Beverage History – Bill Sipper

May 19, 2020May 19, 2020

The History Of The Beverage Industry (Part 8) – All Time Commercial Advertising Campaigns

Advertising can be traced back thousands and thousands of years to ancient civilizations. Be it in ancient Egypt, Greece, China or Rome – sharing a message to spread the word to others is a concept as old as time itself. From wall or rock paintings, to papyrus posters, newspapers, billboards, all the way up to radio, television and digital commercials – its transformation is synonymous with the evolution of society.

In terms of its role in capitalist economies, that really took off in the 19th century with the promotion of books, tobacco, automobiles, food, beverages and cosmetics among other things. The concept of creating a campaign around a product to attract and educate consumers started to boom in the early 1900s. Creating a culture, a lifestyle, in which a specific company’s product “embodied” is a concept that, despite its evolution, has been practiced for well over 100 years now. The means in which it is delivered however, has never been more captivating than it is in the modern era.

As televisions became a staple in family homes, so too did commercials. As computers became a staple in family homes, so too did digital ads. These advances in society opened up the capabilities for ads, in a more creative fashion, to captivate a larger audience with slogans, reads and visuals effects that connect with the belief systems of a larger population of people.

Back to the specifics of the food and beverage industry, certain companies have been exponentially more successful in creating a culture through their advertising campaigns (commercial or digital), than others. How do you turn a taste into a visual spectacle? Can you think of any that come to mind? Here’s a good place to start – if you can remember a commercial from over one, two, three or four decades ago, odds are, that company did a pretty good job.

Coca-Cola comes to mind, Pepsi comes to mind, Budweiser comes to mind among many others we will dive into. In this blog, we will take a look at some of the best commercials from the food and beverage industry that have become timeless identifications of a company creating a culture that goes beyond their product.

Coca-Cola vs Pepsi

When it comes to all-time commercials in the beverage industry, it is no surprise two of the industry’s giants produced some of the most memorable. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have set the pace for generations while competing with one another tooth and nail. They battled over product placement in movies, running long ads in the 1950’s 60’s, as well as competing for celebrity endorsements. The two combine to spend over $3 billion on advertisements on an annual basis across their different products. Naturally as industry leaders, many of their ads be it during Super Bowls or around the holidays, have become model templates for how to create a successful campaign.

Let’s look at a few of the best from the core products, that exclude the companies sub products such as Sprite, Mountain Dew, Frito-Lay, 7-Up, Gatorade Powerade, Aquafina, Dasani and Vitamin Water.

I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke – Coca-Cola

I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke to this day is still one of Coca-Cola’s most famous commercials from 1971. It portrayed a positive message of hope and love by a group of teenagers from all different cultures that brought a sense of unity around the product. The song was so popular it later became a full-length song and was a hit record in the U.S. and the UK. Coke has used this ad nearly a dozen times since it’s original airing in 1971 which ran during the Super Bowl. The ad cost approximately $250,000 at that time which was the most expensive commercial in history.

“Hey Kid, Catch!” -Coca-Cola

Chances are whether you are a baby boomer or a millennial you know where that line is from. That is the power of a great commercial. That is the power of a message that resonates so deeply within its viewers that it essentially becomes timeless. “Have a Coke and smile” personified by the Pittsburgh Steelers star defensive lineman Mean Joe Green, who didn’t get his nickname for being a happy and nice guy.

Because of his rugged personality, and being that he was probably among the last to show any sort of empathy, especially to a child, the commercial really drove home the message during the 1980 Super Bowl as the hobbled Green gave his game jersey to a kid who gave him his Coke. If Coke can make Mean Joe Green smile, it can make you smile too.

Whole New Generation – Pepsi

As Coke had the leg up on Pepsi during the 70’s, Pepsi Co worked hard to inspire the next generation of Cola drinkers to transition over to their product. To the tune of Michael Jackson’s famous “Billie Jean” the “You’re A Whole New Generation” campaign was born in the 90 second commercial featuring Michael Jackson and his crew along with a younger group of talented dancers, all drinking Pepsi. This 1984 classic also aired during the Super Bowl. Jackson actually suffered burn injuries on the set of making this commercial in a pyrotechnic accident.

