climate & change…

It can attract undesirable reaction to align oneself too closely to any particular cause, but the Copenhagen summit underway at the moment is one I do feel quite strongly about.

I don’t advocate marching on parliament (it only serves to alienate less exuberant members of society) but I do implore common sense thought and consensus wherever possible on the subject. Copenhagen gives politicians, business folk and consumers alike an excuse to bring the subject onto a wider agenda, and for my part, it’s time to get off the fence…

Saving energy also saves money, which is a win win scenario for all irrespective of your personal thoughts on CO2 emissions. If you consider the energy a data centre uses to keep computers cool, there’s a huge potential savings to be just by doing things properly! You don’t have to boycott the internet in protest…

Another area we may agree on is that (as far as I’m aware) we only have the one planet, so advocating industrial growth without consideration of consequence seems rather naïve. Consumption is great, both for those doing the consuming and for those profiting from the supply chain that facilitates the things we consume, yet there comes a point where the wider ‘value’ discussion has to be taken into account among the cost of goods.

Transporting cheap products without any distinguishing characteristics over considerable distances – simply because it can be executed cheaper than producing or procuring a comparable product nearer the point of use is not sensible.

It can often make a little more margin for the organisation involved in the transaction, but takes little or no account of the wider environmental impact. Forget CO2 for a moment and consider the deteriorating state of our road system; under constant abuse from wagons delivering cheap produce and costing the wider communities considerably more to repair the damaged road infrastructure than the pennies saved from buying the lowest cost ‘transported goods’.

Using local labour and local resources to satisfy local demand is the essence of the transition town movement which I’m involved with. Some find it hypocritical that I support local growing and consumption, while importing a premium mineral water at the same time, but try thinking inside the box (or just thinking) before casting stones. Look at the traditional retail shelves stacked full of unsustainably cheap and extraordinarily heavy beverage products and you may get where I’m coming from…

AQUAPAX is unashamedly a pure, premium and portable mineral water product in a more ecologically sensible, re-usable and recyclable carton package. It not only has a lower carbon footprint that the cheaper alternatives, it is fundamentally superior quality (microbiologically and chemically) to practically every comparable product on the market, including the significantly more premium ones. Suitable for babies without the need for any pretentious package – it’s as sustainable as a pure product designed for portable consumption can be.

AQUAPAX is a near perfect 7.1pH

For all that, you’ll still find me advocating tap water if you’re near a tap and thirsty… you must honestly know there’s nothing wrong with it and it has the lowest carbon footprint bar none, but AQUAPAX does give you a near perfect, pure and nitrate free alternative if you really are concerned with the vastly over hyped potential contaminants lurking within your tap…

Consideration of the wider environment, while respecting the right to consume has to come onto the public agenda somewhere along the line – I wonder if Copenhagen will bring us closer to that line?

it’s a bit like busses…

Opportunities I mean – you wait forever for the one you want and then 2 come along at the same time… it’s certainly been like that lately, hence my absence from writing.

We partnered with Estethica for their press day at the London May Fair hotel on 11th November. Estethica is officially the British Fashion Council’s eco sustainable initiative and it’s now in its seventh season. During that time it’s evolved to become the epicentre (and the collective conscience) for London’s ethical fashion industry and it was an honour that they asked AQUAPAX (the conscience of the bottled water industry) to partner with them for this prestigious and premium quality event.

The day was a tremendous success showing there’s no need to compromise on design or style while remaining true to one’s personal and professional ethics. Despite some seriously ‘off-piste’ questioning at the start of the open press session, everyone agreed it was sensible for Estethica to maintain a separate stance to the core BFC press day, where they otherwise risk being marginalised by the big name classics.

I even managed to meet my son for a ‘pie and mash’ dinner near London Bridge later in the evening, which is something we haven’t done for a long time.

