If we imagine that each of the bottles was 1 liter, his experiment grossed him $2.2k at a minimum in a day. Minus the cost of the hot dogs and water bottles, not a bad profit!
In all seriousness, it's amusing to see the correlation people put on monetary cost and the supposed effects of a product. Time and time again we've all seen studies of higher priced items performing better than the exact same product at a lower price point. If a bottle of hot dog water costs $38, it must work!
While this was intended as a jab at "holistic" products that get sold with dubious health claims, it turned into a case study on marketing and positioning your product using pricing to convey value; even if that value is actually bogus in any measured context.
People who paid $38 for his hot dog water would not have bought it if it weren't for the experience he offered them, which to me looked like the opportunity to turn the tables for a minute at a fair and act like hucksters.
I can think of two ways he can scale this offering. He could focus more on the personal aspect, then he'd be turning into an actual product huckster and is moving towards the space occupied by pitchmen like Billy Mays and Vince Offer.
Or he put his hot dog water up on the Internet with some funny copy, putting it in Pet Rock territory.
Kickstarter next. Or maybe an ICO complete with white paper. The wonders of a DNA based blockchain could be leveraged to guarantee that the product is legit. Then get a few Youtube 'influencers' in on the gig, giving them promo codes that, if used, give them a $10 back-hander. Plus the $75 Google give you for your first goes at ad-words. I would love to be stalked everywhere I go online by 'HOT DOG WATER'. Then there is affiliate marketing. That would work.
A back-story is needed too. Some story about how the product was discovered in Germany by some gay Jewish-Romanian autistic savant in the 1930's, for the Nazis to spare him from 'Aktion T4' due to his discovery. Maybe they mixed it with amphetamines so that the Luftwaffe could fly 24/7.
The concentration of 'Hot Dog Water' in the rebooted product could differ from the original in that the 'water' collected from the nether ends of pigs is pasteurized, homogonised, denatured and FDA approved for modern 'tastes'.
The inevitable court case could also be part of the 'art performance', to take the piss out of how big pharma defend their opioid products.
Before we all get swooned by the effectiveness of his business model - most people probably bought this as a gag gift rather than because they believed in its medicinal properties. Because if they didn't, these sales would qualify as a scam.
So where do you place Aethaer who are selling bottles of "fresh" air? http://www.aethaer.com/shop There are companies selling other nationalities of air. (It's bad enough just writing that out)
Aethaer seem to have grown since their little bit of viral fame a few years ago.
And let's not forget the billion dollar industry that is pouring tap water into a container and selling it for $15/gallaon.
Pepsi (Aquafina) and Coca Cola (Dasani) have an... "amazingly loyal" group of customers. They're buying soda, with everything that makes it soda removed, and paying the same price as if they bought actual soda.
Everything that makes soda soda is bad for me. I could buy soda and remove that stuff myself, which is a fair bit of work. Or I could pay someone to do it for me. The fact that Pepsi does this at no additional premium over the soda is something I appreciate.
Putting a simple filtration system on your tap is a lot cheaper than buying soda-priced water, though. And even if you do buy it, there's no guarantees about the quality of the water in the bottle.
Trustworthiness plays at least a minor role in this kind of sells, even though you could say it's not the point. His good nature, honest appearance, and probably knowledge of science could confuse people, so he shouldn't sell the product himself to prove a point.
Did you know that spruce resin, nature's own goodie, is highly effective in curing wounds? Or is it? 20$ a bottle. It works like this. These and these compounds make it work. Do you follow? 20$ a bottle.
In all seriousness, it's amusing to see the correlation people put on monetary cost and the supposed effects of a product. Time and time again we've all seen studies of higher priced items performing better than the exact same product at a lower price point. If a bottle of hot dog water costs $38, it must work!
While this was intended as a jab at "holistic" products that get sold with dubious health claims, it turned into a case study on marketing and positioning your product using pricing to convey value; even if that value is actually bogus in any measured context.