Why Saratoga Spring Water is suddenly everywhere

If you’ve been noticing that cobalt-hued water bottles have started to pop up everywhere you’re not alone. The water has recently made an appearance on shelves at major retailers including Whole Foods and 7-Eleven, starred in viral social media videos created by fitness influencer Ashton Hall, adorned on tables at the Golden Globes, and beginning this week, will star in a fresh new advertising campaign featuring WNBA point guard Skylar Diggins.

All of these marketing efforts represent a more expansive pitch by Saratoga Spring Water that the brand’s premium-priced water isn’t just for fine dining– which has been the brand’s core focus for the past several years — it’s for everyone.

From fine dining to cultural signal

“We have an opportunity to speak to a lot more people than I think we thought we did,” says Kheri Tillman, chief marketing officer of Saratoga’s parent company Primo Brands, in an interview with Fast Company. “Consumers love the blue bottle and want to engage with it in many different places, as opposed to just fine dining. It’s a bit of an affordable luxury.”

Saratoga’s total points of distribution has swelled by 69% during the first 11 months of 2025 compared with the prior-year period, the brand told Fast Company, citing data from market researcher Circana.

While partnerships with Michelin-starred chefs like Buddha Lo are still important, Saratoga felt it had room to stretch to a wider audience and has done so through a pop-up speakeasy at a 7-Eleven in Los Angeles held in November, a brand partnership with BMX star Nigel Sylvester, and water-food pairings at fancy restaurants developed with water sommelier Martin Riese.

“It creates, dare I use a water pun, fluidity between the partners,” says Christi Lazar, head of The Lab, the in-house creative agency at Primo Brands that vets external partnerships. She says the throughline through each of these relationships is a connection to water that feels as authentic as possible.

A new face for a broader audience

The brand’s next big new moment is an ad campaign starring Diggins, which debuts on January 5 just days before the Golden Globes, an event that Saratoga sponsors as its “official water.” The ad spot will run across broadcast television; Instagram, TikTok and other paid social channels; and print titles including paid social channels including Instagram and TikTok, and print titles including Vogue and Travel + Leisure.

“Skylar was really interesting, because she was this great mashup of super high-end, with a great look that you would expect from Saratoga, but then also just this every day work, hard grit that you would need to be to be a professional athlete, as well as a mother,” says Tillman. 

Diggins tells Fast Company that the campaign is a good fit for her own brand because “obviously, as an athlete, hydration is extremely important.” But, she adds that the campaign, which ends with Diggins appearing in front of flashing paparazzi cameras on a blue—not red—carpet appearance, represented her life off the court that’s “more style, elegance, and how I like to dress.”

Letting virality do the work

The viral moment with Hall skewed more male. Tillman says that Saratoga opted to allow that cultural moment to play out without any interference from the brand. “You can’t plan a viral moment, but what you can do is make your brand relevant enough, to certain people, to make them want to have it by their side,” says Tillman. Primo Brands says it grew the company’s audience on Instagram by 77% in 2025.

Primo Brands is a relatively new entity, formed late in 2024 through the combination of Primo Waters, whose brands included Mountain Valley and Crystal Springs, and BlueTriton, the water purveyor of Saratoga, Deer Park, and Poland Spring.

The combined company now sells one out of every four plain water bottles in the U.S., according to beverage industry publication Beverage Digest, easily making Primo Brands the most dominant seller of branded plain bottled water. Private label plain bottle water accounts for 62% of the market, while soda giants Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper are all in the single-digits, Beverage Digest’s data shows.

Premium water’s crowded next chapter

Duane Stanford, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, tells Fast Company that premium-priced water brands like Saratoga and Smartwater have reported growth that’s outpaced the total plain bottled water industry, which in total reported a volume increase of 27% over the past decade through 2024.

Saratoga, he says, elevated the brand’s positioning through a focus on distribution to fine dining restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality channels. “They made a conscious effort to do a lot more with that brand and premiumize it and take advantage of that blue bottle,” adds Stanford.

Primo Brands says that the company’s premium portfolio, which includes Saratoga and The Mountain Valley Spring Water, posted a 126% increase in retail sales for the first 11 months of 2025 versus the same period a year ago, citing retail scan data from Circana.

But the category is competitive and rival brands have also rolled out major ad campaigns in 2025. Coca-Cola’s Smartwater reunited with pitchwoman Jennifer Aniston for a new campaign as macroeconomic pressures have dampened some demand for pricy water. Around the same time, rival Sanpellegrino, which is owned by Nestle, debuted an ad spot with “The Sopranos” stars Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa.

Primo Brands has also leaned on celebrities for its advertising, including the Saratoga-Diggins spot and an advertising campaign starring “Perfect Pitch” actresses Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson to promote the Splash Refresher brand.

Tillman says it is key for Primo Brands to differentiate the marketing strategy for the glass adorned Saratoga and Mountain Valley from the regional water brands like Poland Spring and Deer Park, a portfolio of six names that focus on more hyperlocalized marketing and particularly leverage a sponsorship with Major League Baseball. Some of those brands are big sellers—Poland Springs is a billion dollar brand that’s only sold in six states—but, “the intention is to keep them regional,” says Tillman.

Saratoga’s fine dining efforts are also continuing through the work the brand does with Riese, a German-born water expert who created his first menu to explain regional variations and flavor in his home country in 2005. “When it comes to water, our most important beverage on this planet, we’re treating it as a commodity,” Riese tells Fast Company.

He works with restaurants like Gwen, the Los Angeles Michelin-starred restaurant by chef Curtis Stone, to cultivate a water menu with selections from nine different countries, including Fiji from the Fiji Islands and France’s Evian. Saratoga’s sparking water has enough fizz that it can be enjoyed with appetizers as a champagne replacement, says Riese, who works with Primo Brands as a paid partner.

“I don’t see water as hydration,” says Riese. “And I think, especially here in America, a lot of people don’t understand and don’t know it yet, that there’s an epicurean side to water.”

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