Advertisement Failure: Birds and Bottled Water

I perceive advertisements as interesting for the same reason why also the psyche of serial murderers can be interesting to study. It’s useful to know your enemy, isn’t it? Being familiar with common marketing techniques and tricks has some practical benefits. I’m not naïve, I won’t claim that I’m immune to being influenced by advertisements just because I have read a few books about marketing. Research indicates that also people who are familiar with some marketing trick can still fall prey to it anyway. But, hopefully, being educated about marketing will make me at least a little bit less likely to make foolish financial decisions due to getting manipulated by a masterfully crafted advertisement. So, yes, I do find advertisements interesting, and I study them. Every now and then I spot some really bad advertisements that make me cringe and feel repulsed by the product. Here’s one such bad advertisement that invokes from me the wrong associations.

These are advertisements for bottled water. The brand name is “Venden.” The text “dabīgs minerālūdens” translates as “natural mineral water.” Do you also spot a problem with these advertisements or am I the only one whose mind makes the wrong mental association?

Whenever I see a plastic bottle placed next to a bird, this is the image that appears in my mind. A lot of birds and other wild animals die because of all that plastic trash generated by humans. The first time I saw these advertisements for this brand of bottled water, I immediately imagined a picture of a bird with plastic trash in its stomach.

Here’s one more advertisement from the same brand. At least this time there are no birds in the photo. The text next to the squirrel translates as “New! Slightly carbonated,” and the text at the bottom means “Natural mineral water from a national park.” The way I see it, bottled water and nature do not go together well. In this photo we can see beautiful and pristine forest. What I’m imagining instead is a forest littered with plastic trash. Something more similar to this image.

By the way, personally I prefer to drink tap water. I have no ambitions of succeeding to make this world a better place, but at least I don’t want to leave a trail of trash behind myself.