As if that wasn’t enough activity for one day, I’d started the day in Lewes (East Sussex), where the students at Sussex Down College were presenting the output of their Digital Media ‘motion graphics’ module. These incredibly talented individuals used AQUAPAX as their challenger brand to support with a series of viral ads, created to spread the word of our more sustainable mineral water against the corporate communications might of ‘the big boys’. At this point I’d very much like to publicly thank both the students and their tutors, particularly Sue Bamford and their professional animation tutor Sarah Bird – her work is awesome if you have the time…

The videos are now posted on you tube and if you search for AQUAPAX, you’ll see there’s quite a quirky collection gathering… (or click & follow this link) They range from seriously professional to… well, make up your own mind. Some students got a little close to simply condemning plastic bottles as opposed to actually promoting AQUAPAX, but as the group were kind enough to do this work for my brand, I wasn’t going to try and influence or control their output.
As a brand owner, this loss of control to a group of students could be perceived a brave (or foolish) decision, but I believe a brand exists in an open form, to be embraced (or not) and ultimately shaped by its consumers. How else would our brand have ended up within a ‘monty python’ style wacky but imminently watchable video?

Sure advertising can try to control consumer perception of a brand, but as a marketer, I’m conscious that brand interaction becomes more intimate once the ‘buy’ decision has been made; during the consumption phase or post purchase remorse as we were taught when I was a student.

Appreciating this isn’t a normal experience with a consumable like bottled water, it’s the iconic AQUAPAX design – thanks again SunHouse – which helps us build an emotional connectivity with our customers. As the retail price points for AQUAPAX and the plethora of plastic bottled stuff are broadly the same, our design led brand image has become our real brand attribute.

Anyone who’s read my blog (or tried our water) knows our product quality is superior but providing it can at least live up to and reinforce initial consumer perception of our brand promise (which it absolutely does) I believe that’s a more important brand attribute than me trying to tell consumers what their brand perception should be. Perception is reality as my friend Chris used to say.

Our French distributors have a slightly different perspective to my ‘let it be’ approach and you can see their incredibly professional animated video film in the same ‘you tube’ space if you type in our brand name, or follow my tweet link on the right. I respect the wonderfully collaborative creative work from Drinkyz and their partners at Scorpio Music and love both the funky imagery and the music itself; yet at the same time, there’s a shorter video from a Sussex Downs student called David Rosser which absolutely nails brand AQUAPAX in just 15 seconds!

Speaking of busses (I was in the beginning) I’m off to see Vegan Routes tomorrow in Brewer St. Soho, where AQUAPAX is the beverage of choice in their fine new vegan restaurant on board a renovated and quality converted 1967 Routemaster bus… Maybe we can meet there for lunch one day

iconic AQUAPAX at fabulous FIAC…

Between 22 and 25 October the art world turned out in force to celebrate the 36th FIAC in Paris. 210 galleries exhibited the work of 4,200 artists, with works prominently housed at the magnificent space within the ‘Grand Palais’ and at the ‘Cour Carrée du Louvre’ – the world famous museum known by all and visited by many.

I can assure you that seeing a series of paintings by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon in real life is pretty impressive, especially considering the way our AQUAPAX cartons seemed to blend so perfectly into their incredible surroundings, but my personal favourite was a piece of art created by Kader Attia. I saw this on my walk between the Grand Palais and the Louvre, where the outdoor projects in the Tuileries gardens were some of the most creative and large scale pieces on show.

The artist in question had created a work consisting of cymbals, installed slightly above water level in a large octagonal basin. The cymbals were all displayed in different angles, so each produced its own resonance, when affected by rain, wind, or indeed the sound of coins being thrown by enthusiastic visitors. The weather in Paris was spectacular for my visit, so I didn’t get to see how the rain impacted the piece, but I certainly ‘got it’ and to directly quote the artist ”Nature always transcends culture” – at least for me it does!

The core sponsors for the FIAC event (for the past 4 years) have been the Galeries Lafayette, which has a common ambition as the FIAC, to promote creative energy and to see the whole city come to life for art.
AQUAPAX has recently partnered with Galeries Lafayette, which is why AQUAPAX was the water sponsor for all of the exhibitors during this magnificent art festival. Roll on 2010, especially if the weather is as wonderful as 2009.

re-use and recycle… think inside the box!

There’s a degree of hypocrisy among many well meaning folk with fundamentally good intentions but closed minds. They hear or read a little about something and become disciples of the cause, without really understanding anything about the process or ‘thing’ they’re advocating.

