---
title: "Using \"Lithium Water\" to Win Over Consumers Over 45? Nongfu Spring Isn't Even Trying!"
description: "Nongfu Spring has launched a lithium-containing natural mineral water, priced at about 4 yuan, targeting the middle-aged and elderly market. However, compared to its 2015 product launches, this effort appears less thoughtful, with unverified health claims, minimal packaging innovation, and questionable pricing."
author: "澄韵"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-07-03"
language: "en"
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# Using "Lithium Water" to Win Over Consumers Over 45? Nongfu Spring Isn't Even Trying!

> Nongfu Spring has launched a lithium-containing natural mineral water, priced at about 4 yuan, targeting the middle-aged and elderly market. However, compared to its 2015 product launches, this effort appears less thoughtful, with unverified health claims, minimal packaging innovation, and questionable pricing.

Click 'Read Original' for details.
Recently, according to multiple media reports, Nongfu Spring released a natural mineral water containing lithium, named "Lithium Water," with lithium as the primary mineral element. Nongfu Spring positions it as a mid-to-high-end drinking water, hoping to leverage a health angle and expand into the middle-aged and elderly drinking water market. The product is priced at about 4 yuan and will be launched in mid-July, debuting on Tmall's flagship store, followed by distribution in modern trade and e-commerce channels.
This is not the first time Nongfu Spring has entered a niche market. In 2015, Nongfu Spring launched three new products at once: Student Water, Baby Water, and High-end Water, targeting students, mothers and infants, and high-end consumers.
At that time, Nongfu Spring's marketing efforts and first-mover advantage in niche markets earned it high praise. Having tasted success, Nongfu Spring has now quickly targeted the potentially huge middle-aged and elderly market.
However, compared to the "investment" and "thoughtfulness" of its 2015 niche market entries, this time Nongfu Spring seems somewhat "half-hearted."
**Niche Market Entry and Layout**
Famous marketing guru Ye Maozhong once said that as a marketer, which product category is the hardest to plan marketing for? The standard answer is all are hard, but if you want a particularly hard one, water is it.
This is the most special category in the beverage market, bar none. Because water is so pure and simple, product homogeneity is at its peak. If someone says they want to make "delicious water," we must admire their courage. Can anyone really taste the difference between Nongfu Spring, Kunlun Mountain, and C'estbon?
In terms of water sources, first-tier water brands using the Changbai Mountain concept include Hengda Ice Spring, Uni-President, Nongfu Spring, Wahaha, and Master Kong—the mountain is almost full!
In terms of packaging, Evian, Nongfu Spring, and Ganten have high-end glass bottles; Uni-President's Aikua has seven-color rainbow bottles; Nongfu Spring has music bottles, high-speed rail bottles, and so on.
Therefore, for water companies, selling water has become extremely difficult to differentiate. At this point, entering from functional or demographic niches and telling a good story becomes especially important.
Nongfu Spring has always told its water marketing story well.
From a marketing perspective, when Nongfu Spring launched the three new products—Student Water, Baby Water, and High-end Water—in 2015, its preparation was meticulous. The most eye-catching was the infant water, marking its first entry into the maternal and infant industry. At that time, Nongfu Spring invested heavily in this water.
When launching Baby Water, Nongfu Spring started with a video ad costing tens of millions, lasting 2 minutes and 14 seconds, aired on Youku online and in elevators offline. It spent a lot of money to tell one story: Fang Qiang searching for water.
It also invited French Open champion Li Na as a spokesperson. At the time, Li Na had just given birth and become a mother. With an Olympic champion's recommendation and the "scene" of Li Na and Jiang Shan's happy family, this water achieved excellent market feedback, with supermarket shelves often out of stock and impressive sales.
In contrast, the performance of this "Lithium Water" seems a bit "lazy."