Cindy Crawford – Pepsi

No Pepsi commercial is referenced quite as much as Cindy Crawford’s 1992 moment, in which she does nothing but walk out of a car and drink a Pepsi. Pepsi was featuring a new can in a sexy way with the stunning Crawford who had two poor young boys drooling the entire time. It’s doubtful even an ice cold Pepsi would have quenched their thirst. The commercial was shot to the famous “Just One Look” song by Doris Troy.

Budweiser

No beer company has had more of an effect in advertising than Budweiser over the last century. Their campaigns have successfully hit multiple different demographics, often at the same time. Between their core product, Budweiser, and Bud Light which has grown with the popularity of the light beer sector, none of their competitors have been able to replicate the cultural influence that their campaigns have generated. While their commercials over the last 5 years have been more “light” centric to the younger audience, here are some of the most notable Budweiser commercials in the company’s history.

“Bud – Weis – Er” – Budweiser

Airing during Super Bowl XXIX in 1995, the Budweiser Frogs fittingly named Bud, Weis and Er revolutionized the alcohol advertisement campaign industry with their catchy croak of their respective names shot at “the swamp”. It has been dubbed as one of the greatest Super Bowl commercials of all time and as a result of its success, the american beer company produced several commercials at “the swamp” afterwards, with other animals taking the place of the original frogs. Throughout the 90’s it became a mini series in itself on Super Bowl Sunday as viewers anxiously awaited the new year’s version.

“Whasssssup” – Budweiser

One of the most memorable sayings from the turn of the century, Budweiser single-handedly turned a greeting into a cult icon and pegged it to their drink. It became a cultural saying even among kids which demonstrated the kind of outreach the campaign had. Budweiser’s website traffic had almost tripled as a result of this ad. There were several other renditions that came to follow as a result of its success.

Clydesdales 2002 & Clydesdales 2013 – Budweiser

The Clydesdales have been around since the 1930’s and have been a staple advertising campaign for Budweiser through the decades. These two touching commercials hit home for Americans in the 2002 and 2013 Super Bowls (see the campaign trend here). Respectively, the ads captured the theme of unity, patriotism and brotherhood. Perhaps none more powerful than the ad of 2002 that ran in honor of 9/11.

Other Notable Campaigns

The Most Interesting Man In The World – Dos Equis

“He’s been known to cure narcolepsy just by walking into a room. The Police often question him, just because they find him interesting. His blood smells like cologne. He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels.” He is,the most interesting man in the world, and while he doesn’t always drink beer, when he does, he makes it a Dos Equis.

The Most Interesting Man In The World campaign made Dos Equis a desirable product in a time when craft beer was taking over the U.S. and sales on imported beer were dipping. Their campaign broke the norm of other beer companies advertising to a younger audience, where on the contrary they portrayed their product as the sophisticated selection.

Red Bull Gives You Wings – Red Bull

You probably remember some of the first Red Bull commercials made, the famous cartoons that were vital in creating the culture of “Red Bull Gives You Wings”. The commercials early on were nothing extraordinary, at times even a bit corny. It was some variation of a cartoon, someone drinking a Red Bull, growing wings, then flying. So simple yet so effective, the slogan actually led people to believe the product would give them wings. This was later settled in a lawsuit believe it or not as people actually thought they would be able to fly. The effectiveness speaks for itself.

The company has been the most successful energy drink world wide as a result of their marketing campaigns. The commercials have taken a shift towards athletics, specifically in extreme sports, as Red Bull is a major international sponsor for events, teams and athletes. Those campaigns have become known as “The World Of Red Bull” which include powerful sporting footage along with inspiring quotes. Despite the new style, Red Bull still close those campaigns with the catchphrase “Red Bull Gives You Wings” be it verbally or written.

