Water branding has officially gone off the rails

With packaging that looks like beer and cigarettes, water is positioning itself as your next vice.

Last summer, a new beverage brand hit the market. Accompanying the product release was a two-minute promotional video with some eye-catching details: a man in a skull mask cracking open a cold one to some death metal, a bikini-clad woman emerging from a lagoon in front of an industrial plant, and some seemingly intoxicated shenanigans in a kiddie pool. But the commercial wasn’t advertising beer, or liquor, or even hard seltzer.