A Waterfall of Hype

I must begin this post with a disclaimer -- or mea culpa -- I’m not sure which is more appropriate. I’ve spent the last twenty-five-plus years writing ad copy for clients as large and well-known as Nissan, the LA Dodgers, Blue Cross, Carnation Foods, Lockheed Martin, Baskin-Robbins and well, I’ll just say that I can be blamed for thousands of TV and radio commercials, print ads, web sites and direct mail campaigns. Sorry.

I know far too intimately how the creative side of effective marketing works – specifically, how to use words, images and cultural attitudes to create something called perceived value for any given product or service. This is especially important when marketing what we in the business call a parity product, or something that is almost identical to its competition. Advertisers of parity products try to convince consumers that there are valuable differences between their – whatever – and all others. Buy ours, not theirs. Why? Because we’re brighter, whiter, newer, fresher, cooler, more hip, more fun, a better value, more impressive, less polluting, faster … you get the idea. Parity products include beer, banks, dairy, grocery stores, soft drinks and that mother of all perceived value marketing magic – bottled water.

Case in point; there is a TV spot running now for a popular brand of bottled water whose slogan is, Bottled At The Source. The TV commercial for this particular water shows a kid at home asking his Mom for the water by name (as all kids do, right?). Mom turns to  a store keeper (through the magic of green screen) and repeats the request. The store keeper turns and asks a warehouseman with a hand cart, who then turns toward a beautiful, panoramic vista with a snow-covered mountain peak in the background and lush, verdant rolling hills in the foreground punctuated by a forest of majestic pines in between. As bluebirds flutter overhead and God-like rays of sun warm his face, the warehouseman calls out to what can only be the great Spirit of Mountain Water in the Sky and calls out, “Crystal Geyser, please!”

Makes you crave a cold, tall glass of this nectar of Nature, doesn’t it? (Or a barf bag, in my case. Then again, I’ve been in this business a long time.)

Now, I’ve crossed swords with enough Standards and Practices guardians at the various networks to know that you can’t say things in a TV commercial that aren’t technically true (political and environmental advocacy ads not withstanding). And I happen to know that this particular water is, indeed, “bottled at the source.” Technically.

Here’s the thing: the source for this particular brand of bottled water isn’t in some far-flung, Eden-like glacial valley where furry animals talk to each other and never poop near the water supply. No, the source is actually about 185 miles north of where I live in a place just beyond Olancha, California, a teeny tiny town on the edge of the dry and dusty Owens Dry Lake bed. Makes you thirsty just thinking about it, right?

So, why don’t they show the real source in the TV spots for the brand? Because the Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water bottling plant is in reality a few massive, nondescript corrugated metal buildings that squat alongside the ribbon of asphalt that is Highway 395. There are huge windows on the side of the buildings facing the thousands of cars, RVs and trucks that scream by every day on their way to Mammoth, Reno and beyond. As you roar past you can see a plumber’s nightmare of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling pipes and valves and stainless steel and wires and cables and various other industrial equipment.

Outside, between the massive metallic structures is a vast parking lot that is typically occupied by dozens of tractor trailer rigs and forests of wooden pallet stacks. Not a bluebird, verdant valley or cascading waterfall in sight.  

I’m really not surprised. Because I know that, as it is with most parity product marketing, it’s more often than not the implication of purity, or superiority or better performance/enjoyment/whatever that makes consumers part with their hard-earned dollars – not actual product benefits themselves. A rose is a rose and water is water, after all.

The blatant marketing sleight of hand used in the Crystal Geyser commercials, however, just makes me want to take a drink – but not of water. Which reminds me of a much better campaign for yet another parity product, the brilliantly executed “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials for Dos Equis beer. Of this type of smart advertising I can only say, cheers!

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly longer version of my column first published yesterday, 6.2.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Hooked On Annual Event

On the Friday before the last Saturday of any given April, the northbound freeways out of southern California are choked with SUVs and pickup trucks towing boat trailers and loaded to the gills with work-weary fishermen headed for the same general destination – the streams, reservoirs and lakes of California’s Eastern Sierra mountains.

If you aren’t an avid angler or married to one, you may not know that the last Saturday of every April is the annual Opening Day of the Eastern Sierra Trout Season – often shortened to just “the Opener” – as in, “Are you doing the Opener this year, or waiting for warmer weather?” Also affectionately known to participants and those they leave behind as “Fishmas,” the annual Opener sends Southern California anglers by the tens of thousands up Highway 395 and into Inyo and Mono Counties to try their lucky lures against the wild and planted fish stock that have had the long, bitter winter to grow bigger and hungrier.

On Opener weekend, fishermen head out by the carload, bleary eyed and caffeine-fueled, visions of rainbow trout dancing in their heads. This legion of lake loiterers becomes progressively more alert as they drive through the Owens Valley towns of Lone Pine, Independence, Big Pine and Bishop. Signs and banners in shop windows and hung across the highway greet the wader-wearing warriors as they pass with graphic shouts of “Merry Fishmas!,” “Welcome, Fishermen!” or “Land a lunker!”

As part of the Opener ritual, most if not all of this convoy of casting characters will make a stop at one or more of the many bait and tackle shops along the way – many of which stay open all night on “Fishmas Eve” (and yes, they really call it Fishmas Eve). After all, it doesn’t matter how much fishing equipment you’ve brought, there’s always a new flavor of bait or type of hook that simply must be purchased in order to ensure a successful weekend.

The high school kids in Independence (a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town along the way to hallowed fishing grounds) sell Styrofoam containers of night crawler worms on Opener weekend to raise funds for various school activities. I’ll bet the clean up.

Having a son who’s been a certifiable fishing addict since the age of five, I know of no other hobby – some would say affliction – that requires the near constant addition of new gear and accessories. (Although, golf may come close.) To be a true fisherman, one needs to invest a sum worthy of Goldman-Sachs bailout on new and improved ways to catch fish.

I’m not saying that fishermen are gullible (“gill”able?), but I would bet that you could take a simple size 12 single salmon egg hook, repackage the exact same hooks with a new label marketing them as revolutionary left-handed technology designed exclusively for use in water flowing right-to-left instead of left-to-right – and a million fishermen would spend perfectly good cash to add these special “new” hooks to the arsenal in their tackle boxes. You never know when you’ll run into reverse flowing water, after all. Or ambidextrous trout.  

As we have for many years, my above-mentioned son and I often take part in any given year’s Trout Opener weekend – getting up before dawn on the Saturday morning in question to put our small aluminum boat into the frigid waters and await the first rays of sunlight, and with it, the official start of the Spring/Summer fishing season.

How do we usually do? Well, if you measure the “success” of a fishing trip by the number of rainbows brought home in the cooler, we typically fail spectacularly. Depending on the year, either most of the lakes are still covered by ice and the water just too cold for the fish to bite – or the wind is blowing at gale force – or there are enough boats crowding the prime lake locations that you can’t cast your line without hooking another angler, or … you get the idea.

But as far as I’m concerned, the chance to sit in a boat with my college-age son (and sometimes my father-in-law) for most of the day, in the high altitude splendor of the snow-covered Sierras, sharing a cheese and cracker lunch with a side of priceless conversation – well, it’s pretty hard to classify a trip like that as anything but successful.

Besides, I hear there’s a brand new sun-dried Tuscan garlic flavor of bait that I’m going to pick up before our next fishing trip. Yeah, that should have ‘em absolutely jumping into our boat.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the April 29, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).