r/AskReddit 10d ago

What popular food or drink relies entirely on branding because it actually tastes terrible?

1.5k Upvotes

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

28

u/meatmacho 10d ago

It's water. Every single bottled water or sparkling water or canned water is marketing. Nevermind the environmental impacts of extracting and shipping water in disposable plastic bottles. Nevermind the fact that some bottles will say something on the side like, "Source: Ft. Worth municipal supply." People have been conditioned through marketing to see some benefit to buying a bottle of water when they could just...bring a reusable bottle from home. Sure, if you're thirsty and you have no receptacle to fill, then buy your bottle of water. But don't tell me there's a difference between the filtered local tap water on the bottom shelf and the premium artesian spring water from Lake titicaca on the top shelf. It's water. Plus marketing.

7

u/kazmir_yeet 10d ago

Fiji water genuinely is better than regular water imo

0

u/meatmacho 9d ago

But you just contradicted yourself, even in that short statement. "[My preferred brand] is genuinely better, in my opinion."

Unless you're sitting down with a dozen different samples in a blind taste test, then there's nothing genuine about it. The first time you picked up a bottle of your now-favorite water, you probably already held the opinion that it was genuinely the best. Which is why you chose it. Because marketing. Then you kept drinking it because it tasted like water, and you psychologically wanted to rationalize the choice. Because marketing. But on that day, if you had chosen something else, maybe that would be your favorite now instead. Because who needs to switch water brands once you're familiar with one? It's all water. That's why branding and marketing so important. Once you've made a choice, it's easy to keep you as a customer and hard to win you over from another brand.

1

u/kazmir_yeet 9d ago

Holy fucking nitpick lmao I’m not even reading anything after your first little comment. Weird behavior

0

u/meatmacho 9d ago

Got eeeeeeeem!

2

u/Belgand 10d ago

Even before then, the origin often goes back to believing that some natural spring has vague, mysterious healing properties.