Brita's Baseline: What a 3-Month Sustainability Diagnostic Revealed

Brita has been on a mission to encourage people to drink more water sustainably for over 50 years. The brand’s core products, in-home tap filters, water jugs, on-the-go bottles, offer a direct environmental alternative to single-use bottled water. The commercial and environmental proposition should be well aligned.

The challenge is that the market does not always reward inherent sustainability advantage. Bottled water sales in the UK continue to grow despite consumer concern about plastic and packaging waste. Portability, taste, and convenience create purchase inertia that environmental positioning alone does not fully overcome.

Brita’s question: is our sustainability positioning resonating with the consumers we need to reach, and are our messages aligned with the things that actually matter to them at the category level?

Glow worked with the Brita team to design a baseline sustainability diagnostic using SRS methodology. This established:

• Overall consumer perception of Brita’s social and environmental performance
• Comparative performance within consumer cohorts (age, income, purchase behaviour)
• Positioning relative to category competitors and direct alternatives
• Baseline brand health metrics for ongoing tracking

Alongside the tracking foundation, Brita commissioned two quick-turn custom studies within the same engagement: the first to support a new product launch (category buying dynamics and consumer segmentation), the second to test evolved messaging for a core product line. Both studies were fielded, analysed, and delivered in under a week from briefing.

Within three months, the engagement had produced clear direction on where sustainability program investment was most commercially justified, what messaging hierarchy was most effective for the core product, and where the perception gap versus bottled water alternatives was narrowest, and therefore where the switching opportunity was strongest.

The combination of a baseline tracker and rapid custom work within the same engagement is the pattern that suits brands with active product and communications cycles: a standing measurement foundation with the flexibility to run specific questions against it as needed.