Water war: representation of modern dispute

Many countries face or faced strong confrontation between bottle water industries and public water distribution companies.
The French example is very representative.

Between November 2004 and May 2005, the SEDIF (Syndicat des Eaux d’Île-de-France) and “Eau de Paris” launched two commercial campaigns to promote tab water.


They posted few posters in public areas, only little reactions came out at that time, although the message of some posters was quite violent as the one showing a baby bottle, to represent the level a exigence of tab water. The aim of this commercial action was to change the representation consumer had of tab-water. On some posters, we note the participation of NGO’ like les “Amis de la Terre”. 
Thecampaigns’ argumentation turns around precise topics:
- Quality of tab water
- Financial benefit of tab water consumption
- The small ecologic impact of tab water consumption
- The distribution service
In the meantime the campaign aimed to show that drinking water from the tab was also an act of consumption, they therefor “marketed” it as a usual product. Some posters showed what would be the etiquette's of the “public  water”, they also tried to have restaurants bring tab water in special bottle to consumers, saying it was water from the city of Paris.


In response to this campaign, a bottle water brand Cristalline launched a commercial campaign that this time created an important buzz. The argument was to say that the ones how say that tab water is good don’t drink a lot.
The point of the short presentation is to underline the confrontation of two arguments: ecology versus public health. Shows you side.


This phenomenon is not only french, in the United States, the environmental protection agency launched the same kind of campaign but with a little detail : the portrait of George W. Bush Jr, on the left side of the poster. In Hungry, the same phenomenon of promotion of tab water.
When most people that buy bottle water do so for its “healthiness”, public water distribution responds with an environmental argument... In this case, the consumer has the easy choice between personal and public interest.