http://www.ethoswater.com/ Click 'About' - Sell $1.80 bottles of water and 'give' $0.05/bottle to your own charitable foundation. They were acquired by Starbucks inside 2 years.

Water is actually the best re-hydration aid ever. Bottled water is really popular with construction workers for that reason. They like the convenience of being able to carry the bottles around with them, and the fact that they come pre-filled when you buy them (even though they re-fill them with tap water later). So you really can sell bottled water based on the fact that it's water and it's in a bottle.

Market it as dihydrogen oxide skin cleaner.

I would sell carbon-neutral, zero-environmental-footprint water. A portion of the price of every bottle offsets the manufacturing/transport costs to the environment, so people are free to enjoy the water totally-guilt free.

I have carbonneutralwater.com/net/org (and have for awhile) - free to a good home if anyone wants to seriously pursue this idea.

This is a very longwinded way to say "sell the sizzle, not the steak."

You don't sell water. You sell rebellion.

I dunno, an awful lot of people seem to be making an awful lot of money by selling bottled water, and I don't see any of them using a rebellion-based marketing strategy. I see messages ranging from "Buy our water, it's cool and refreshing and comes in a pretty bottle" to "Buy your water, it's cooler and more refreshing, and it comes in an even prettier bottle!"

It's true that products don't sell themselves, but on the other hand some products are dumb enough that even a huge marketing campaign won't make 'em popular, and I'm pretty sure that five-spouted rapper-endorsed water is one of them.

The rebellion example came from the article. It suggested creating an alternate means to drink water that "rebellious" people would use.

I know, I thought it was a silly example. Sorry, I kinda convolved my reply to your comment with my reply to the article.

There's one part of the article that states:

"Instead of getting caught up on the idea of creating the perfect product, settle for an okay one."

As hackers and creators here, I think we'll have a hard time getting over that point. The suggestion to release early can sort of apply here, but the goal is to build something better and better - perpetual improvement, and settling into the mindset of "why make it perfect when I can make it cool" is probably not the best startup advice.

Still, the moral of the story is still a great take away. When doing any sort of sales, be it to customers or investors, sell the benefit, not the features. People don't don't want A/C, they want comfort.

I loved the marketing thought put into this article. It really makes it easier to get into a consumer's mind.

By targeting the right market....with the right strategy in place.

Anyone else concerned with zellunit posting a link from zellunit.com? Or does that happen a lot around here? Legitimate question.

No, I'm not concerned, there's nothing against it here:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Does it happen a lot? No, I don't think so.

In bulk. Through a pipe. Cheap. Advertise that it never touches plastic.

I wouldn't.