By Claire Reilly

Water filtration brand Brita took to the HIA Home Show in Sydney over the weekend to promote its new 3-Way Water Filter Dispensers, and the company’s association with new brand ambassador Gary Mehigan.

Taking a break between filming episodes of MasterChef’s fourth season and working in his Melbourne restaurants Fenix and Maribyrnong Boathouse, Mehigan said the association with Brita made sense in terms of his own priorities.

“On a personal level, it just seems to fit,” said Mehigan. “It’s been on my mind a lot about bottled water particularly, more so on the home front. It drives me nuts that we’d leave the house, drive three minutes down the road and my daughter would say she’s thirsty, so we’d pull over at a garage and buy a bottle of fizzy water from Italy. Three bottles of water and $9 later, I’d think, ‘Can we not just fill our bottles up at home?’

“We live in a country that’s got some of the cleanest water in the world, and I figure if we can filter it out of our own taps, it’s a better way to go.”

Brita’s managing director Peter Harley also emphasised that the product range was designed to make drinking filtered water easy, accessible and desirable, while the association with Mehigan increased the focus on using filtered water for other things besides drinking water.

“Gary’s a world-class chef and I think it’s important for us to show that filtered water is not just about the eight glasses a day, you should actually be using filtered water in your cooking because it removes the impurities you don’t want in your water,” said Harley.

“We wanted to bring that story to the everyday household consumer – we wanted to make sure that they had more touchpoints with filtered water during the course of the day. Not just for hydration, but also for cooking.

“And if you want to make great tasting coffee or tea, then you should really be using filtered water as well. We’re working with a number of coffee manufacturers on that front – filtered water is good for scale build-up and it improves the quality of your machine over time, but also you get great tasting coffee and tea.”

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Brita’s product range includes a selection of jug and water bottle filtration systems, as well as filters that can be fitted onto existing taps and the new range of European-designed 3-Way Water Filter Dispensers.

Regardless of the product, Harley said the Brita message can be easily summed up for retailers and consumers.

“Health and taste are probably the two key selling points,” he said. “If it tastes good, people drink it more often. Especially for young children – if you make water great tasting, then the choice for other alternatives becomes less obvious for them. If we can get that message across to consumers that will certainly help.

“From a retailer’s perspective, they should be cross-selling this type of product with coffee machines, with fridges and those sorts of things. There is a great opportunity to partner with Brita.”

Brita’s range of products are available from department and electrical stores, including David Jones, Myer, Target, Kmart, Big W, Harris Scarfe, Harvey Norman, Good Guys, Bing Lee and Office Works. They are also available in selected Woolworths, Safeway, Coles, Franklins and IGA supermarkets, and selected hardware stores including Bunnings and Mitre10.

Brita managing director Peter Harley and chef Gary Mehigan with Brita's new range of products.