Coke launches premium bottled water brand by Marketing Week: "Coca-Cola is making a major push into the growing UK bottled water market under its Glacéau brand, a launch that comes ten years after the company hit the headlines with its Dasani water brand, which it was forced to pull from the market after it was revealed the product was just tap water.
Glacéau Smartwater is made from British spring water, which Coca-Cola says is “vapour distilled” before electrolytes are added for taste. It will be produced and bottled in Northumberland, which the company says reflects its “Made in GB” commitment.
The brand was first launched in the US in 1996 and has grown to become the “leading premium water brand” in the region, according to Coca-Cola,it expects " UK to follow and replicate its success"
The launch will see a fair amount of online and offline ad and marketing budgets, TV, digital, outdoor and print. This launch is expected to " help" Glaceu brand"name regain some of its " Reputation which had taken a bad hit, during the 2004 Dasani water scandal
By putting the new smartwater product under the Glacéau name - which is also shared by the popular Vitaminwater products - Coca-Cola will be looking to put the reputation damage suffered by the 2004 Dasani water scandal, when coke suffered a huge damage when it then described as its "highly sophisticated purification process", based on Nasa spacecraft technology, was in fact reverse osmosis used in many modest domestic water purification units. The entire UK supply of Dasani was pulled off the shelves because it has been contaminated with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical
