Does Your Water Taste Better?
Most business owners, living their business 24/7, are hard pressed to define their USP. Their Unique Selling Proposition, that One thing that makes your brand the Only brand for your customers. Heck, I suffer from it myself. The Owner-with-blinkers Syndrome, I call it.
If you think your product is difficult to brand, think about commodities. A commodity has no essential qualitative differentiation to its attributes. I mean, salt is salt is salt, right? And (bottled) water is water wherever you get it. Yet they have achieved the seemingly impossible – think Morton Salts and Evian Water. So if commodities can do it, why can’t you?
The latest ‘cult’ water brand to break into the fiercely competitive bottled water is Fiji Water. It’s not yet available in Malaysia, but brand enthusiasts like us here have read all about it. In essence, Fiji Water is not selling water; it is selling a dream. By linking the brand with the virgin forests and ecosystems in the remote island of Fiji, it injects some excitement into the plain ‘ol water. Would you want to drink water, or would you want to drink water from Fiji? No wonder Fiji water is labeled the exotic water.
Our local water tai-ko, Diamond, also claims to taste better, be better for your skin and health and so on. In fact, drinking 8 daily glasses of any water will get your skin glowing and flush out bodily toxins. Diamond is selling health.
Exactly what we Malaysians want.
Fiji Water has come under fire for racking up the carbon footprint miles and for exporting water when more than half the people in Fiji do not have drinkable water. This article triggered it all. And with political instability in Fiji, the company is closing its plant in the country.
All in all, a good job branding the seemingly un-brandable, till fate stepped in.
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