Coke and Pepsi's New Marketing Strategy: Pull at Your Heart Strings
By Richard Girard, Polaris Institute.
The big bottled water companies are trying to counter negative press by tying their products to charitable causes.

World Water Day 2008 (March 22) will see a flurry of announcements from bottled water companies who claim to be helping solve the globe's water crisis. The catch is that these altruistic claims are intimately tied to major advertising campaigns designed to convince the public to buy their products.

Numerous media and industry reports are saying that sales of bottled water are slowing as a result of campaigns targeting the product's environmental and social impact. In a recent article, Brandweek declared that Pepsi and Coke are facing "evaporating sales growth for bottled water and increased concerns about their products' impact on the environment."

Another report, from industry publication Beverage Digest, said that sales and growth of the bottled water industry in 2007 was about half of what it was in 2006. Recently reported annual results from the world's largest bottled water company Nestlé show a slowdown in growth in its bottled water sector from 2006. According to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, global sales growth has consistently dropped since 2003.

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