Everything is fundamentally recyclable or capable of re-use for some purpose other than which it was originally created, and at the risk of being called a heretic, being recyclable is not ‘the holy grail’ when making a product choice. The order for thinking people who really want to minimise their planetary impact should be (a.) do I need to consume this? (b.) is this the most sustainable option? (c.) am I compromising my personal tastes or quality standards? (d.) do I have the means to afford my choice?

Embracing product sustainability as opposed to base level recyclability is the next step we need to teach the masses, which is quite a technically challenging communication to execute.

Most folk don’t want detail; they’re happy to know a little about something and to close their minds to any ignorance. That is human nature, so we shouldn’t knock it, but I do so appreciate consumers who take the time to ask why, and who more importantly, open their minds to listen to the answer.

To bring today’s piece around to bottled water (as you’re expecting me to); portable packaged water is a unique product within a media driven customer psyche. The ‘moral’ decision for ‘planet conscious’ consumers is whether to ever buy into this product category at all. Bear witness the small Australian town of Bundanoon’s recent headline grabbing bottled water ban, which I’ve previously blogged on.

Considering the alternatives are either fattening, contain sugars, additives or alcohol, most thinking people will accept the necessary evil of a pure beverage as a distress solution when there is no tap accessible. That doesn’t oblige consumption; it simply allows choice for when one doesn’t choose to hydrate with any of the aforementioned alternatives.

As customer focussed businesses, retailers and caterers are obliged to service customer needs, so they cannot be criticised too severely for stocking this product category, however, their commitment to CSR should be challenged…

A well thought out CSR policy must drive a sustainable procurement approach – one where satisfying customer needs in an ecologically sensitive way, without compromising product quality, is appropriately weighted on the ‘decision scorecard’ being used.

A parochial approach to bottled water so often leads to customer choice being restricted to whichever bottled water is packaged closest to where it’s being consumed, irrespective of its quality or true ecological impact. This geographic weighting ignores the genuine attributes of products which often come from further away, yet are proven to ‘cost less’ on any correctly weighted ecologically motivated score card.

Think inside the box – we’re only custodians of this maginificent planet, and it really does make sense!

organic fortnight merges into london design festival…

It’s the final week of Organic Fortnight and we’ve had a great response to our customer promotions. I’ve been doing a series of customer tastings to introduce new customers and say hi to some of our long standing friends, and the atmosphere has been really positive.

Whole Foods Market in particular have got their stores behind the integrity of Aquapax in putting together a great customer offer for the whole month of September. There’s never been a better time to buy Aquapax in town, while out of town, anyone who’s been to Brighton recently without visiting VBbites Café at Hove lagoon, needs to make another trip – yes their vegan food is worth it and of course they serve wonderfully chilled Aquapax.

Next week, is another major milestone in our brief history, as we celebrate The Westminster Collection’s networking event, ‘A Night To Remember With TWC‘, at the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday 22nd. The exquisitely positioned networking evening has been a complete sell-out, with over 850 pre-registrations. Aquapax is the mineral water sponsor for this prestigious evening, so it will be especially rewarding to see our iconic blue cartons wandering off down the Strand after the show.

At the same time as the TWC evening, Aquapax are also the prime sponsors at the oh so chic and totally inspirational Gallery FUMI launch party in Tabernacle St. and also at the more intimate Gallery FUMI and Studio Toogood Corn Craft dinner at their Hoxton Square venue. Both of these events kick-off their celebrations for the 2009 London Design Festival and we’re thrilled to be a part of the festivities.

The Aquapax ‘water wall’ (pictures to follow) is being designed by the immensely talented Pierric Verger who’s put a lot of himself into getting the wall right. The intention is to communicate the flowing energy of Aquapax to everyone visiting the gallery, as well as to keep the water chilled for those partaking of non-alcoholic refreshment.

Enquiries so far this week include Denmark and Puerto Rico, but then it is only Monday. Who ever said dreams don’t come true just didn’t work hard enough…

summer’s a busy time…

yours truly with the maestro Paul Rankin & his Aquapax

As always, there’s been a lot going on in Aquapax world over the past few weeks. It’s the silly season of shows at weekends and store samplings mid week, so taking a holiday has been the furthest thing from my mind, despite jovial e-mails from folk who read my blog wondering when I’m back.

