L ‘Desh Fresh: this bottled water is different

Think driving to work is bad. More than one billion people have to commute each day just for drinking water, and contaminated water kills more than a million children per year. Living in a culture with perfectly drinkable tap water and bottled water in every store, it can be easy to forget this fact, which was the problem John January was facing.

January is the executive creative director at local advertising agency Sullivan Higdon Sink, which designed the packaging for Shatto Dairy and works with non-profits including WaterPartners International. “It’s something we take for granted,” January says. “I think Kansas City was even voted best tap water in the nation. It’s life and death for people and here we are, drinking it out of a bottle … it’s impossible not to care about this issue.”

With no budget for such a project but still wanting to make an impact, the agency invented its own line of bottled water called L ‘Desh Fresh and promoted it as “the world’s most authentic drinking water.” Here’s the infomercial on YouTube:

This past week, a team from the agency set up a booth at First Friday to give “tastings” of L ‘Desh Fresh. Not surprisingly, the disgusting chunky brown liquid — a mixture of chocolate sludge, cocoa and nuts for texture that January said took some experimenting to get sufficiently gross-looking — drew lots of visitors.

The agency plans to do more tastings throughout the summer, at the City Market and possibly again on First Fridays. January said the goal of the campaign was simple. “Yes, we wanted to ads to be visceral and going out with bottles is a part of that too, but it’s all about donations to WaterPartners … For only $25 WaterPartners can give someone water for life. For life!”