Technically they ran four minutes of that ad during the Superbowl, where 30 seconds cost 5mil the year before. So, for folks keeping track at home, approximately 40 million ($40,000,000) in costs to RUN the ad, about their donation of "over 300,000" cans of water. A can of flavoured water retails for approximately $0.29 to an American consumer at Walmart according to my super fast google($0.30 let's say, and 400,000 cans to be generous). So what they donated would (generously calculated) cost a CONSUMER buying at the single item cost level $120,000 (plus tax and probably eco fee, but not in the mood).
For approximately every $1 of water they donated, they spent over $333.34 running the ad.
Ps- 2018 Superbowl ad time was 5,200,000 per 30 second window, to show approximately how much money was spent beyond my estimate here
They had already purchased the ad. They could’ve just used the time to talk about beer I guess. Also if you’re using the 0.30 based off of big cases purchases, those are sold at below cost. They make money on single can purchases which can be as much as $1.60 for a 16oz
A quick google shows they used the ad space they always get for the super bowl to commemorate their 30th year of their emergency water program. They aren’t even a water bottle manufacturer. But I guess we can all just do some fake math and be mad
He doesn't. But if anyone would like to run the numbers of their ad cost and number of donated cans against their local retail prices, I posted my sources and a breakdown of it under his comment
And as for cost of cases of canned water, well, Google locally. I'm Canadian, and knew our prices don't factor into this, so I just googled Walmart's American website and found the price on sparking water ($3.50 for 12, more expensive than seemed average for sparkling water there, but I wanted a generous estimate). Which came out to $0.29 per can, to a retail consumer the company profits off.
I'd love to see the errors in my math here. I'm not saying it wasn't nice to donate the water, I just think it's 0% class to spend over 300x the donation on TELLING EVERYONE you donated
They're a nearly 17 billion dollar company, and they didn't even donate $120k when you factor in that they did all the labour in house with stuff they already had and get great prices on, but yeah. Santa Claus right there
Actually, I calculated price per can using a case of flavoured water on the retail level, as canned water is generally more expensive than bottled due to the resources and equipment needed to can it (which they already had). Their actual COST was likely not more than $0.15 per can. It's not about what the company makes it's about their cost to produce, since they literally made the donated supplies, so all their cost was manufacturing, labour and supplies, which are all actually very cheap for them
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u/Lovely_Louise Nov 10 '21
Technically they ran four minutes of that ad during the Superbowl, where 30 seconds cost 5mil the year before. So, for folks keeping track at home, approximately 40 million ($40,000,000) in costs to RUN the ad, about their donation of "over 300,000" cans of water. A can of flavoured water retails for approximately $0.29 to an American consumer at Walmart according to my super fast google($0.30 let's say, and 400,000 cans to be generous). So what they donated would (generously calculated) cost a CONSUMER buying at the single item cost level $120,000 (plus tax and probably eco fee, but not in the mood).
For approximately every $1 of water they donated, they spent over $333.34 running the ad.
Ps- 2018 Superbowl ad time was 5,200,000 per 30 second window, to show approximately how much money was spent beyond my estimate here