Sex sells many products, so why not water?

Hint Water doubled its marketing investment from last year with a lust-forward campaign that showcases its brand evolution as water that tastes “really freaking good,” said Allison Cullman, senior vice president of marketing.

“There are definitely some things that we’re doing that will raise eyebrows,” Cullman said.

The campaign, which launched mid-May, showcases two poolside people courting each other, until the big reveal that they are actually lusting after Hint water.

“We are getting people’s attention by showing them water in a different way and reaching incremental audiences for Hint,” Cullman said. “We’re seeing that they appreciate the brand venturing into new territories.”

Hint Takes on a Brand Evolution

Hint launched in 2015 before the water, wellness and hydration craze took off, and before there were tons of water competitors, Cullman said. The marketing focus then was on what Hint wasn’t, which was zero calories and zero sugar.

Now, with hydration more top-of-mind, consumers are more apt to hear a marketing message about the importance of water and how it can taste good, she said. In May 2025, Hint began its mission to reenergize the brand and adapt it to the current consumer culture. The brand started working on this campaign in fall 2025 with the plan to launch it before the beverage brand’s busy summer season, she said.

“The tailwinds that we’re seeing from a health and wellness perspective really set this up to be a perfect launchpad for Hint to reemerge into the market in a bigger, bolder way,” she said.

And while the brand is established, it doesn’t have the pockets of Pepsi or Coca-Cola. That allows Hint to operate as a challenger, Cullman said, meaning it operates with more fearlessness and optimism than risk management.

“We still need to operate like a challenger and that’s why we’re taking the direction we’re taking with this campaign because we can’t buy 100% share of voice within beverage and water,” Cullman said.

Consumers Want to Feel Good, Express Their Desires

The target audience for Hint is the “wellness curious,” or consumers who want to feel good and live well, but don’t want to go all-in on all of the parameters of a wellness community, she said. The “riskiness” of a desire-forward campaign for a water brand is minimized, Cullman said, because it is rooted in a clear brand strategy and true to its brand personality.

“We, through research, understood that this audience is in an era of expressing their desires and temptations more openly,” Cullman said. “It’s taking what we know about our target audience and what drives them, what their guiding beliefs are, what unites them and adapting the message to meet the moment of what’s happening within their culture.”

The main goals for the campaign are to acquire new customers and to increase its brand awareness. After two weeks, Cullman said it’s too early to tell if it is achieving those metrics, but it will be tracking the results via sales data from its direct-to-consumer channel data and using consumer insights tool Numerator to track household demographic data. So far, the campaigning is generating positive sentiment and additional earned reach, she said.

Evolving Water Brands

Like many beverage brands, bottled water is primarily purchased in stores. Yet, 10-15% of Hint’s sales are on its direct-to-consumer website, which Cullman said is a competitive advantage. The brand can have one-to-one relationships with customers, receive direct feedback and enhance loyalty to Hint. Shoppers buy directly from Hint for the broader assortment, first-access to new flavors and convenience, she said.

One recent product Hint launched is a tall-boy (19.2 once) single water can to sell in convenience stores. This product comes on the heels of its aluminum can product that helps cater to consumers who are looking reduce their plastic consumption.

“We are seeing that those products are effectively bringing people back to the brand that may have lapsed because they became more plastic conscious,” she said.

Hint is not the first brand to launch a provocative water campaign, as canned water brand Liquid Death launched its brand with this ethos.

“Liquid Death recognized that water is a commodity and you need to have a different approach to selling a commodity, especially when you don’t have bottomless pockets,” she said.

Cullman’s Beverage & Marketing Prowess

Prior to joining Hint in March 2025, Cullman held marketing roles at Vita Coco, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Zola. Each experience taught her something different that she now brings to role at Hint.

At Vita Coco, she honed a deep understanding for the consumer and learned how to operate on intuition versus being overwhelmed by data, she said.

“At Anheuser-Busch, (the) complete opposite experience of having endless resources, but understanding that the value of those resources are only as good as the creative that you have,” Cullman said.

And while wedding planning tool Zola is not in the beverage space, it taught Cullman how to extract as much value from a consumer as possible during a short customer lifecycle window.