I don't get their marketing pitch. The idea seems to be to brand water as if it were an energy drink or alcoholic beverage. I'd have thought that the appeal of the irony would wear thin very quickly.
The product is almost a commodity. I've bought it and it tastes good, but it's virtually identical to other sparkling waters. But look at how differentiated the packaging is.
They're entering one of the least exciting/innovative categories, branding it in this unhinged, hyper-masculine way (e.g. cartoon monsters decapitating thirsty people) that has already proven successful (in things like energy drinks and craft beer) and completely stands out in aisles full of bottled water branded with rivers/waterfalls/mountains.
Is it worth $700 million? Who knows. But as someone in marketing, I am really in awe of brands that can actually pull off something so wildly different like this. The risk of it falling flat and you looking like an absolute idiot is so high, that it's incredibly impressive when someone actually nails it - as these guys clearly have.
It's interesting that retailers would appear to allow this. If I were the retailer, I would require an agreement on who was allowed to run ads in my store, and get a cut of it. You're already on a very thin margin as a supermarket retailer. Why risk a "bad" advertisement, and then not get paid for it?
seems equally likely that this auction is itself an ad for the beverage. never heard of them before today, but i bet you i’m going to start noticing them all over the place now.
