Before Liquid Death, there was Cano. Can the original canned water catch up?
British startup Cano was the first company to put water in a can. Its founder admits to The Drum that it now has to work twice as hard to keep pace with those that follow.
How Cano is planning to disrupt the bottled water market / Cano
Cano was founded in 2015 by three 22-year-old friends who went on vacation together and got really riled up about the amount of plastic pollution.
It wasn’t until Liquid Death launched in 2017, however, that appetites for canned water were properly whetted (it has since been valued at $1.4bn).
Cano co-founder Josh White is a confessed fan of Liquid Death and says the competition is better for business, with newcomers helping to grow the category. “We needed all these brands, like Liquid Deaths and Evian, to offer water in a can because we were looked at as a bit of a joke for many years,” he says.
White, though, does acknowledge being the first adopter came with its drawbacks. “It is the most depressing thing ever being the first to do something. Other brands come in and that is when you end up getting taken more seriously, but you need to be thick-skinned. You’ve got to accept it happens and make sure you are still up there in people’s minds.”
White, along with friends Perry Alexander and Ariel Booker, launched Cano at London Fashion Week and secured Selfridges as a stockist before even working out how to put water in a can. “The plan was this to build this fake brand that didn’t exist and to drum up some interest to the point where we could raise some money,” says White.
Cano was lucky to pitch Selfridges at the moment it was planning how to remove plastic from its shelves. “We aimed high as we always wanted Cano to be a premium product.”
The trio wanted to position Cano against Evian, which also plays in the more premium water space. A case of 24 cans of Cano costs around $23 (£18) on Amazon. “Cans are more expensive than plastic and that has been a big, big challenge for us. People have asked why they are spending double on a can of water.”
@canowater Proper British Water Now sourced right here in the UK, slashing our carbon footprint like a boss. I’m telling you … that’s wayyyy more sustainable! #DontBottleIt ♬ original sound - Cano Water
Coming from creative backgrounds, Cano’s founders “always wanted to bring a bit of culture and bit of art, music and fashion to Cano,” explains White. When starting Cano, the sustainability messaging was higher in its messaging, but White says when it is “shoved” down people’s throats, they tend not to listen. “When we do things that are a bit cooler and a bit more aspirational then people want to listen more compared with when you are a mundane product and just saying that oh, I’m sustainable,” he says.
Cano’s branding is clean and simple, with just black and white options. Its out-of-home advertising follows a similar style. It has distribution deals with London nightclubs, including Drumsheds, along with premium hotels such as Virgin Atlantic and cinema chains, often being the water of choice at UK film premieres. Last year, it appointed creative agency 10 Days to help it with its next stage of brand growth.
“The water industry is really boring and it needed brands like Cano and Liquid Death to really shake it up. These [plastic water bottle] brands have been making hundreds of millions of pounds and dollars over the years by polluting the planet.
“The only thing that anyone had ever known about the water world or seen from a marketing perspective was that stupid Evian Baby advert about 15 years ago. There was nothing else.”
Along with traditional marketing, Cano has carried out stunts such as turning up at Wimbledon’s Centre Court to protest Evian’s sponsorship and, on Earth Day, placing a washing machine below Coca-Cola’s Piccadilly Circus billboards. Cano has recently hired a PR agency to help amplify its stunts.
Without much marketing investment, Cano relies heavily on PR and organic activities. “If you look at Liquid Death, it must have spent $80m to $100m on marketing. We haven’t even spent $1m on marketing.
“Our strategy is to be disruptive, the underdog who is coming in to fuck shit up, but we do that in a premium and tasteful way. I love Liquid Death, but it can’t get into the F1 or the big hotels.”
Cano has recently moved its water sourcing from Austria to the UK – a major win for White, who has been trying to find a solution to overseas filling since the cans hit the shelves in 2015. The trio’s next big plan is to crack the US, with LA first on its radar.