Last month, students took advantage of the 70-degree weather, ditching the library and sitting in the sunken gardens of Loyola Marymount to tan, dance, and study. There were more blankets than there was visible grass. Boxes of Ape Water sat on a stone wall lined with pink flowers and abandoned Nike sneakers.
The sun cast a stinging heat from above, brightening the colors of everything below it and forcing people to squint. “Ape Water” was written in a comic-looking cursive font on a blinding white box. The blue text fits horizontally across the front and back of the box, and a tall boy sits beside it on the right. The top half of the tall boy water can is graphically the same as the box, and the bottom half has a monkey in sunglasses and a yellow sun hat. Elliot Joel and his team, the minds behind the design, sat on the short wall, kicking their feet back and forth, looking out at the students playing on the field. “This is just epic,” Joel said. “This could go so far.”
Joel met Andre Bagg, the co-founder of Ape Water, through a friend. A recent college graduate, Joel began working straight out of school. He was involved with Bagg’s cryptocurrency company when it eventually expanded into water. That’s when he shifted his focus to marketing and branding. This got him started in a not-so-typical post-grad career. But today, non-conventionality is the norm.
Joel works to film content around college campuses and helps with merchandise and production. “Manufacturing and sourcing a physical product is tough,” Joel said. “Producing over 2,000 cans of spring water was a learning curve, but it was fun.” Nothing about Ape Water is straightforward, except for the marketing aspect. But getting college kids to do stupid things is uncomplicated, and marketing canned water that holds some investing opportunities to Gen Z is equally as simple. This makes Joel’s work fun.
“I’ll give you a water for a fun fact, talent, or dance,” said Thomas Peck, one of the guys on Joel’s team. He was offering Ape Water to a group of students on skateboards. They chuckled, and one of them obliged, telling him a joke. He handed them all a water, and they skated up and down the paths that line the gardens while sipping on the cans. In an inspired bit of guerilla marketing, the students rode around visibly carrying Ape Water. Elliot hoped others would buy Ape Water under the principle of “monkey see, monkey do.”
In the wild campus grass, Joel’s brows furrowed behind the camera. He was squatting 10 feet away in a bush, trying to camouflage with the green shrubs, balancing his entire body weight on his folded-over calves. He was a natural. His eyes were entranced with what he was seeing. This was his safari, and it was as if there was some undiscovered magical creature playing frisbee in sunken gardens. “What we really wanted to achieve and showcase was genuine, candid human interactions between one another while subliminally tying the product in,” Joel said. “Seeing that come to life…You really don’t know how it’s going to be until you put yourself out there and just do it.” His earlier expression had been accomplishment.
Joel was equally as passionate about the environmental aspects as he was about the marketing. “Ape Water is different than every other can-packaged water,” Joel said. “We are a premium product. It speaks more to some audiences than others because some people in America are not well educated on water quality.” He made it a point that through their expansion process, every water source in each country must be top quality, or Ape Water won’t budge. “The bottom line is, it has to be as good of quality as the water at Mount Shasta. Or better,” Joel said.
A student approached wearing unfit, baggy slacks and a Hawaiian print shirt. The group sprawled out in teams of three to four people, and Peck’s group met him by the short stoned wall where the Ape Water was sitting. The student was curious but timid before receiving his challenge. “Hey, bro,” Peck said. “Fact, talent, or dance for a sweet can of water?” Without hesitation, the boy stuck his tongue out. Trying to speak while twisting his tongue, he muffled, “I can twirl my tongue.” He got a large round of applause from Peck for his enthusiasm, and a wave of confidence washed over him. The rest of the Ape Water team turned towards the commotion and went wild over the twirled tongue. “The thing that is so interesting about the LMU experience compared to other places, socially, is the friendliness,” Joel explained. “At USC, everyone was like, ‘I’m busy; I don’t want to be on camera.’” It made sense — the excitement regarding how willing people were to be a part of their brand.
“Water has never been this epic,” is written underneath one of the Instagram posts with a gold Ape Water edited to rotate in front of a crystal clear portrait of a lake. Elliot edited the hours of content from Loyola Marymount into a three-minute video. The montage includes the Hawaiian shirt guy twisting his tongue and basking in the praise of his audience. The skaters kick their skateboards up and down, speeding in circles around the pavement while sipping their water. A couple laughs off Elliot’s offer, “Would you trade a date with your girlfriend for an Ape Water?” In the back, students scattered across the lawn, some studying and others filming TikTok dances. A sorority is picnicking in the corner, playing volleyball, and chasing around Buster, the campus dog. “Ape water is more than canned water,” Joel said. “It’s joy.”