**A Comprehensive Look at "Lithium Water"**
**► From a product function perspective: Has the efficacy of "Lithium Water" been confirmed by authoritative institutions?**
According to a detailed report by Jiemian News, lithium is a silvery-white metallic element and an essential trace element for the human body, found in crustal minerals and tap water. Nongfu Spring claims that lithium is closely related to human emotions; when lithium intake is insufficient, people may experience low mood, irritability, and agitation. Therefore, in medicine, lithium has long been used as an element for psychiatric treatment. Lithium can also participate as a nutrient in the absorption of vitamin B12 and folic acid, and in neural regulation. Additionally, it has anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects.
Nongfu Spring hopes to leverage a health angle with "Lithium Water" to expand into the middle-aged and elderly drinking water market. Supporting this concept is research on the link between lithium and Alzheimer's disease.
The company's most frequently cited case is a study by a research group at the University of Copenhagen, which found that adding lithium to tap water may be a preventive measure against dementia. The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry. The group used 151 drinking water samples from across Denmark to map lithium levels in drinking water for all 275 regions, investigating whether there is a relationship between lithium levels in drinking water and dementia incidence. The results found that high levels of lithium in tap water were associated with fewer dementia cases in those regions.
However, an article in JAMA Psychiatry also mentioned that many neural pathways involving lithium are related to neuropsychiatric diseases, but the relationships among these pathways are very complex, so it is impossible to determine why lithium has these effects, especially considering its relatively low concentration in water. Moreover, like other population-related studies, this new data suggests a link, but it does not fully confirm that lithium plays a decisive factor here. The University of Copenhagen researchers also explicitly stated that their study could not rule out other factors related to the cities of residence.
Not to mention that Nongfu Spring has not yet obtained certification from Chinese authoritative institutions for the efficacy of "Lithium Water," and even foreign studies have not fully confirmed that this water is effective for the elderly. Under such circumstances, how can consumers be expected to trust it?
**► From a product communication perspective: What do consumers know about "Alzheimer's disease" and "lithium"?**
In terms of communication, it is understood that Nongfu Spring sponsored a variety show on a related topic. This public welfare program specifically for elderly Alzheimer's disease has a very high score of 9.4 on Douban and has moved many viewers to tears.
▲ Nongfu Spring sponsored the first national cognitive impairment public welfare program "Forget Me Not Cafe"
It must be admitted that Nongfu Spring has always had a good eye for sponsoring variety shows, but this sponsorship has had no obvious effect on "Lithium Water." The water shown in the program was the classic red-cap regular water. "Lithium Water" did not appear in the program, and the efficacy of lithium or its association with the disease was not mentioned at all.
When searching for the program's topics on content platforms like Weibo, Douban, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, I found almost no information about Nongfu Spring and this variety show. Instead, I found many promotions for another sponsor, Rinnai, indicating that Nongfu Spring has not put much effort into related content communication.
Additionally, searching for "lithium" on major search engines yields only lithium batteries and similar products, with no medical research results.
**► From a product packaging perspective: The packaging of "Lithium Water" seems a bit "lazy"**
Compared to the three products launched in 2015, I found that the packaging of this Lithium Water has no innovation at all.
**Compared to Baby Water's packaging**, the official design concept at the time was that fathers with larger hands could grip from the back, while mothers with smaller hands could easily hold from the front, improving user experience through details.
It also highlighted two benefits of the 1L bottle besides practicality: 1. No waste, making it easier to measure children's water intake; 2. Hygiene, as once opened, water is threatened by bacteria and viruses, so finishing it the same day is best.
**Compared to High-end Water's packaging**, the design was stunning when it debuted. The bottle illustrations were carefully drawn by a famous British illustrator, featuring 1,578 species of wild animals and 2,806 species of wild plants known to exist in the Changbai Mountain water source protection area. The overall packaging gave consumers aesthetic pleasure, and many even bought the water for the bottle, using it as a decoration or vase at home.
