Paris water wars

   French advertising is usually pretty tame, except for its use of sex to sell just about any product. So I suppose we should congratulate the makers of Cristaline, the biggest-selling mineral water, for an aggressive campaign that has stirred the ire of Parisians, the government, the city council and environmental campaigners.

Cristaline's idea was to hit back at a city campaign to promote humble tap-water as just as tasty and healthy as expensive bottled H20. The company has plastered the Métro and billboards with this unappetising poster and others all suggesting that l'eau du robinet is undrinkable and polluted.  The message over the lavatory seat says: "I do not drink water that I use".

Behind the water war lies a decline in sales in a saturated market for a product which the French still drink more than the piped-in version. Until recently Parisians nicknamed their unloved municipal water Château Chirac -- after the Mayor of 1978-95 who became president.

Another poster shows a tap and says: "Nitrates, lead and chlorine... I don't save money on water I drink". A third says: "Anyone who claims that tap-water is always tasty can't drink it often."

The advertisements were issued in defiance of a ruling by the BVA, the advertising standards authority. They have prompted outrage from Nelly Olin, the environment minister, who has threatened legal action. "I am angry. We do not accept that this company should cast aspersions on tap water. It is dishonest," she said.

Anne Le Strat, President of Eau de Paris, the city water authority, was so upset that she conducted a tasting session at a café to prove that tap water and Cristaline were indistinguishable. "This campaign plays on imaginary fears. It is contemptible," she said. "It seriously annoys me that they can cast doubt on the quality of our water. The consumer is often unaware that bottled water costs between 100 and 600 times more and resembles, sometimes to the point of confusion, tap water," she said.

She was referring to a disclosure last summer that tap-water in the industrial port of Saint Nazaire comes from the same water table which Cristaline uses to feed its local bottling plant.  "Why drink tap-water with plastic around it?" wondered  Le Strat.

The Paris city water campaign took a swipe at the snobbery around mineral water and the environmental cost of bottling and shipping water. One of its radio advertisements asks: "What brand supplies a billion litres a day without a single bottle ?".  Why, Château Chirac of course.

André Santini, a politician who is president of the regional water authority, told us that his campaign was just a fun dig at bottled water while Cristaline's campaign is "grotesque and shocking". He added:  "It's crazy. In France, we have the biggest water utility companies and we are the ones who drink most mineral water."  That is not quite true, the Italians drink more both still and sparkling and by some measures so do the Germans.

Parisians claim that whatever the city says about its water purity, Château Chirac still has a metallic, chlorinated taste. Half the city's arrondissements are supplied more or less direct from the underground table while the rest receive water from the Seine and Marne rivers. That input receives more chemical treatment.

Pierre Papillaud, boss of Cristaline, is indignant over the criticism  "I do not understand this fuss," he said. "If you are not allowed to express yourself in France any more, things are becoming serious."

Other cities are going further than Paris in promoting the merits of tap-water. The eastern town of Mulhouse puts its water into labelled bottles for municipal banquets and receptions.

Slowing sales have inspired mineral water makers to come up with new ways of winning customers. While Cristaline was devised as a mass market product, others are going up market, charging ridiculous prices and trying to persuade customers that their H20 has gastronomic qualities.

In March, Badoit, which supplies one of the sparkling waters most served in restaurants, is to open courses in "eaunologie" -- water studies -- along the lines of wine appreciation classes (the name is a play on oenologie, the science of wine). These are being run by Dominique Laporte, the sommelier at the famed Alain Senderens restaurant. Laporte uses wine-style language to describe the merits of fine waters, talking, for example, of its "attack", its "nose" and its "ending". I think we agree that Chateau Chirac is not a grand cru, but it will probably not be part of Badoit's dégustation.

    

   

Comments

[michael robertson]

One of the luxuries of living in a first world country is the constant availability of safe, drinkable water from a tap. In many parts of the world, people would kill to have that facility! Surely this obsession some people have of drinking exclusively branded bottled water is absurd. If they live in a crowded city they would be better off buying bottled, purified air, wearing it on a back pack, and breathing it, scuba diving style through a mask and tube! Sounds absurd? Perhaps not as silly as buying bottled water when the content of tap water is as carefully controlled and cleaned as well as it is in most cities in north-western Europe, and the United States etc. Air pollution is much more difficult to control, yet we breathe it without question as a rule. Anyway, all water that we drink has been recycled, billions of times, regardless of how attractive the label is on the branded bottle!

