Tell me how you feel, I'll give you wat(er) you need

What emotions drive us when purchasing a bottle of water?

It's no secret that emotions influence people's decisions about what, when and how they buy. Emotions are powerful motivators. It is important for brands to creatively associate a positive emotion and positive attitude with their product.

Emotions drive our purchase all the time. Imagine yourself in a supermarket around 11.30 am when you’re getting hungry, you will see those nice chocolate bars and buy it. That’s the point.

Consumers are driven by the image water brands provide them. Water brands must have a clear positioning in order to adapt their communication to their target. Let’s take the example of Contrex. They used to communicate only in an informational way: no emotion. The message was: “Contrex helps you eliminate”. It was promoted by thin women but it was so naïve than the public turned the ad into derision. Recently, they have decided to target active young women and totally changed their promotion and based everything on fun, dynamism. They changed the message into an emotional slogan “On mincirait mieux si c’était plus fun” (“we’d lose weight easily if it was more fun”) in order to have an impact on women’s behavior.  (*To know more about Contrex, feel free to click on the tab above!). 

On the opposite, seniors will feel attracted by traditional values: we all remember about Cristaline’s ad directing Guy Roux, the best endorser to bring this image to consumers!

However, people drink water because we all have to do it (if not, we’ll die, right?!) but the goal here is to add value to the water so that people can feel the benefit of drinking bottled water. It can be about the taste (value of happiness), it can be about the intrinsic benefits (well-being, slimness) or also about purity, nature (healthy).

Emotions consumers feels about water is also linked to the commercial and how the brand communicate. Evian always put babies in their ads: it’s not random. Their ads calls out consumer’s emotions around sensitiveness. People see babies on roller, we all think it’s cute.

Volvic will linked consumer’s emotions with nature, well-being, freedom. When we see their commercials, we can feel the nature, we can have a deep breath and dive into a volcano.

Still water brands have to create emotions in the consumers’ minds to create an image people will identify themselves into and this image is the thing they have to build everything around.