Be A Pepper – Dr. Pepper

Airing in the 1970’s, the David Naughton “Im A Pepper” jingle has been renowned as one of the most catchy jingles in advertising history. “Be A Pepper” was the catchphrase for the minute long ad that even included Popeye the Sailor Man chugging down a Dr. Pepper in place of his regular spinach. The song was written by, at that time, jinglist Barry Manilow.

“Oh Yeah” – Kool Aid

Who didn’t love a Giant pitcher of Kool-Aid crashing through the wall to deliver a thirst quenching beverage? That became the synonymous theme of their commercials over three decades with the giant Kool-Aid man always showing up when children needed a cold drink. Starting in the 1980’s, it is so timeless it has been featured in Family Guy episodes and in a Dane Cook stand up special.

Murder Your Thirst – Liquid Death

I wanted to include this campaign not only for how incredibly unique it is but to demonstrate a transition the advertising space is seeing now in the digital era, with companies running campaigns on YouTube and other online platforms. Liquid Death is a canned water product we represent, that brings quenching your thirst with water to a whole new level. “Murder Your Thirst” along with “Death To Plastic” are the two flagship slogans.

The brand appeals not only to an ecofriendly approach with their packaging, but additionally to a hardcore artistic audience in a beverage space that is generally thought of as a healthy yet boring. You’d be hard pressed to find a campaign like this airing on television, which is why brands like Liquid Death are utilizing other means to spread the awareness of their products.

Fun Commercials

In effort to include a few more fun videos for you all to enjoy, take a look at these great videos below.

Top Super Bowl Commercials
Top Doritos Commercials
Perrier (1991)

Key Takeaways

There are creative advertisements that stick for a couple hours or become a topic of discussion among friends and family – and then there are creative advertisements that change the way you perceive and remember culture. These advertisements were so well done that they have become iconic, influencing us even till this day, in some cases over 4 decades later. Although they are all unique, the one thing they have in common is their innovation. It pays to be different and to set the trend.

December 7, 2019May 19, 2020

The History of the Beverage Industry (Part 4): How Bottled Water Changed the Industry

Bottled Water History

Fred Sipper outside Irving’s Food Center and on the TV Guide cover

What about Bottled Water?

Unlike sports drinks, bottled water has a much longer history. Even though we humans started transporting water in vessels since the dawn of the first civilizations, bottling of it started much later in the early 17^th century. The craze for bottled water in the United States started much later, though, in the 1970s.

In 1621, the first bottling of water began at the Holy Well in the United Kingdom. It was a humble beginning in one bottling plant. That doesn’t exist anymore, but the Malvern water from the springs in this area is still bottled to this day.

The practice started in the UK, then spread across Europe and subsequently to North America during the 1700s. The method gained in popularity as natural springs are believed to have many healing properties. Even though it was popular, bottled water only started being commercially distributed in 1767 by Jackson’s Spa in Boston. All the while, bottled water was mostly created and sold as a medicinal remedy by pharmacists.

In the 1800s, technological innovations allowed for some improvements to the practice. These mostly consisted of cheaper glass bottles and significantly faster bottling. Thanks to this, bottled water grew in popularity even more.

The popularity of bottled water in the 20^th Century somewhat declined, especially in the US. This was mostly due to the invention of water chlorination, which reduced the dangers of drinking water available from the public supply. However, bottled water still persisted in Europe, and in the 1970s, became popular again.

A bottle of beer on a table

Description automatically generated — Perrier

In the mid to late 1970s Perrier managed to position itself as the ‘Earth’s First Soft Drink’, thanks to Bruce Nevens and James Stevens, the first US CEO and VP Marketing respectively (and later the inventors of Chipwich Ice Cream Sandwiches). Perrier started bottled water’s commercial dominance. Perrier is now known throughout the world for its high level of carbonation and especially for its distinctive green bottle. It’s now owned by Nestlé.

