Evian Saves Money on Paul Smith

At Lateral we have many many many wonderful books about advertising.

We only look into 3 of those books regularly.

The first 2 books are decades old: George Lois' book and Bill Bernbach's book.

We look into Bernbach's book to remind us of basic ad wisdom like "if your ad goes unnoticed everything else is academic".

We look into Lois'book to remind us to be brave and ambitious.

The third book however, was published recently.

It's called Advertising Next.

There is not a single TV or print ad in it, because the book is all about advertisers and agencies who have managed to reach a lot of consumers without a huge media budget.

Every campaign in the book is different (some are products, services, virals, events etc) but there is one common denominator:
they use a part of the huge budget they do not have to spend on media, to make sure everything looks and feels great.

In other words: less money, more effort.

One of the great examples in the book is Evian, which collaborates with a new designer every year to create a new special Evian bottle.

These bottles become collector's items instantly, turning the lucky few who own one into Evian fans forever, and the rest of us in to Evian admirers.

Evian's latest collaboration is with designer Paul Smith.

Who surely doesn't come cheap, but surely costs less than the production and media budget of the average TV commercial of the average big brand.

The moral of this story? Drink enough water, read Advertising Next and start thinking differently.