As if Wine, Coffee and Chocolate weren’t enough. Premiumization, one of consumer site Trendwatching’s 8 important consumer trends for 2008, is occurring to every product under the sun including of course the most indispensable product of them all. Water.
Now anything that makes ludicrously rich people spend some of their cash, hard-earned or otherwise is usually a good thing but what gets me is how they can be so status-conscious as to spend up to US$480 on a bottle of water!
From Trendwatching.com:
“Bling H20 is bottled water that comes in limited edition, corked, 750 ml frosted glass bottles, embellished with Swarovski crystals. Established in 2005 by a Hollywood writer-producer who noticed that “you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water that they carried,” Bling H20 is designed to be as much a fashion accessory as a drink of water. Aiming to be the Cristal of bottled water, it’s been spotted at everything from the MTV Awards to the Emmys. The bottles cost from USD 17–480. “
or how about:
“Tasmanian Rain is captured “on the pristine north west coast of the island of Tasmania, Australia.” The water is collected “just minutes from where the World Meteorological Organization records the world’s purest air.” As this rain has traveled eastward via air currents over Antarctica and 10,000 miles of ocean, it contains 17 parts per million of dissolved solids. Tasmanian Rain is collected by a custom-designed catchment facility and never touches the ground. And so on. “
Who makes this stuff up? Someone must actually have the job of coming up with this stuff. I could serve up a bowl of sand and call it freshly ground Gaia seeds. The world is, as always, going loony.
