• by Christine Champagne , August 24, 2006

Evian's beautiful 'Detox' campaign feels skin-deep

Evian's "Detox" campaign, created by Euro RSCG, New York, uses various media to stress the health benefits of drinking Evian water, including print ads in which beautiful women create snow angels in the French Alps.

Those of us lacking the means to join these lovely ladies in their stress- and toxin-purging exercise atop the snowy peaks can instead visit the Evian Detox Web site (eviandetox.com). Created by the New York office of interactive agency Nurun, the site will remain live through the end of the year.

"Detox is about being youthful, purified, and ready to live at your best," says Evian chief of marketing Marc Jacheet. The Evian Detox site, he explains, is designed to provide practical information about the benefits of drinking Evian water and offer a fun, soothing escape from reality.

So does the Evian Detox site deliver? OMMA convened a panel of creatives composed of Anomaly's Johnny Vulkan, thehappycorp's Doug Jaeger, and Atmosphere BBDO's Patrick Clarke to get their take. Smuggling bottles of Evian into a Starbucks in New York's SoHo section, we sipped and perused the site. Our journey began on a page featuring an image of the French Alps. A few clickable items, including a snow angel, a bottle of water, and a bird, appeared in the scene.

Jaeger: I want to click on the bird. The bird is the most interesting thing on the page. The production values are really high. They spent a lot of money on this. There are really no words at all, so it's appealing from an international sense.

Vulkan: It's a little abstract.

Jaeger: There's really no instruction. Maybe they're appealing to a sophisticated [audience].

OMMA: Their core demographic is men and women, 25 to 40 years old and up, who make $75,000 a year.

OMMA: Are you intrigued so far?

Vulkan: I'm not getting anything that would suggest "detox" at the moment, so I would like to see where I'm going to start finding that.

OMMA: Well, there is a feature here with a short film explaining the bottling process.

Jaeger: This [short film] doesn't deliver "detox" to you. It just tells you how the product is made. Clarke arrives, running late. Jaeger shows him the site's features, including a skiing game.

Jaeger: I like the skiing game. But there is no way for me to share this with someone. They've created a browser window where I can't even give the URL. Points off for that.

Vulkan: I'm guessing there must be somewhere that pays off on "detox."

Jaeger: I think some of the games are maybe a mental detox.

We continue to explore the site as the panelists fixate on finding info on detox.

Vulkan: There's a nice feel to the site. I'm certainly taking fresh, cold, and natural out of it. Evian is a pure, natural spring water.

OMMA: Do you think there is too much content to wade through?

Jaeger: There are fewer than eight [icons on the front page], so it's not too many. But I'm just a little worried about the clarity. They've not done a good job at explaining detox. The site is being used as a catchall for a lot of different information, and I wonder whether a separate micro-site around detox might have been more focused and usable to consumers.

Jaeger clicks on the snow angel on the front page, which brings us to a section called, "What is detox?"

Jaeger: After seven clicks and lots of discussion, we find detox. That's kind of problematic.

We dig deeper into the "What is detox?" section.

Vulkan: It feels very much like this is a fashion site, and I think Evian has that certain style  fashion-leaning. Some of the imagery is definitely lifestyle imagery, and I'm using that word in a very positive way.

OMMA: There is a short here that explains how water helps the body expel toxins, then other shorts featuring good-looking people doing fun things.

Vulkan: It's not that specific about detox. It's very general. Detox is obviously something that must be good for me, and I'm going to have a great, fun life where I'm going to hang out with interesting people and play computer games. So on that basis, I'm sold.

Jaeger: I think detox needs to be blogged, or something that delivers continuous content that updates me about health and water.

Clarke: You're supposed to drink how many glasses a day  something really simple and basic.

Jaeger: Yeah, this could be so many more things. Evian is the primary water at a number of spas. Maybe having a directory of those where Evian is the primary product available, so if you are looking to really detox, here are some places where we've put our product and these people endorse our product.

OMMA: So what are you ultimately getting from Evian Detox?

Clarke: You'll be able to hang out with very attractive people...

Jaeger: ...who wear very little clothing.

OMMA: How would you have done things differently?

Clarke: I would start right from scratch at the strategy for detox. I don't think they paid it off here. I would even question it. It's got a sort of drug connotation. So I would want to start there before I got into the execution of it.

Vulkan: I think detox as a concept has more mass appeal in Europe.

Jaeger: The production values are so high, but the communication is not very good. Everything looks really great. It looks like candy. The functionality is really amazing. But I would have expected better communication. I get detox, but give me a couple key points that I could take away and tell someone else why I would choose Evian.

Vulkan: I just think there are opportunities that are being missed.