The Next Big Thing is: Tap Water
There is an old expression “the customer always knows what he wants, but he rarely knows what he needs”.
Marketing is the science of identifying those needs and then developing and delivering products to meet them. Firms who play only to our ‘wants’ usually loose out to firms who fully understand our ‘needs’ - firms who are orientated around ‘needs’ develop successful new products and uncover lucrative new markets.
But do marketers fully understand our environmental ‘needs’, or are they making a quick buck out of our environmental ‘wants’?
To find out, advertising imagery firm Getty Images spent a year examining advertising images from all around the world relating to the environment. With many firms jumping onto the green bandwagon they found an increasingly large gap between what companies say they are doing and what they actually deliver. This phenomena is becoming increasingly known as ‘greenwashing’.
Greenwashing
In a recent study, environmental marketing firm Terrachoice identified the six principle ‘sins’ of greenwashing as practiced by marketers today:
Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off:
‘By suggesting a product is “green” based on a single environmental attribute or an unreasonably narrow set of attributes without attention to other important, or perhaps more important, environmental issues.’
Sin of No Proof:
‘Any environmental claim that cannot be substantiated by easily accessible supporting information, or by a reliable third-party certification.’
Sin of Vagueness:
‘Every claim that is so poorly defined or broad that its real meaning is likely to be misunderstood by the intended consumer.’
Sin of Irrelevance:
‘Making an environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant and unhelpful for consumers seeking environmentally preferable products.’
Sin of Lesser of Two Evils:
‘“Green” claims that may be true within the product category, but that risk distracting the consumer from the greater environmental impacts of the category as a whole.’
Sin of Fibbing:
‘Making environmental claims that are simply false.’
Can marketing also offer the answer?
But maybe the marketing world has a new opportunity to redeem itself? A recent BBC documentary has highlighted the environmental impacts of bottled water, a bottle of which requires 600 times more Co2 for transportation compared to tap water. A British government advisor has even gone so far as to claim “We have to make people think that it’s unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong,“
Paying extra for something that comes out of the tap for free has often baffled me, and during blind taste tests filmed as a part of the documentary tap water was frequently preferred over bottled. So can marketing come to the rescue?
People want pure, fresh tasting water. Right now they think they need it in a bottle with an interesting label. What they actually need are tap-water coolers and purifiers that can deliver the same water ‘experience’ (to use a marketing term) at a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint. After all, if marketers can sell something in a bottle for several dollars when it’s also available from the tap for free, then surely they must be able to sell anything?
Sources & further information
La Marguerite - The Six Sins of Greenwashing, BBC - ‘Greenwash’ is losing its shine, BBC - Bottled Water: Who Needs It?
What a thought-provoking post.
I think bottled water has some benefits. Examples: on the underground, at the sports centre, on the move, in the car… etc. This is probably where the demand/need started in the 1st place.
I suppose there is an argument that you could have an empty bottle at home that you fill from the tap and take with you, but that would require a vastly different lifestyle to which the majority of us live.
Limiting the ability of companies to market/advertise water may limit their profits, and therefore availability of water in the shops, and therefore competition?
Not sure where I’m going with that.
On the other hand of course, there are the examples in London now of £125 for a 75ml bottle. Now that is daft, especially as there is no skill involved in the production of water (as there may be in, say, the making of a handbag, which may encourage talented inividuals to create handbags for a living, thus encouraging entrepreneurialism).
I’m not sure that dealing with that particular fashionable trend will quell the wider demand discussed above.