The fruit-infused water category, which did not exist in any meaningful way fifteen years ago, has apparently reached the stage of its development where it requires parody.
Hint, the sugar-free flavored water brand that has been quietly building distribution since 2005, is introducing a campaign that applies the humid visual grammar of fragrance advertising to the act of drinking water. The sixty-second spot, created by the Los Angeles agency Mythology, opens with a French voiceover of the sort typically reserved for declarations about desire and forbidden pleasure, while attractive people in swimwear regard each other with what can only be described as intention.
The reveal, such as it is, comes at the midpoint: what they want, it turns out, is another water. (The spot is called "Mmmmm Water," which tells you roughly where the irony dial has been set.)
The campaign will extend to media placements during "Love Island," the dating competition series that has become something of a cultural shorthand for a certain kind of aspirational thirst, and will include partnerships with the recording artist Yung Gravy and the actor Jesse Metcalfe, who appeared in "Desperate Housewives" two decades ago and has remained in the celebrity ecosystem since.
What Hint is attempting here is a maneuver that has become familiar in beverage marketing: positioning a product that is, at its core, water with fruit essence as something worth feeling strongly about. The category has grown crowded enough that mere refreshment no longer suffices as a selling proposition.
Whether consumers will find the joke as amusing on the third viewing as on the first remains to be seen. But Hint, at least, appears to be having a good time.
Original story published in The Drum: "Ad of the Day: Hint’s ‘Mmmmm Water’ makes H20 sexy (sort of) | The Drum"