Pay for something you can get for free…

Posted on 04. Sep, 2008 by thedirtymexican in design, other cool stuff

This takes balls.

Balls the size of which mankind has not seen since William Wallace flashed his ass at the English or Maximus stalked into the arena to take down Johnny Cash. Balls so huge I can’t think of a non celluloid example to describe the cojones involved.

Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s pure genius. The sort of mad genius that thinks it could get away with selling people bottled NYC tap water. Not in a Dasani “let’s pretend it’s special way” but in a “let’s put it loud and proud on the bottle and see what happens” kinda way.

Tap’dNY is the latest entrant into the bottled water scene. Now this a brave move given the backlash that’s starting against bottle water, what with the carbon emissions and ludicrousness of shipping water halfway around the world.

But, as always there’s a twist designed to make it green and eco-friendly. How so? Well it’s only available in NYC and uses local ingredients (100% NYC tap water) plus they encourage reuse, suggesting you should refill the bottle a few times before chucking it into the recycling. Equally as admirable is their commitment to ‘Honesty in Marketing’, hence the straight up nature of the product and its marketing material.

So, all things considered, we’ll give these guys a pass. You’ve got to admire them for calling out pretension and thinking innovatively. And the emphasis on witty taglines is appealing, this would have been a fun account to work on I imagine. I’d be interested to see an analysis of the impact that changing to bottle water sources like this would have on the environment though. Does the reality match the impact these guys are hoping to achieve?

Some manifesto-y goodness below and the taglines after the jump