DDB Needham will soon unveil its first creative work for Evian since it acquired the high-profile bottled-water account from Harrod & Mirlin last year.
The campaign will debut with an ad in the April issue of Toronto Life magazine. Additional magazine titles are slated to carry ads in their May issues and beyond.
As well, outdoor advertising will break May 1 in Montreal and May 15 in other markets.
DDB Needham picked up the Evian business in July, when Danone Group aligned its worldwide business with agencies that are part of the Omnicom Group.
In Canada, Danone subsidiary Great Brands of Europe, which handles Evian in Canada, transferred the account to DDB Needham – despite the fact h&m has won numerous national and international awards for its Evian creative work, most notably for its outdoor ad campaigns.
In one memorable poster, a fish named Wanda, preferring Evian water over the water in her fishbowl, leaps from the bowl into an Evian bottle.
Kurt Hagen, executive creative director, and senior vice-president at DDB Needham, says he has great respect for the ads created by his agency’s predecessor on the Evian account, but does not think h&m accomplished much in the way of building the brand.
‘A lot of what they did before was very scattered. We wanted to get some uniformity, to create a premium image to match the product.
‘I think a lot of people who liked [Wanda the Fish] were not Evian drinkers.’
The new creative by DDB Needham is linked directly with the bottled water’s European heritage.
The magazine executions show a very simple, stylized illustration of the French Alps in blue, from which sweeps a similarly angled pink torso and head of an obviously enraptured woman.
Future ads will incorporate men’s bodies as well.
The campaign is anchored by a new DDB Needham created tag line ‘The mountain comes to you,’ which plays on the proverb ‘If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed.’
Body copy in the ads emphasize the timeless quality of the product and its purity.
‘The advertising has to feel like the product,’ says Hagen. ‘What these ads do is tap into the Evian drinkers’ sense of sophistication.’
‘The Alps are what makes Evian different.’
The magazine ads break later this month, with bus shelter posters appearing shortly thereafter.
The bottled water market varies tremendously around the world, from almost universal popularity in Europe, to having a more health and fitness niche in North America.
In Canada the popularity of the bottled water varies by region, being still something of a novelty in much of Western Canada, but almost a staple in Quebec.
The total Canadian packaged water category, including flat and carbonated, had sales of over $123 million in last year, according to Nielsen Marketing Research.
Evian, the leader in the flat bottled water market , accounted for more than half of sales in that category last year, and enjoys an awareness of over 90% among bottled-water drinkers.
