Drink Locally, Be A Good Person Globally
Our Town downtown
March 19, 2007
For one day, NYC tap water will be branded -- but you've probably already heard
On all other days we get free tap water at restaurants; why on March 22 would we pay?
It all started last October. The creative minds of a SoHo advertising firm were hard at work to come up with something… big. The challenge, which had been posed to them by Esquire Magazine: build a brand out of nothing.
“So we came up with a bunch of super-silly ideas to build a fictitious brand, send people on a wild goose chase,” says Andrew Essex, CEO of the advertising firm Droga5. “But we happened to be sitting around a restaurant. It was the week that India ostensibly ran out of water.”
“Paying $47 for a piece of chicken,” he recalls, “and realizing that you get this bountiful, magnificent tap water for free and realizing that you take it completely for granted” sparked an idea. Thus was born a brand.
“We thought we could brand New York City’s tap water: we’d call it New York Tap, and then we could get the restaurants to sell it constantly, and that would be a great thing and that would be that.”
However, kind of like all the awesome ideas I come up with, like a floating love seat that moves at the speed of the average pedestrian or a game show where the winner would become a presidential candidate, Droga5’s brainchild didn’t quite hold up when it encountered reality.
“We subsequently learned that that was not even remotely viable, that bottled water is a huge source of revenue for the restaurants.”
Only a little bit daunted, they headed to the revision table. “We thought maybe we could do it for a week,” says Essex.
“And some restaurateurs said: ‘Mmm, not so much.’”
Still, it was the best idea they had, and they knew it was a good one, even if no one else did. Water, the most valuable resource in the world, cost nothing here. That made it a huge untapped fountain of revenue – if they could only put a label on it. “In advertising there’s a chestnut that you pay $100 for the swoosh and $5 for the sneaker,” says Essex. “If you could put a label on the tap water that they serve, you’d suddenly make it valuable to people.”
Their restaurateur friends suggested they try it for a day. “And then once we modified our expectations, we realized, well that would be cool.”
Droga5 found out the United Nations had something called World Water Day on March 22, “so we thought, well that’s clearly the day to do it.”
Then they realized that they were going to be making money that they, being a for-profit business, could not collect. And so they called up UNICEF and asked, hey, do you want some money?
Unsurprisingly, “They completely embraced it, went over the moon for it,” says Essex. “We have their complete backing, it’s their plan to take it globally after this year. You know, we’ll start in New York and then next year they can move it exponentially to other cities that have first-rate, plentiful, clean water. So there will be New York Tap, Chicago Tap, Sidney Tap, London Tap, Geneva tap, and we think it’ll make a real difference in terms of revenue and awareness.”
The rest, Droga5 could do in their sleep. “We created ads for it, created a logo, a look. We lined up support of four or five of the top restaurateurs and chefs in the city. We got a sister agency to create a magnificent website, all pro bono.”
They’ve been advertising as only an advertising company can. By the time March 22 rolls around, every sequestered juror and elderly hermit in all five boroughs will have seen an ad for New York Tap.
I first saw a cute essay by George Saunders in New York Magazine last week about his lifelong antagonistic relationship with water, personified. At that point, I thought this Tap Project might be a cool, relatively obscure idea for a Water Log. Then I saw an ad on the website gothamist.com. Then I realized that a massive advertising campaign was about to crest and I was just surfing along with it, but oh well.
Essays by ten prominent novelists will be running in print publications. Reuters donated two big Times Square billboards on March 21st and 22nd, Van Wagner donated 100 free phone kiosks to be plastered with ads. The New York Times gave a full page ad that Essex said will likely run on March 21. It will look like a menu and say something like, “Special of the Day: Tap Water, $1,” and it will list all the participating restaurants, which was over 300 as of last Wednesday and increasing by more than twenty each day. The day of the event, Microsoft is giving them the homepage of the MSN network.
So how will it work? Well, in case you haven’t seen the ads: on March 22, you go to one of the participating restaurants, get a glass of tap water and pay for it. The money goes to UNICEF, to provide safe drinking water to children around the world.
New York Tap will raise money and awareness about the scarcity of drinking water, but that’s not all. This is the best ad campaign ever – for advertising itself. If this kind of buzz can be created over tap water, what could happen with a product that doesn’t come out of everyone’s sink? A full-scale Japanese little girl-style craze.
