Image courtesy of Ocean Bottle
Ocean Bottle was founded with a mission that extends beyond replacing single-use bottles. And for Ocean Bottle co-founder Will Pearson, sustainability is not a marketing message. It's their business model. Every sale funds the collection of 1,000 plastic bottles that might otherwise reach the ocean, tying the company’s environmental impact directly to its sales. For Pearson, that connection between business and impact is also one of the clearest tests of whether a company’s sustainability efforts are authentic.
“The test I’d use is simple: can you explain in one sentence exactly what happens the moment someone buys your product or service?” Pearson said. “If you need a manifesto to explain it, it's probably a comms exercise.”
But authenticity also requires companies to acknowledge when they fall short. When Pearson and Ocean Bottle co-founder Nick Doman were 23, they publicly committed to collecting 7 billion bottles by the end of 2025. The company did not reach that goal and Pearson believes being transparent about that is just as important as celebrating its successes.
“Our impact report is the same: it’s about progress over perfection, even as an impact company,” Pearson said. “I've even told people on LinkedIn that if they already have a perfectly good reusable bottle, they should keep using it until it leaks like a sieve. That's probably not in any marketing playbook, but trust comes from being willing to say things that don't sell.”
- Will Pearson
Co-Founder, Ocean Bottle
Storytelling as the marketing model
For Ocean Bottle, storytelling has been central to building the brand because, as Pearson puts it, “nobody needs another water bottle.”
"What people are actually buying is a small, repeatable act that does something, and that only lands if you tell the story properly,” Pearson said. “The product gets them in the door and the impact is non-negotiable. The story behind the brand is why they stay.”
The product also gives Ocean Bottle an opportunity to keep that story alive. The company’s research found that almost half of people consider their reusable bottle the most essential thing they take when leaving the house.
“Every Ocean Bottle is a daily reminder to the person holding it of why they bought it,” Pearson said. “Most brands pay a small fortune for that kind of frequency. We get it every time someone refills their bottle.”
Pearson believes other companies can make sustainability part of their financial decisions rather than treating it as just a communications strategy.
“The brands doing it well have made it a commercial decision with commercial consequences, not a story their agency tells once a year around Earth Day,” Pearson said. “Green solutions need to be better, full stop. If they’re as convenient, as good in practice and competitive on cost, they’ll simply displace the worse alternatives.”
For marketers, even small decisions about merchandise, packaging, and event giveaways can communicate a company’s priorities. A stress ball or lanyard with a logo slapped on it is unneeded waste. And Ocean Bottle used this idea to inspire Philanthropica, a $3,500 limited-edition drink in a “supercharged” Ocean Bottle.
Only 1,000 Philantropicas were created, with each purchase funding the collection of one million single-use plastic bottles. “Next to a $1,350 cotton polo shirt or a $2,500 tennis racket, our price-to-value equation is a little different,” Pearson said.
Philantropica launched on a megayacht during the Cannes Film Festival. The unconventional setting gave the brand a chance to use the luxury and spectacle surrounding Cannes to draw attention and capital toward ocean restoration. The campaign also shows that sustainability does not have to lean into guilt to get people’s attention.
“The lesson for CMOs is that aspiration is the most powerful tool you have,” Pearson said. “Sustainability doesn’t have to be worthy to be serious. Make it desirable, make people smile, then show them the receipts."
The Goldilocks Problem - Finding the "Just Right" Agency Partner
It started with a question: “Can AI actually help clients find the ‘just right’ agency?” We kept seeing clients turn to AI and other digital tools to navigate an increasingly crowded agency market, and we wanted to know whether those tools could actually surface the information clients need to make the right choice. So we did our research. We surveyed 30 marketing and communications executives on what matters most in their agency search and analyzed how 14 representative agencies addressed those priorities across LLM responses, Google Search, and their respective websites.The results:
There is a consistent disconnect between what clients care about most (proven results, relevant experience, senior-level involvement, chemistry, accountability) and the information agencies make publicly discoverable.
For example, agency websites addressed only 30% of the clients' priority topics, and a traditional search wasn’t much better: across 28 Google searches, the agencies appeared in results for just 13 topics, with no agency appearing at all for the other 15.
The main takeaway: AI can make agency discovery more targeted and efficient, but it cannot solve the agency-search problem on its own. LLMs can only surface what has been published, indexed, and cited, while many of the factors that ultimately determine agency fit and potential match in expertise are inherently relationship-based.
Good Good Golf x Callaway: To promote Callaway’s new Quantum driver, Good Good Golf released an ad showing creator Alexis Miestowski reaching for the club in a golf bag. Good Good Golf co-founder Garrett Clark rushes over and knocks her to the ground, warning, “Do not touch my new driver.” The scene was supposedly meant to show just how obsessed and protective golfers would be over the new club. Instead, viewers saw a man knocking a woman to the ground over a golf club, drawing immediate criticism for making violence against women (and in a male-dominated sport) into an advertising joke. Callaway admitted to approving the ad but ended its partnership with Good Good and pledged $1 million to organizations addressing violence against women. Good Good also withdrew as the title sponsor of an upcoming PGA Tour event. One social media video turned into a much larger reputational crisis that cost them a partnership and a million dollars.
Converse: Converse released campaign photos modeling its Chuck 70 sneakers, but one image quickly gained attention for the wrong reasons. The model’s white skirt, combined with the angle and lighting of the photo, created a triangular shape that viewers said resembled a KKK hood. At the same time, a pair of Converse sneakers hanging in the background was interpreted by some as evoking imagery of lynching. Converse quickly removed the image and apologizing, claiming that it did not intend either reference, but it leaves you wondering how something like this made it through a creative review process without anyone stopping to consider how the final ad could be interpreted.
McDonald’s CEO Video: McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski posted a social video introducing the Big Arch, a new burger product positioned as a major menu launch. When he tried it, however, he took an unusually tiny bite and delivered awkward, corporate-sounding commentary about the “product.” Social media immediately blew up the clip, laughing about how McDonald’s own CEO seemed hesitant to eat his own food. The overly controlled production made the entire endorsement feel forced and gave viewer a reason to question whether the person running McDonald’s was even sold on the burger.
These are just some of the many advertising blunders-turned-PR nightmares that we’ve seen so far this year. They share one simple lesson: a campaign means nothing if you don’t stop to consider all the ways people will actually receive it. Sometimes the scariest part isn’t the backlash; it’s wondering how no one caught it before it went live. Hopefully marketing teams have learned to check their work and we’ll have fewer scary stories to tell next year…
Shimek is built on connection. We’ve counseled more than 1,800 companies on their agency search and marketing strategy at no cost to them.
Reach out anytime, we'd love to be a resource.
Did someone forward you this newsletter? Make sure you're on the list! Subscribe so you don't miss the next edition of Field Notes.
SubscribeSubstack