The backlash against bottled water
Consumer market:The backlash against bottled water - by Joannie Chianello
n the early 1990s, Evian had all its bases covered. Several years of trying to build its image around athletic, sweating bodies had paid off on both ends of the celebrity spectrum. Diana, Princess of Wales, drank Evian after working out at her exclusive London club -- and was occasionally photographed dashing from gym to car, bottle in hand. Meanwhile, a pre-family-values Madonna would drink the French water onstage at concerts. Her controversial documentary Truth or Dare provided the kind of publicity a company just can't buy in a scene where Madonna pleasures a bottle of Evian. Not long ago, bottled water was a foreign affectation. Before Perrier made it across the pond in 1976, the industry in North America was negligible. But the French water company brought with it a big marketing budget aimed at urban professionals, and hired Orson Welles, whose velvet tones confided that Perrier's "natural sparkle is more delicate than any made by man." By 1988, Perrier was selling 300 million bottles a year in the U.S., and had been joined in tony restaurants by the likes of Evian and Vittel.
How did something that seemed so innocuous, wholesome even, turn into a guilty pleasure, a symbol of everything that's wrong with consumer society? More than anything, though, the decline in sales is a consequence of widespread economic woes, as the recession spurs the usual rounds of belt-tightening and general rethinking of what is a necessity and what is a luxury. The fact that we're so quick to drop the bottle when times start to get a bit tough probably says more about its true place in our consumption hierarchy than all the arguments over carbon footprints, health benefits and overflowing landfills.
Note EU-Digest: what will be the next consumer product to go? Corn flakes, Cut flowers, or you name it.
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