You Can Be Brain Dead and Still Have Your Intelligence Insulted

I saw an advertisement for Evian today (I believe they sell water) which proudly proclaimed "Every drop sourced from nature."  Where did people think it came from?  That statement is about as helpful as "Made from stuff" or "Contains ingredients".  I think the thing that annoyed me most about it is that it is so obvious that either the people who created that ad were terminally stupid or they believe the rest of us are.  My money is on the latter.

The place my money won't be is in Evian's coffers.  OK, regular readers of this blog will know that getting me to buy bottled water is a pretty hard sell in any event.  I'm perfectly prepared to pay for coca cola or vodka or any other beverage that has been manufactured.  I'm even prepared to spend a little money on fruit juice in acknowledgement of the fact that people had to rip bits off trees and squash them up in order to provide it but I am deeply reluctant to pay for a bottle of something that I can lick up out of a puddle.

Still, Evian's advertisement has guaranteed that I will never drink their (sorry, nature's) product.  It is a total insult to the intelligence of the human race and in my case at least seems to assume I never even evolved to the stage of splitting into two cells.  You could piss into a bottle of Evian and sell the result with the same claim and the same accuracy.

I do understand the difficulties involved in marketing water.  Evian is essentially attempting to sell something that pretty much anyone outside the Sahara Desert can get for nothing with a little effort.  It can't be easy but guys, you have standards to maintain.  The advertising industry is pretty much the only thing still producing quality television these days.  If you sell out all we've got left is endless series of Geordie Shore.

At this point I can imagine the advertising team for Evian muttering things like, "It's all very well for you to criticise smartarse.  You have one blog which is essentially read by your parents.  We have to try and market this crap to the world."  That's a fair comment so in the spirit of helpfulness I have bent my not considerable brainpower to the task of producing a better tag line for Evian.

I will admit there were a couple of false starts.  My first concept was something along the lines of "Evian; when you're too fucking lazy to turn on a tap."  I liked it but I can see why others might not, including pretty much anyone who works at Evian.  My second effort was "Fabulous outfit? Check.  Electronic music? Check.  Bag full of pills? Check.  What's missing?" but I decided Evian was probably looking to expand their appeal beyond their traditional customer base.

Finally I came up with this.  I can't claim its particularly inspired but I honestly believe its an improvement on what they have now.  Evian logo at the top and underneath it the line "Water is Life".  No silly statements, no ridiculous claims.  Just the logo and a simple statement of fact.  Of course if the general public wants to conflate the two and rush out to buy 44 gallon drums of Evian to avoid dying of thirst that's entirely their affair.  I said Evian's original tag was insulting the intelligence of the human race.  I didn't say it was insulting it by much.  If anyone from Evian happens to read this blog entry please feel free to use this idea (assuming somebody hasn't already) and pass it off as your own.