Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month (and I don’t mean to discriminate against rock-dwellers, they have rights too) then you’ve no doubt heard of, if not seen the Old Spice Man: A washboard-ab’d man’s man who’s outrageous lifestyle is the premise behind the new Old Spice marketing campaign.

What makes these commercials so successful, I think, is that they’re hilarious, pretty clever, and just absolutely outrageous.

It’s obvious that Old Spice is going through a complete rebranding but perhaps the less obvious thing is that whoever they’ve got at the wheel is a complete genius. This is marketing for the 21st century. Their rebrand, “Smell like a man, man,” has become a complete Internet sensation. Their YouTube channel is getting a bazillion hits from people wanting to watch their hilarious TV spots and, what’s more, they’re pumping out new content daily online. They’re skipping the networks, skipping the distribution and putting it right online, for free, all by themselves giving people what they want which is, ironically, instant access to their commercials… and we’re eating them up!

They’ve gone even one step further by launching a new series, yesterday, of the Old Spice Man responding to messages from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. He has even gotten into a back-and-forth with Alyssa Milano culminating in him sending actual flowers to her house. We’ll have to wait and see if the Old Spice Man wishes to continue their relationship—only possible if he next donates $100,000 to the Gulf Oil Spill clean up, according to Milano.

But the kicker is that we will wait and see what happens next… this is an ad campaign that’s actually grabbed our interest and kept us entertained. Rarely, would a person go out of their way to watch ads, but Old Spice has got us doing exactly that. If anyone was wondering how to make money in a modern society where people skip the TV networks, download programs themselves, and watch ad-free television on their computers, I think Old Spice has hit upon the formula, and it’s pretty common sense actually, make ads that are entertaining.

In my profession I talk a lot and, as a result, I drink a lot of water to keep hydrated. I have an 800ml stainless steel water bottle that’s dinged and nicked from lots of use and sports a purple sticker with a unicorn on it that says “Chiropractic is Magic”—a gift from my wife’s workplace. I fill up my water bottle, on average, about three times a day from the tap, a gesture that I didn’t used to think very much of until I started getting comments from my coworkers.

It seems that tap water has got a bad rap.

Frequently, when filling up my water bottle I’ll hear things like, “Ah, slumming it today, are you?” Slumming it? By drinking water out of the tap? And it isn’t because the water isn’t cold because I always add ice from the freezer. It’s the quality that I’m receiving heck for. The quality of tap water.

It’s clear that the bottled water industry—a billion dollar industry—has pulled one over on us, and it’s a shame because there’s nothing wrong with water from the tap.

I don’t know where the impression arose that bottled water is safer or healthier than tap water but it simply isn’t true. The fact that it seems to be widespread enough that educated, intelligent people would believe it is of concern.

After doing digging I found that Health Canada holds water, in the bottle and out of the tap, to relatively the same standards but the situation in the United States, and other countries around the world is very different. In fact, in these places bottled water can be held to a lesser standard then tap water. So drinking tap water can be better for you. What’s more, some argue that by drinking local water you’re building up immunities to local diseases. I don’t know if that argue holds any water scientifically but there certainly is no data, anywhere, to show that water imported from France is any better than the stuff coming out of your kitchen facet.

But it’s the importing that’s the problem, isn’t it? Consider the manufacturing costs, the wastefulness, the unnecessary shipping and transportation when perfectly good water comes right out of the tap. David Suzuki, in an interview for the CBC called our bottle water consumption “absolutely disgusting” highlighting the fact that we pay more for water in a bottle than we do for gasoline.

OK, so this is my tap water rant. I’m constantly surprised though by people who themselves are surprised that I’m drinking unfiltered water out of the tap. Considering that many of the brands of bottle water out there are, themselves, just tap water in a fancy, wasteful bottle I think it’s time for a reality check.