But back in the day, a retailer named Fred Sipper, whom Smithsonian Magazine once called the “King of Bottled Water”, started selling Perrier in his small grocery store in New York City in 1960 called Irving’s Food Center. At the time, though what was to become a revolutionary idea, started out as a ploy to attract more consumers to his supermarket. Irving’s Food Center had a lot of European customers, especially French clientele, and his tactic worked.

Fred first purchased cases at a time. Then he started running full page advertisements in The New York Times to promote Perrier and Irving’s Food Center. He began purchasing and selling pallets of Perrier and then overseas containers from France. Unfortunately, the grocery store was too small to handle that type of volume and he opened a warehouse and a new wholesale distribution company called Mootch and Muck, affectionately named after his parents’ nicknames for one another.

Bruce Nevens and Jim Stevens were great marketers, constantly looking to cater to the upscale NYC clubs, restaurants, and hotels, etc.

The business grew and Fred added other bottled water brands including Evian, San Pellegrino, Poland Spring, Mountain Valley, Aqua Panna, Contrexevelle, Badoit, Apollinaris, Gerolsteiner, Ferrarelle (to be re-launched in the United States by Evian in 2020) and many more. He eventually convinced the major and many minor retailers, as well as the trendy restaurants and clubs to sell the first bottled waters in New York and New Jersey.

Fred opened his first warehouse to distribute bottled water in the mid 1970s. The first warehouse was 1000 square feet and housed mostly Perrier. The second warehouse opened in 1982 and was 35,000 square feet; the next a 60,000 square foot warehouse on Grand Avenue, and then 100,000 square feet in 1985 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

From 1976-1988 Fred was the exclusive Evian distributor for the NY ADI. Mootch and Much was also the first Vitamin Water distributor and shared the exclusive distribution rights to San Pellegrino with a food service distributor.

In came Jack Maguire, a savvy former Vice President of Canada Dry, and the first CEO of Evian USA, then called Great Waters of France. Jack was a great marketer and teamed up with Fred to create the largest bottled water empire in the USA for many years. In fact, Fred and Jack participated and sponsored the NYC Marathon and catered at first to runners. Both would run in Central Park at mid-day together to train for the event in pink Evian shirts and sweats, and of course always with a bottle of glass Evian, there was no plastic at that time in their hands.

Jack Maguire, CEO Evian and Fred Sipper, CEO Mootch and Muck

Fred developed the first bottled water program where he would visit the swankiest upscale restaurants, hotels, and clubs in Manhattan. His first questions was, “how much money do you make on the free bread you give out? What about the free tap water you serve with ice that you pay for?” They soon began to realize that a bottle of Evian at the table could add 15% to their checks. Fred would also interview the wait staff and initiate his Evian Waiter Program which consisted of training the waiter to convince their customers to buy Evian so that their tips would increase by at least $1.00 per client, if their customer only bought one bottle.

He made an arrangement to meet with all the waiters and outlined his program: 1) When the customer sat down, there would be a bottle of Evian on every table. 2) No glasses of tap water were visible. 3) and if they convinced the client to buy the Evian their tips went up. Since the average waiter would wait on more than 30 tables per night, he or she would earn an extra $30 per night.

He also advised them about the Evian Mystery who would unknowingly have dinner in their restaurant during a defined period of time. If the waiter even mentioned Evian, the waiter would receive $100 on the spot.

Simultaneously, he convinced chain store buyers to create the first bottled water sections in their stores. He offered a free fill for every inch of space they gave them. And if the product didn’t sell, at the end of the month he promised to purchase any unsold merchandise at full retail price. The result: He never had to buy back any bottles.

Food Emporium’s Buyer at the time, Dan Portnoy,
worked with Fred to launch their Bottled Water Spectacular, a one week bottled water promotion four times per year

Fred and Jack convinced Marvin Taub at Bloomingdales to display Evian in their stores and sample consumers in high end departments like fur and expensive women’s clothing. Taub wanted a 60 day exclusive when the plastic Evian bottle was introduced. The three parties agreed and then Fred pre-sold all of the city’s supermarket chains leveraging the distribution in Bloomingdales.