We had a really successful 3 day Hatfield House Country Show this year, where the good fortune of being positioned next to Miles (the curry sauce man) certainly raised our sampling customer numbers. There was a special atmosphere in the Food Hall, as a few of us took turns at broadcasting the Ashes criscket score to visitors (and one another), causing spontaneous nervous laughter and the occassional ripple of applause. A particularly uplifting moment of the show was when an off duty representative of a well known supermarket engaged with me on why I created Aquapax, leading to an exchange of cards towards the end of the conversation… (watch this space)

The bank holiday weekend just gone was less illustrious, as we took a last minute stand in the Food Hall at the Stoneleigh Park Festival. The event has so much potential, but alas the Food Hall wasn’t laid out terribly well… Life is what we make of it, and in this instance, the time we had as ‘traders’ allowed us to get to know one another socially. The ‘Dunkirk spirit’ kicked in and the ‘celebrity chefs’ coordinated by the professionals at ‘chefs on stage’  were generous in their support of all the trade at the show, encouraging the public to engage and sample our wares. There are a lot worse ways to spend a bank holiday weekend and I’m grateful for the spontaneous social time ‘Neil waterguy’ spent with ‘Curry Sauce John’ & ‘Chocolate Heaven Lucy’.

Speaking of chefs, I met a wonderful Chef called Claire Harbron and get on with her like a lost friend. We’ve got a great alliance going with her and her fellow professionals at the dalston kitchen. They create the iconic ‘dk’ lunch boxes seen at the best photo shoots and outdoor events across town, where it’s a fantastic accolade they’ve chosen Aquapax as their water in the box! Kind of sums up their quality proposition really, which shouldn’t be any surprises for anyone who’s tried Aquapax.

Got a lot more web work to do in the coming weeks with my webtech friend Ian. We’ve discovered a typo on our French site (read carefully) and we also need to create a page for our new Dutch distribution alliance. Also want to plan the site development as the revolution is growing now and I really want to communicate that growth to keep our new recruits smilling. In the meanwhile, here’s something else to keep you smiling – our latest internet advertisement ‘the guillotine’ It’s all go in water world…

a music festival and a home delivery service…

Life has never been boring and this last weekend was spent enjoying some wonderfully talented bands playing live music at the Chalgrove Live Music Festival in Oxfordshire, where Aquapax was one of their core sponsors. 

The Festival is designed for people to enjoy live music in a family fun atmosphere while raising money for local worthy causes – this year’s charity was ‘crossroads – caring for carers’.

They had 20 bands booked in total and the face painters and fun-fair helped bring a real family feel to this intimate live music fest, which was real fun to be a part of. 

My son and I took a stand outside the beer tent  to offer ice cool Aquapax original (and energy drinks) to the bands as well as for the warm and weary members of the public – drinking beer for 12 hours in serious sunshine isn’t for the faint hearted, although we met plenty of people willing to try! 

All things considered, the event was well run and there were some genuinely nice people there. We had a really enjoyable weekend in the sunshine and it was great that the weather folk got it so wrong on this occasion!

zebra guy at the CLMF 2009

Bands worthy of a mention from this particular critic were:

The Motowners ; Strange Folk (amazing voice) ; Quo Incidence (if you like that kind of thing) ; All Right Now (must be my generation) ; Jiv’in Jules Jazz Ensemble (pity a lot of folk were still in bed) ; The Whoo (?) Ann Duggan (amazing voice) ; and of course The Kommitments (always end with a good boogie…

Coming home to a warm shower and a proper bed are always a bonus of a festival – or any weekend in a tent for that matter!

A bit of good news this week is that Aqua Amore – ‘the UK’s largest water delivery specialist’ has responded to our customer demand in taking on home distribution for Aquapax across London and the home counties, plus wider distribution nationwide. Now the challenge is to dust off the enquiries database to see if we can bring this new alliance to their attention and help generate some home delivery orders in due course.

Tomorrow’s another day in the big smoke and then Friday is looking like a journey to Peterborough beckons. What is it they say about winners never quitting and quitters never winning…

quick and honest; that’s the pitch!