I can understand to a certain extent those who drink carbonated water, as the fizzy sensation does represent an added bonus, but you have to remember that this is due to dissolved carbon dioxide in the form of carbonic acid, which renders the water quite acidic, just the same as fizzy fruit flavoured drinks, and could cause digestive problems if drunk to excess, or even dissolve the enamel from your teeth, though again only if drunk in enormous quantities!

Well of course, I do realise that the purchase of a nice brand, with appropriate label and drinking it wherever you might choose to do so, or putting it on the table for your friends and family, conveys a powerful message about your healthy lifestyle choices, and such like, and it is this that drives the whole bottled water industry, I suspect! As for the taste, yes there is a difference, but does that really justify the enormous price premium, and considerable effort transporting it from wherever it is refined, and bottled, to its point of sale, then transported further back to the home? Remember, there is the dreaded carbon footprint issue to consider these days, how many “water miles” has your bottled travelled, and volumes of carbon dioxide released in order for it to quench your thirst? The distribution of water through pipes has to be a lot more carbon-sparing! Fair enough if you are unable to reach a tap, and passing a shop, where it may be on sale in a small sized bottle, but for most purposes, tap water wins hands down! Of course, you can always recycle the branded bottles, by replenishing them with tap water, to recreate that oh so important branded water experience!

[rocket]

"It seriously annoys me that they can cast doubt on the quality of our water".

How many times have I heard this before but in many other contexts!

This seems to be a famous French maximum for any contestation towards anything French,(especially when it involves French Public servants defending "je ne sais quoi")

Charles, Once again you have hit the nail on the head.

"Pierre Papillaud, boss of Cristaline, is indignant over the criticism "I do not understand this fuss," he said. "If you are not allowed to express yourself in France any more, things are becoming serious."

Hello.... Pierre! Where have you been for the last 200 years.

Once again I say thank God for the internet and blogs and real time which are allowing to French people to see there is life outside of France and allowing outsider to look into France as far as is permitted by the regulated society

As per the science of water

Laporte uses wine-style language to describe the merits of fine waters, talking, for example, of its "attack", its "nose" and its "ending".

I fear that the "ending" of water will always be in the toilet bowl with it's more common friend city water or between two cars in the street in the case of many of our Gallic friends.

[Scaree Gee-Oh!]

WCs are à la mode in France at the moment. As a member of the pre-selection committee slash jury of the Lumières du Cinéma, a kinda Golden Globes à la française, I saw about 30 French & francophone flicks during the first two weeks of December, &... although at this very minute (or time of night) I can't think of any precise examples... I must say I got the distinct impression that an awful lot of 2006 films featured people sitting on the lavatory...!

[Sarah Hague]

I drink tap water and only use bottled on picnics. Buying and storing the amount of water we drink in bottles would be horrendous. I drank the tap water in Cairo too, when I lived there in 1983. I had no untoward reactions...

What I want to know is, where is this year's Evian New Year bottle? Have they stopped producing them?

[roger crabb]

twas ever thus. in the late 1970s or early 80s a municipality in alsace bowed to tourist whinges about bottled-water scams and ordered restaurants to place a carafe of tap water on each table. all very fine on paper. one restaurateur stuck to the letter of the ordinance, but added a goldfish to each carafe.

[robert dingley]

Well, I for one like Badoit. I lived in Brussels and thought the ubiquitous Bru brand pretty good, but then I moved to Paris for a while and became hooked on Badoit, which I regard as superior (it has a finer 'bead'). I wish I could get it in Australia (where I currently am). I miss my sparkling water habit . . .

[Richard Huxley]

I wouldnt drink the tap water in Strasbourg if i had to..tastes like s#it.

We drink Crystalline here...but its so cheap at 1 euros 50 cents for 6 x 2L bottles.

The water here is very hard and dries the skin easily. Wish they would sort it out...add that to the other things that need to change on my list but wont :)

[Chris Divine]

As an American I could never figure out why there are no drinking fountains in France. It took me a while to get used to carrying around water bottles everywhere. Nobody ever really gave me a straight answer as to why there aren't drinking fountains in France other than that it wasn't sanitary. But it's pretty obvious that the French just don't trust their water. I never had a problem with the water. I was an English teacher for four years and everywhere I went people seemed to think their water wasn't safe. Even the school teachers didn't trust the water and some even thought they would develop cancer over a long period of time. The evidence is in the supermarkets where entire shopping isles are filled with different kinds of water.

[Maggie G]

I thought the reason they don't have water fountains (in airports, for example) is so that you will be forced to buy something in a café, and thus stimulate commerce.