Adding Lil' to your name only works if you're a rapper

New from the people who brought you Lil' Wayne, Lil' Kim, Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boys, and expensive bottled water comes...

Here's Lil' Fiji, straddled by regular Fiji and what I assume is marketed as Big Ol' Fiji

That's right folks! The same bottled water shipped in from a rain forest on the island of Fiji, drank by the President himself now comes in a smaller and even less economical package! Why drink outrageously expensive 16 oz bottles of water when you can drink 11.2 oz bottles?

I was taken aback when I saw the above package on the shelf at Target. Now understand, I'm beyond the fact that people actually pay for water. Getting people to buy bottled water at all is one of the great successes of advertising of the last decade; most people have come to accept the practice. My house is constantly stocked with bottled water. There's something to the idea of the cleanliness or the healthiness of drinking a Dasani (Coke's tap water) or a Poland Spring (Nestlé ground water).

It's different when you're talking Natural Artesian Water. A nine-pack of Lil' Fiji goes for $8.99. A dollar a bottle. A 28-pack of Poland Spring 20 oz bottles goes for $6.54. That's 9 cents per ounce versus 1.2 cents per ounce. I didn't look up the comparable size for cheap water because 11.2 isn't really a legitimate or appropriate size for anything.

Let's go on the assumption that bottled water actually is better for you in some way than tap water. Therefore, both Poland Spring and Fiji (Lil' or otherwise) must both offer benefits that tap water does not. Based on the pricing, can we then deduce that Fiji is eight times better for you than the leading bottled water brand? In short, no.

People are willing to pay for brand names; if they weren't, my industry wouldn't exist. Somebody must be willing to pay a dollar a bottle for Lil' Fiji; the brand has actually been around for three years. To some people, Lil' Fiji must be eight times cooler than Lil' Poland Springs, or Lil' water from the faucet. To you folks, I say: thank you.

Without the upper echelon tool kits that buy products like Lil' Fiji because it comes from 8000 miles away and Barack Obama drinks it, branding would be meaningless, and I'd be drifting aimlessly through the world. And probably be a philosphy major.