Even this far down the road, I still meet a number of people who don’t get the Aquapax proposition and who sadly won’t allow however many seconds it would take to look at our pack design and fathom it out.

official Aquapax logo

The proposition could be perceived as too complicated I suppose, so I keep on trying to simplify my pitch description to capture the essence of what Aquapax is in however many milli seconds people give me.

Current soundbites embrace: “It’s one of the purest mineral water’s in the world – even suitable for infants!” or “It’s pure mineral water sealed airtight and protected from light which keeps it tasting fresh!” or ”It’s premium quality natural mineral water in the lowest carbon impact package option on the planet!” or “It’s pure portable water in a leach free re-usable package!” or “I’m an environmentalist and hate plastic – this is my answer to the scourge of plastic bottled water!” or “We won best bottled water of 2008 and it’s not even in a bottle!” or “It’s natural mineral water in a carton, so it stays colder for longer and you can re-fill it when it’s empty!”… there’s more, but I’m sure you get the idea.

While all the soundbites are true, as a brutally honest lady told me earlier today, they’re clearly not breaking through at the level of the masses, where sensational news or celebrity association or selling through years of advertising propaganda are what’s actually piercing the public’s earplugged consciousness. (she didn’t say the bit about ear plugged consciousness – that was me trying to paint a picture of an ignoramous.)

I clearly need to spend some time pondering how to get our marketing message simplified further, to help the mainstream get it.  I don’t honestly believe our premium quality natural mineral water in a paper carton will ever appeal to the entire mainstream, but if anyone has any enlightenment to share, I’m open minded and I promise to give you as much time as you need to convince me – within reason…

living here and now…

I can’t help wonder why decision making is sometimes so difficult. Are we afraid of ‘no’ or do we genuinely not know? This has been a frustrating fortnight for ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’ and ‘might’ – the financial markets may be recovering quite well, but there’s a hard core of ‘no decision suits me better’ out there which has to change if the economy is to pick up properly.

Commitment is a wonderful thing because it gives the impetus to go forward. Foundations can be laid and plans developed while positive actions are taken towards the execution of whatever has been decided. Once decisions are made, there’s no need to wait for anything and that same decisive action is now needed to kick-start the business world back to life.

In our own small way, we’re going for it and we’ve agreed to sponsor this year’s Chalgrove Live Music Festival. The way I see it, there will be 20 bands playing to an audience of a few thousand over 3 days from Friday evening 7th to Sunday evening 9th August. It’s a far more intimate affair than Glasto and unlikely to be as muddy… It’s also a perfect opportunity for families to enjoy their own music festival and let’s face it, music is a wonderful thing if you can enjoy it with people you love.

Why did we choose this particular festival this year? Well we’re scaling back a little, paying homage to these prudent times, but it’s still getting us out there in the Oxfordshire community, which is one of those areas where Aquapax doesn’t yet have great representation. (come on Oxfordshire businesses – your residents need Aquapax.) So there’s the strategic rationale, whereas on a human level, the fact we agree with the CLM ethos as a fun for the family fund raising festival (lots of f’s) which donates its profits to noble local charities is right up our street.

The Chalgrove Live Music Festival website seems to be having some issues right now, but we hope to see you there in any case. Find me on the Saturday if you want to talk opportunities – after 2 nights in a tent I get a little sleepy…

the shelf wobblers…

We’ve recently produced some new shelf wobblers as a trial to coincide with our latest signing for Aquapax distribution in London (South Thames Wholesale) and are pretty happy with how they’ve turned out. Essentially a shelf wobblers’ duty is to attract people to a product while staying attached to the shelf the product is sitting on.

In any case I thought I’d share the wobblers with whoever’s reading, in case you haven’t come across one in town yet. Aquapax shelf wobbler 70×100mm_200% If your’e an Aquapax retailer and you’d like one (or two), please contact your regular distributor who should be happy to help out. Failing that, send us an e-mail and we’ll get on the case.

If you’re a retailer based anywhere in London and you’re looking for a pro-active supplier for your Aquapax, I can’t rate Robert and the rest of the team at South Thames highly enough. But then we’ve always made a point of forming alliances with folk whose company we enjoy, so the same goes for all of our distributors!
Happy Friday