To this day and since 2000, Fred consults for the second largest online distributor, second only to Amazon, of non alcoholic beverages, Beverageuniverse.com. He still seeks new bottled waters daily to add to the 290+ kinds and sizes Beverage Universe stocks.

But I digress…and it is time to re-focus on the earlier history.

The Origins of Schweppes and Carbonated Bottled Water

One would think that this is all there is to bottled water, but there’s more to it. In 1783, a Geneva man called Johann Jacob Schweppe developed a process for the manufacturing of bottled and carbonated mineral water. He also founded the now-known Schweppes company that started selling his carbonated water.

This changed the game for the bottled water industry. It was the first time people came into contact with soda water, sparkling water, or seltzer water as we know it in the United States.

Even though Schweppes started the bottling of carbonated water, that water itself had been accidentally developed by Joseph Priestley some 16 years earlier. He discovered that it was possible to imbue water with carbon dioxide. He drank his concoction and later wrote about the unusual satisfaction he gained from drinking it.

Later on, in 1809, bottled carbonated water started gaining popularity in the US as well. Joseph Hawkins got a patent for producing imitation mineral water. As the decades passed, bottles of carbonated water were being sold in the millions.

Bottled Water Market and Its Effects

In the 1970’s few people knew about bottled water. However, they started to buy it in droves as negative reports about US water supply surfaced and trendy discos like Studio 54 and restaurants like Elaine’s and clubs like Regines started selling Perrier.

After Perrier took the market by storm, Mootch and Muck added San Pellegrino and Evian to its distribution trucks to build all 3 bottled water brands in the Metro New York area. Poland Spring soon joined along with Calistoga, Arrowhead, Badoit, SPA, and other pioneers.

Mountain Valley, Contrex, Evian Trade Ad, Perrier Trade Ad

More and more consumers switched from Perrier to non-sparkling waters like Evian and their usage occasions increased. Evian was in fact the first bottled water company to introduce their products in plastic bottles. Once this occurred the bottled water industry exploded. Competitors followed suit using plastic bottles. And sales have continued to increase for every year since the late 1970s.

Today, centuries after the first bottled water was produced, the entire market is worth around $200 billion and is expected to reach $330 billion by 2023. The enormous growth of the market is being spearheaded by many conglomerates bottling and selling mineral water and carbonated water, thus easing public concerns across the globe about the safety of tap water.

In 2012, the US annual consumption of bottled water reached 9.67 billion gallons (36.6 billion liters) or 30.8 gallons (116.6 liters) per person. As for the world, global consumption reached 300 billion liters or 79.2 billion gallons in 2014.

The consumption of bottled water varies from place to place, and it mostly has to do with how safe tap water is in the area. Bottled water is also used in emergency responses when disaster strikes. However, on the other end of the spectrum, it is critiqued for its negative effect on the environment. The usage of plastic bottles is mainly blamed as plastic has a massively negative impact on the environment. Despite that, most companies still use plastic bottles because it’s much cheaper than glass.

Nestle has become the number one bottled water company in the world. They now own Perrier, San Pellegrino, Poland Springs, Arrowhead, Calistoga, Ozarka, Deer Park, Zephyrhills, Aqua Panna, Vittel and their filtered water brand under the Nestle Pure banner. DANONE now owns Evian, Volvic, Badoit, and more. Coca Cola owns Dasani and Smartwater and Pepsi Cola owns Aqua Fina. Keurig owns CORE.

Key Takeaways

Bottled water is now consumed across the globe, with its own distinctive history. Bottled water is a major player in the beverage industry, and its scope is still growing exponentially.

The entire beverage industry continues to evolve, and it is worth the while for every aspiring beverage entrepreneur to stay in touch with the industry insights, as well as to turn to historical takes like this one for clearer perspective. By doing that, you will be better-positioned to create a new shakeup in the industry.

Darius Bikoff’s Precursor to Smart Water and Vitamin Water

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