Water Works

Brandweek, August 21, 2000 by Jennifer Owens

Similarly, L'original visitors can checkout female skateboarder Jaime Reyes, whose section also features video segments edited by Cythere producer Gigi DeRoux. Says Damon, "Each video has a different feel to it. We try to make it appropriate to the forum."

Reyes' segment includes "Tricks & Pics," where users can see and learn four different stunts. It also includes a schedule of Reyes' upcoming competitions and a contest to win a year's pass to Chelsea Piers, an entertainment and sports complex in New York.

Additionally, L'original includes other sections, including eLounge, home to Evian screensavers, e-cards, games and wallpaper; and Channel Evian, which will eventually highlight exclusive Evian promotions. The site also features a boutique offering Evian-and L'original-branded T-shirts, tote bags and pink rubber duckies.

L'original also offers an opt-in e-mail newsletter, which is already generating a positive response, says Damon. "They do sign up," she says. "Say we send out a newsletter for a contest within the tri-state area, generally our rate of response for people registering is about 11 percent, which is way above the standard. We feel it's a great way to do a value added for the people who do sign up as well as keeping them interested."

STRATEGY

Having created it own space to express itself, L'original's goal is to attract younger consumers without alienating any older ones, says GBE's Perkins. "This is an extension to add a little more value to a Gen-Y user who's looking for a little more interactivity, a little more game playing and refreshed content that's more relevant to them as well," he says.

Not that creating something authentically Gen Y was easy, says Tadiar. "We struggled with how to build a site that would not alienate the users who were already there, but switch the focus to a Gen-Y target," he says. "So we did a lot of research."

According to Waggaman, one of the first things Evian learned is that "you've got to be really careful with [Gen-Y] Web sites ... We found that if your site's uncool, then your product is uncool, and probably the same is true if you have no Web site at all."

So, says Waggaman, GBE wanted to make sure it had an authentic Gen-Y feel to L'original before the company began promoting it hard. "It can't be some late 20s, early 30s kind of guy trying to speak down to them," he says. "It just doesn't work. It's got to be the real thing."

To do that, Tadiar says research showed that Evian should concentrate less on advertising to Gen Yers than on integrating within their lifestyles. And yet, says Tadiar, "a lot of people are doing it--Coke, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper--so how can Evian stand out among all of those? We figure [the answer is] to keep it original, to keep it unexpected and to keep it proprietary.

"So while we have a music section and a sports section, it's not haphazard, miscellaneous information about who just won a tennis open. It's about proprietary stuff, highlight one particular extreme sport athlete and one particular musician. If we wanted to use miscellaneous information, we'd put it in Channel Evian, so we're not excluding it, but we have specific, proprietary areas."