In his latest Consumed article, Rob Walker looks at the eco-attack on the water brand Fiji and their reaction to it - which includes an advertising campaign that promotes its green credentials. Walker raises an interesting point at the end of the piece about consumption decisions and our need for brands to help us make them.
If you’ve come across any of the many media accounts of a consumer uprising against bottled water, you might well assume that makers and sellers of the stuff are on their knees. You might further assume that Fiji Water, which comes from an aquifer in the South Pacific, would be in particularly bad shape: it is a regular target of scorn in those accounts, cited to underscore eco-conscious consumers’ discomfort (or disgust) with something shipped halfway around the planet that also happens to come out of your kitchen tap. Maybe this would explain the brand’s decision to convert pretty much its entire marketing message to: We are an eco-friendly “green” company.
…it’s probably wrongheaded to see Fiji’s greened-up image as being aimed at eco-opponents. It really speaks to consumers who are conflicted. Not so long ago we all felt good about drinking less soda; do we now have to feel guilty unless we drink tap water? Reid Lifset, the editor of Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology… empathizes with the consumer. “People don’t want to spend their lives wrapped up in ambiguities over one consumption decision,” he says. We want to be told whether something is terrible or perfectly acceptable. Fiji is offering its answer — an answer that, so far, people are still buying.
Consumed - Water Proof - Fiji Water - Consumed - Rob Walker - NYTimes.com
Excerpt from a Fast Company Artice > Message in a Bottle
“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.”
Eventually the green-washing will run out. Or maybe not?
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
There’s another little known, or, if known, at least not widely so, and certainly not advertised fact about FIJI water. I visited Fiji twice and stayed at very upscale, western run resorts. There are little red plaques chained around the base of the faucet handles on all of the in-room sinks which read, “Tap water unsafe for drinking”. I rented a car and drove out into the countryside and did a bit of grass roots investigating. I discovered by various interviews that much of the ground water in Fiji is too polluted to drink without proper treatment. So where’s the benefit of drinking it over any of the Nestle brands or just plain tap water any where else for that matter?
June 12th, 2008 at 9:21 am