Familiar with “Blue Ocean” marketing strategy?” That’s when a business tries to hit the growth and profit jackpot by finding or creating an uncontested market space—in effect, wide-open “Blue Ocean”—rather than getting beat up and bloodied trying to succeed in crowded market segments with a lot of competition for customers’ money and attention.

I think the marketers behind Activate brand must have read the book! (The product is from Rising Beverage Company in, no surprise, Los Angeles, CA.)

With countless brands fighting it out it with variations on the “enhanced” formula, Activate actually brags that they’ve taken all that junk OUT. Who NEEDS nutrients that “deteriorate sitting in water.” GONE. Minerals? OUT. Let the others ionize their brands. Activate DE-ionizes. You’ll love it, cool consumers, because you’re not like everyone else, I know. You’re different. You’re PURE. You don’t follow the crowd. You follow the hip people, leisurely paddling around their exclusive blue ocean space by themselves. (It doesn’t float with me!)