The Water Bottle War of the Word of Mouth

Mary Clare Hunt — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:46:07 -0500

This weekend, CBS Sunday morning featured the water shortage that will be happening in 5 years for Southern California. Las Vegas will also be hit hard not only with lack of water, but lack of hydro power which keeps the lights on at night. I completely forgot about that little issue - no water, no power coming from the Hoover Dam. Lake Mead is already 60 feet lower than it once was.

That sent me back to re-read Maude Barlow's book, "Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water." On page 85 she notes how Nestle paid BzzAgent to get bottled water samples out to 10,000 moms for word of mouth marketing. So I'm thinking I wonder who would win the word-of-mouth war when it comes to bottled water - moms handed a free sample or moms who don't believe we should be drinking bottled water? I'm guessing the later, what do you think?

It poses an interesting issue, though, doesn't it? How many non-green products will continues to be pushed when there is an equal amount of push back? When it comes to water, it's not only the price (about 10,000 times higher than tap water), but also the plastic build up (only 10% of the bottles are recycled) and the plastic puts nasty stuff into the water anyway.

Is there a place for non-green products in a word of mouth consumer world?

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The Water Bottle War of the Word of Mouth