**Compared to Student Water's packaging**, the feature of Student Water's packaging is the cap. The official introduction says children can easily open the cap with one hand, and it has a patented valve that only opens when the bottle is squeezed. Therefore, even when the cap is open, children don't have to worry about the bottle tipping over and ruining books and homework.
**In contrast, this "Lithium Water" for middle-aged and elderly people has a bottle shape identical to the previous Student Water.** For students, this cap design can be said to facilitate one-handed opening and prevent leaks that could wet homework. Previously, Nongfu Spring's functional drink Jianjiao also used this cap, and athletes could say it's convenient for carrying during exercise. Now, after being used for Student Water and Jianjiao functional water, this identical cap is placed on middle-aged and elderly people. I really can't think of what significance this cap design has for them.
**The entire packaging of "Lithium Water" is a continuation of Student Water's packaging, just with a different label. This operation is indeed a bit lazy.**
**► From a product price perspective: Can consumers accept the 4-yuan price point?**
Currently, the 4-yuan price point for water is still a blank space in the market.
"Bottled water consumers are particularly price-sensitive, with a psychological price range of 2-3 yuan. Beyond this price, any high-end water faces promotion obstacles, and consumers who can afford high-end water are more interested in imported high-end water," said an industry insider.
Previously, some companies launched similar water products and hit a wall due to high prices. For example, China Resources C'estbon's "Zero Pa" functional water, the company's first new product in 20 years since its purified water launch, entered with a high-end image at 4-4.5 yuan, but was withdrawn due to poor market performance.
This "Lithium Water" is positioned in the mid-to-high-end market, possibly attempting to seize the 4-yuan price point. However, whether the elderly can accept a 4-yuan price remains to be seen.
**Maybe it's just because the "silver economy" market is too tempting?**
Since the "Lithium Water" news broke, many distributors have contacted me via the official account or private messages for the product's franchise phone number. I contacted several distributors to ask why, and found that most are attracted by Nongfu Spring's brand.
As is well known, Chinese consumers have a shallow understanding of water, and the public knows little about how to judge the quality of water. A lot of market education is still needed, so selling water is about selling quality on one hand and brand on the other.
"First, Nongfu Spring has a good brand. Second, lithium's high segmentation of consumer groups means less competition. Third, in an aging society, the prospects for elderly products are definitely good. Nongfu Spring has a professional product R&D team; if they launch this product, it must have been thoroughly considered," a distributor surnamed Jin told me.
"How many elderly people do you think will spend 4 yuan on a bottle of water?" I asked. "First, children will buy it. Second, if the selling point is well promoted, the elderly will also buy it; health supplements are much more expensive and people still buy them," Jin said. "The key is the profit margin for the terminal."
Another distributor expressed pessimism about the product, saying, "The lithium concept has no consumer awareness." That is, people don't know what lithium does; if only the company says it, consumers won't accept it. Additionally, this distributor said, "The pricing is too high; it won't sell well."
In my view, for a large company like Nongfu Spring, this product likely won't be widely franchised. It will probably be tested online and in KA stores to gauge market response. Perhaps it's just a trial product, with a project team monitoring it. Whether it does well or not doesn't matter much, as its success or failure has little impact on the company.
**Perhaps it's simply because the company sees the market potential of the silver economy and doesn't want to miss the opportunity to enter this market at this time.**
Relevant data shows that China has long entered an aging society, and the purchasing power of the elderly should not be underestimated. According to the "Report on Actively Responding to Population Aging in the New Era 2018," China's elderly consumer market will reach 3.79 trillion yuan by 2020, and by 2050, it is expected to reach 60 trillion yuan, becoming an important pillar of national economic development. The report also predicts that the growth rate of per capita standard consumption for the elderly will far exceed the average consumption level.
**Although the market size is huge, the money of the elderly doesn't seem as easy to earn as it appears. As for whether Nongfu Spring can successfully establish itself this time, we will wait and see.**
Welcome to leave a message below to tell us why you are optimistic or pessimistic about this product.


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