Hello, OptiMIST People!
Back at it again with KaMIST! Your weekly dose of insights into the latest marketing trends. In this week’s KaMIST we’ll dive into how a brand new–slightly odd–advertising company called FreeWater, uses bottles as their advertising platform.
Quite odd isn’t it? How does one distribute free water bottles while still managing to gain profit and have some extras to donate 10 cents of each bottle to charity? To answer that question, let’s take a closer look at FreeWater Inc.
FreeWater Inc. is a company that uses water bottles as an advertising platform and distributes the water for free to the consumer, ten cents of each bottle will be donated to charity to build wells for the people in need. They didn’t stop there, FreeWater Inc. also requires aluminum bottles and paper cartons instead of plastic bottles as their packaging to achieve the sustainable living and eco-friendly product. What could possibly go wrong? With these amazing offers, it is no doubt that in the future market, FreeWater will be the ‘blue-print’ of a new, innovative, paradigm-changing, type of advertising platform.
By this point, you may be wondering, how in the world does this work? Well to put it simply, it works the same way as a billboard would, but with a twist, they use bottles as their medium. Advertisers are expected to pay for all of the cost of the production (water, packaging, etc.) in exchange for their ads being printed in the paper cartons or aluminum bottles that later will be distributed for free to the targeted consumer.
As we know packaging functions as the case for the product that aids its transport, handling, delivery, and communicates the brand and product information by making it look attractive. However, with this new function added by FreeWater Inc. packaging can be used as a method to place ads for different businesses or even products. This creates a separately new marketing strategy that can be used by businesses to aid in covering the costs of their operations. In this case, FreeWater utilizes this strategy in order to be able to provide their product of bottled water, which is a basic need, for free.
For FreeWater Inc, not only does this aid in the covering of their costs but also builds their brand image. Consumers now see that there is a business that is providing water to the public without charging anything and will not only be attracted to it due to the fact that it’s free, but also to the fact that the business is providing a basic necessity which people usually have to pay for. We could expect to see this strategy being more commonly used in the future, especially by businesses that focus on giving back to the community, namely social enterprises.
For advertisers, their ads are now in the hands of the consumers. As FreeWater Inc. hands out these free bottles of water, people are most likely going to be curious about what’s on the bottle. Additionally, as people start to carry these bottles around, even more people will see the advertisements. What do you think? Could this be an even more effective way to advertise?
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