Stephen Fox, co-founder of Drink Water, a web site that encourages individuals to drink water, talks about how the corporate began what it's about in Park Metropolis on Monday, March 27, 2023. Scott G Winterton, Deseret Information
Stephen Fox, co-founder of Drink Water, a web site that encourages children to drink water, talks about how the corporate started and concepts behind what they do in Park Metropolis on Monday, March 27, 2023. Scott G Winterton, Deseret Information
It takes a minute to get your head round simply what Stephen Fox is promoting, or, to be extra exact, not promoting.
Stephen is the advertising director for a nationwide model referred to as Drink Water. It’s a for-profit enterprise with the acknowledged goal of encouraging individuals to — look forward to it — drink water. All of which is straightforward and easy sufficient. However right here’s the factor: Drink Water doesn’t promote water.
By no means has. By no means will.
Promoting water, Fox is fast to level out, would dilute the model and confuse the message.
“Advocacy is far more compelling for those who can actually say, ‘I've zero to realize for those who drink water. It’s on your acquire. I get nothing for those who discover my message compelling.’”
Wait. What?
* * *
This solely begins to make sense when Stephen backs as much as the start and tells Drink Water’s origin story.
In 2011, two up and coming skilled snowboarders named Bryan Fox (Stephen’s brother) and Austin Smith had been getting began within the enterprise.
An vitality drink you might need heard of by the title of Pink Bull approached Smith. If he’d endorse their product, they’d pay him a bunch of cash.
However Smith was an introspective kind. He questioned if encouraging individuals, children particularly, to drink in depth quantities of sugar and caffeine was sending the correct message. Wasn’t Pink Bull precisely what they shouldn’t be consuming? And comfortable drinks too, for that matter.
What they actually must be consuming is water; aka the unique vitality drink.
Smith discovered a kindred spirit in his fellow boarder and shut good friend Bryan Fox, who felt precisely the identical as he did.
The 2 of them put their heads collectively and dreamed up the thought of utilizing their affect to advertise H2O.
As an alternative of plastering Pink Bull patches on their helmets and boards, they plastered patches of their very own design that mentioned Drink Water.
With that, they had been off and, effectively, possibly not operating, however undoubtedly shifting.
Stephen Fox, co-founder of Drink Water, a web site that encourages children to drink water, talks about how the corporate started and concepts behind what they do in Park Metropolis on Monday, March 27, 2023.
Scott G Winterton, Deseret Information
They didn’t get a sponsorship deal from Mom Nature, per se, however they discovered there have been a variety of fellow water lovers on the market. They acquired sufficient assist and encouragement from followers and followers that they integrated their philosophy right into a model, arrange a web site (wedrinkwater.com), and began producing T-shirts, hoodies, water bottles and stickers to promote to individuals who additionally needed to unfold the phrase.
That is the place Stephen Fox is available in. Stephen is Bryan’s older brother by two years. He snowboards too, however not for a dwelling. He’s a marketer and social media strategist by occupation. When he realized what his brother and Smith had been as much as, he agreed to deal with the advertising finish of the operation.
“They’re the professional snowboarders, I’m the professional keyboarder,” he says.
Towards fairly spectacular odds, the Drink Water model has stayed afloat for greater than a decade now, content material with making sufficient via its merch gross sales to pay taxes and ship 10% of its income to water.org, the charity based by Matt Damon and Gary White with the acknowledged objective to make secure water accessible to everybody on the planet.
Once they created Drink Water, Bryan and Austin had been the pitchmen, and Stephen, the chief achievement officer. At first, when he was dwelling in Portland, he saved the model’s merchandise in his storage and shipped out the T-shirts, hoodies, water bottles and stickers because the orders got here in.
Just a few years in the past, when he moved to Utah, the storage at his residence within the Park Metropolis space grew to become Drink Water’s distribution headquarters.
Stephen and his spouse Hanna spend the majority of their time operating Traverse Company, their full-time advertising enterprise, however each week Stephen finds sufficient time to ensure Drink Water’s message will get its due.
Drink Water’s promoting finances is identical as once they started — zero. Similar with their endorsement finances. However the purity of the trigger continues to draw no scarcity of people who find themselves joyful to promote, endorse and promote the model without spending a dime. Like, for instance, Anthony Keidis, lead singer of the Pink Scorching Chili Peppers, who wore a Drink Water ball cap all through one of many band’s excursions.
“The trigger stays legitimate,” says Stephen — and the competitors stays fierce.
The vitality drink and comfortable drink firms, he notes, “haven't laid off the gasoline pedal” in getting out their message to the nation’s younger individuals.
Drink Water will proceed to wage battle with nothing however a motto and the reality.
“It’s not about promoting water. We’re dedicated to by no means promote water. We want it from the faucet,” their mission assertion proclaims on their web site.
“Our objective is to unfold this message; the easy concept that has grow to be a motion of individuals questioning what’s being bought to them. Be a part of us in saying one thing totally different, one thing easy, one thing as apparent as Drink Water.”