“Britons Swap Water for Sugary Drinks – Study”

If you’re sick of the phrase “credit crunch”, spare a thought for the plucky journalists who are now facing a deluge of unimaginative press releases:

They must be delighted now someone is actually urging them to buy more stuff. That someone is the Natural Hydration Council, and they want people to buy more “naturally sourced” (ie, bottled) water.

While their name sounds innocuous enough, the flaw in their mission to hydrate the masses is obvious. Who could possibly advise against drinking cheap, environmentally-friendly tap water in these times, apart from perhaps Nestlé, Danone and Highland Spring? That’s right: the NHC is their front group. Launched in September 2008  to much ridicule, even PR Week have been unsympathetic, bluntly stating the NHC’s aim as “to stop bottled water being compared with tap water”.

Eager to stem this fresh trickle of negative publicity, the bottlers decided to compare their products with sugary soft drinks instead. This led them to an ingenious (and topical) new claim: they don’t just want to hydrate us, they’re also aiming to save us from obesity. The statistics to back this up were duly cobbled together in  a press release also citing a “new study” (actually market research by Nielsen). This has been enough to convince both the Express and the Telegraph, even though the research project in question isn’t actually due to end until November 2009.

Clearly journalists really do find anti-credit crunch stories refreshing.