution for all Fijians.
I’m helping the local Fijian economy by buying only when I’m thirsty… =)
3 LOL // Jul 24, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Let me see here. You say,
“the cool story behind them drinking 40% more expensive bottled water? Probably the story.”
then you say,
“try drinking Fiji Water for a few weeks and then go back to Arrowhead, or even worse, Sam’s Club brand. It’s all in the aftertaste…”
So make up your mind, ok. Do you think it’s the marketing, or do you think the product is actually good?
based on this story alone, you don’t seem attractive, actually. you’re too jaded sounding.
4 Donovan // Jul 24, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Sidenote: Why does it have to be different: Can the marketing be great, and the product also?
Main response: I think the majority of people buy Fiji Water for the stories sake, which is the marketing. I think they stay with Fiji Water because of that fact which influences their response to the product. I’m sure there are many who like the taste as well, although I’m not sure that they’re mutually exclusive.
I myself, like the after taste, which I stated.
5 GG // Jul 25, 2007 at 9:31 am
Real men drink ordinary water. I’ve tasted bottled water all from Scotland to Sweden to Japan, and none of them either taste any better or appear to give me anything else than what ordinary water could.
If a woman would come up to me and comment the bottle of water I was drinking, I’d laugh at her and tell her to piss off.
It’s a trick, it’s not good for mother earth and chicks that dig it shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
Think about it — it’s not attractive to drink water tapped from another “exotic country”. It’s attractive to stand up for something, like fighting global warming or something else.
6 Donovan // Jul 25, 2007 at 11:31 am
I’m not saying bottled water is a necessity.
You would laugh and tell her to piss off? Attractive. That’s a REAL MAN.
Global warming is overrated. We can cut out our share of pollution - I’ll give you that, but it’s been proven now that the large majority of CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t caused by humans, and there isn’t any evidence contrary that the 0.8 degree rise isn’t part of the earth’s normal atmospheric cycle.
BTW, since when did meteorologists in the 1800’s get reliable enough technical instruments to measure accurate temperatures, when they couldn’t even figure out how to light up a room without wax. Even now the weatherman gets the temperatures wrong half the time.
That’s a rant for a different time though
7 James T. // Jul 29, 2007 at 9:42 pm
1800s? Huh? Donovan, I suggest you go look up “ice cores” to see how they measure temperature and climate change over the long run.
The scientists are still out on whether current climate change is definitively man-made or natural abberation. To state definitively either way as fact is questionable.
8 Donovan // Jul 29, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Let me put it this way.
I try to be an energy conservative person. Growing up in Australia - we always turned off lights, used are cars less, rode bikes, took buses, didn’t run central heating/cooling, we even turned off idling cars at major traffic lights to minimize exhaust fumes (ridiculous)
I’m all for bringing down the levels of pollution, but not for the global warming movement. I do it for the current pollution levels that impact everyone right now.
I’m in Oregon right now, and I swear their freeways are more polluted than LA’s. No joke.
9 jonah // Jul 31, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Charlie Trotter serves Fiji. If it’s good enough for Charlie it’s good enough for me. Case closed.
And when Fiji isn’t available, Aquafina is da bomb…
10 Donovan // Aug 1, 2007 at 10:58 am
I heard on Jay Leno that Aquafina admitted that they use tap water. Hmm… I wonder what that means for the bottled water industry?
11 jonah // Aug 1, 2007 at 7:15 pm
aquafina is purified water. it never made a claim to being spring water. nevertheless it’s better than 95% of “natural” waters out there.
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