Despite having access to hundreds of retail stores, millions of Cleveland residents prefer tap water rather than bottled water, reports say. It’s not that these people like to be too modest or minimalistic. The reason, instead, is that while the city’s tap water is pulled from Lake Erie’s clean water, the bottled water was found to be littered with zillions of plastic particles. In a documentary published by The Story of Stuff Project ( @StoryofStuff ) on 2010’s World Water Day, a woman shared how Cleveland’s tap water was found to be purer and more suited to drinking than the bottled water of a brand that advertises itself as the provider of Earth’s finest water: Fiji.
Fiji Water, famed for being one of the most popular bottled water brands, vouches for itself as the supplier of water that is “untouched by man because he had nothing to do with it,” as the narrator says in this YouTube ad . In 2006, the brand rolled out an ad campaign whose headline read, “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland,” according to the picture shared on X by Edward Builds (@showprogress) . It turned out to be their “dumbest mistakes in history as the city of Cleveland didn’t like to be the butt of their jokes,” as the woman said in the video.
This was a huge marketing fail. Fiji Water once ran a campaign that said, “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” Fiji Water, if you don’t know, is considered high-end bottled water. Anyway, the city of Cleveland was offended by this, so they did some… pic.twitter.com/2HPLZHSOyA
— Edward Builds (@showprogress) March 20, 2024
Offended by the headline, the city of Cleveland conducted some experimental tests to compare Fiji’s bottled water with Cleveland’s tap water. Not only did Fiji’s bottled water prove to be of lower quality, but it also lost taste tests against Cleveland’s tap water. Worse still was the fact that Fiji’s water cost thousands of times more than Cleveland’s easily accessible water. This was just one instance. The woman from The Story of Stuff Project explained that in the general case as well, “bottled water is less regulated than tap water.”…