It all started last October. The creative minds of a SoHo advertising firm were hard at work to come up with something… big. The challenge, which had been posed to them by Esquire Magazine: build a brand out of nothing.
“So we came up with a bunch of super-silly ideas to build a fictitious brand, send people on a wild goose chase,” says Andrew Essex, CEO of the advertising firm Droga5. “But we happened to be sitting around a restaurant. It was the week that India ostensibly ran out of water.”
“Paying $47 for a piece of chicken,” he recalls, “and realizing that you get this bountiful, magnificent tap water for free and realizing that you take it completely for granted” sparked an idea. Thus was born a brand.
“We thought we could brand New York City’s tap water: we’d call it New York Tap, and then we could get the restaurants to sell it constantly, and that would be a great thing and that would be that.”
However, kind of like all the awesome ideas I come up with, like a floating love seat that moves at the speed of the average pedestrian or a game show where the winner would become a presidential candidate, Droga5’s brainchild didn’t quite hold up when it encountered reality.
“We subsequently learned that that was not even remotely viable, that bottled water is a huge source of revenue for the restaurants.”
Only a little bit daunted, they headed to the revision table. “We thought maybe we could do it for a week,” says Essex.
“And some restaurateurs said: ‘Mmm, not so much.’”
Still, it was the best idea they had, and they knew it was a good one, even if no one else did. Water, the most valuable resource in the world, cost nothing here. That made it a huge untapped fountain of revenue – if they could only put a label on it. “In advertising there’s a chestnut that you pay $100 for the swoosh and $5 for the sneaker,” says Essex. “If you could put a label on the tap water that they serve, you’d suddenly make it valuable to people.”
Their restaurateur friends suggested they try it for a day. “And then once we modified our expectations, we realized, well that would be cool.”
Droga5 found out the United Nations had something called World Water Day on March 22, “so we thought, well that’s clearly the day to do it.”
Then they realized that they were going to be making money that they, being a for-profit business, could not collect. And so they called up UNICEF and asked, hey, do you want some money?
Unsurprisingly, “They completely embraced it, went over the moon for it,” says Essex. “We have their complete backing, it’s their plan to take it globally after this year. You know, we’ll start in New York and then next year they can move it exponentially to other cities that have first-rate, plentiful, clean water. So there will be New York Tap, Chicago Tap, Sidney Tap, London Tap, Geneva tap, and we think it’ll make a real difference in terms of revenue and awareness.”
The rest, Droga5 could do in their sleep. “We created ads for it, created a logo, a look. We lined up support of four or five of the top restaurateurs and chefs in the city. We got a sister agency to create a magnificent website, all pro bono.”
They’ve been advertising as only an advertising company can. By the time March 22 rolls around, every sequestered juror and elderly hermit in all five boroughs will have seen an ad for New York Tap.
I first saw a cute essay by George Saunders in New York Magazine last week about his lifelong antagonistic relationship with water, personified. At that point, I thought this Tap Project might be a cool, relatively obscure idea for a Water Log. Then I saw an ad on the website gothamist.com. Then I realized that a massive advertising campaign was about to crest and I was just surfing along with it, but oh well.
Essays by ten prominent novelists will be running in print publications. Reuters donated two big Times Square billboards on March 21st and 22nd, Van Wagner donated 100 free phone kiosks to be plastered with ads. The New York Times gave a full page ad that Essex said will likely run on March 21. It will look like a menu and say something like, “Special of the Day: Tap Water, $1,” and it will list all the participating restaurants, which was over 300 as of last Wednesday and increasing by more than twenty each day. The day of the event, Microsoft is giving them the homepage of the MSN network.
So how will it work? Well, in case you haven’t seen the ads: on March 22, you go to one of the participating restaurants, get a glass of tap water and pay for it. The money goes to UNICEF, to provide safe drinking water to children around the world.
New York Tap will raise money and awareness about the scarcity of drinking water, but that’s not all. This is the best ad campaign ever – for advertising itself. If this kind of buzz can be created over tap water, what could happen with a product that doesn’t come out of everyone’s sink? A full-scale Japanese little girl-style craze.
