Archival Consumed: A Spoonful of Attitude

[Vitaminwater]

By his own account, J. Darius Bikoff was ”confused” when he looked at the labels on bottled water — the ones showing images of streams and mountains. The connection between the packaging and the benefits of the water itself seemed vague. So Bikoff took a different approach when he got into the beverage business and created Vitaminwater, which he says now sells two million bottles a day.

There are no soothing pictures, or pictures of anything. The look is just this side of generic: Black sans-serif type (Helvetica Neue) against a plain background, white plus one color. Like the name, the packaging suggests something almost medicinal. Alex Frankel, author of ”Wordcraft,” on the art of naming brands, calls Vitaminwater an example of ”the bottom-up approach to naming.” Instead of projecting a completely concocted word (like Dasani) onto the marketplace, Vitaminwater articulates in unadorned terms an inherently attractive idea. In this case, Frankel says, that idea is ”water with an asterisk” — something different from both un-”enhanced” bottled waters and sodas. And water spiked with vitamins sounds so . . . sensible.

The full name is actually Glaceau Vitaminwater, although the Glaceau bit is played down on the bottle. In a third name-layer, there are several varieties, like Revive, Vital-t and Focus, each meant to suggest the payoff of a specific nutrient deployment. This gives the consumer something — however preposterous it may sound — to latch on to. ”I’ve actually been in business meetings where people brought six different flavors,” Frankel says, ”and looked around and said: ‘Here, Jim, you need some Focus. And you, you need Balance.”’

As you’d expect, the side of the bottle also lists the vitamin contents. But there’s something else — a bit of a wink. ”For best results,” the Revive package advises, ”mix with individuals showing signs of sluggishness and laziness.” On some flavors, the text is not merely jokey but almost satirical. The note on the Essential bottle begins, ”Although this product is not ‘part of a ”so-called” nutritious breakfast,’ it does contain many vitamins.” The Energy package notes that: ”We, the makers of this product, hereby rebut any offers by any professional sports leagues to become ‘the official water’ of anything. . . . Unless, of course, there’s a lot of cash. Then we’ll talk.”

The executive editor of Advertising Age, Jonah Bloom, recently praised this approach as a masterly take on ”the art of antimarketing marketing,” and argued, ”The cheeky tone works better than the hyperbolic ‘it’ll make you popular/sexy/athletic’ claims of so many others.” Of course, in the process of mocking hyperbole, the packaging opens the door to mocking the whole idea of tarting up one of the world’s most basic substances in hopes of converting it into a fetish object. Which is one way of describing Vitaminwater. After all, whatever its nutrient benefits, the stuff is colored and sweetened, and the package makes no jokes about the 125 calories per bottle.

Bikoff, not surprisingly, has a different theory to explain Vitaminwater’s appeal. He says that the idea came to him when he was washing down a vitamin-C tablet with bottled water: Combine the two. And skip the pretense that drinking the stuff will help you medal in the decathlon. ”My sport is my life,” Bikoff says, meaning the sport of running to catch planes and make meetings; that’s the playing field most of us live on, and that’s what dictates the nutrients we need. ”Vitaminwater works,” he continues. ”It helps people get more out of their day. Nutrients. Actually. Work.”

In a way, this pitch and the name Vitaminwater are so blunt and old-school, it all starts to sound like some health tonic from a hundred years ago. One drink used to suggest that it kept ”the brain clear and mind active” and that it combated ”nerve racking and physically exhausting terrors.” Those phrases come from early 20th-century ads for Coca-Cola, and they sound absurd to us today. Modern consumers find such hype laughable and apparently want a product that laughs along with them — at the hype and the marketing, anyway. Of course, they still want to believe they can find energy, balance and focus in a bottle of sweetened liquid, and Vitaminwater can help them there too.

[This installment of the Consumed column appeared in the August 22, 2004, New York Times Magazine; it was posted on this site some time much later, despite the fiddled-with time/date stamp.]