How Can You Use This?

January 9th, 2025 by under Business - General, Business Strategy. No Comments.

A couple months ago I attended an event at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Florida.

It wasn’t the amazing customer service experience I had anticipated, but that’s for another time.

The first day at the event as I chose my spot at the table I wanted to sit at, there were the usual things on the table. Hotel paper, pencils (not pens… that was different), and this…

At first glance, I thought it was an old-timey milk carton. Nope, it was water. Water that was branded to the Ritz.

I took this picture because I was amazed that they had actually branded water. Instead of just sitting pitchers of water on the table or bottles of another brand name, they had “Ritz Spring Water”.

Then, a funny thing happened…

Almost every person who sat at the table with me said something like “where can I get some water?”.

People seemed embarrassed when I pointed to the branded water to let them know that’s what that was sitting on the table.

It occurred to me that what was meant to be a branded item to represent the hotel had sort of backfired on them.

We’re not used to seeing bottled water in these kinds of containers, so people didn’t easily recognize it as water.

Funny thing was the hotel staff was handing out bottled water during the check in process because there was a line, but it was regular bottled water of some local brand.

Now, you could argue that while the branded water was “confusing” it does have me talking about it. And, you’d have a point.

The other argument, of course, is that when you brand things if you take them out of the “typical or regular” format, people may not recognize what it is, and you might in fact lose the affect of what you were trying to accomplish.

And, maybe it’s just water, and it doesn’t really matter that much…

What do you think?

To Your Success –

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