Pantone Launches the Pee Color Chart To Help You Assess Your Hydration

Anyone who has become a student of hydration knows that you can quickly check your level through the color of your urine, but what color exactly should it be? Water maker Highland Springs launched this quirky promotion with Pantone where they identified five specific colors to watch out for. This so-called “pee chart” was conceived as a way to help “polite Brits” talk about hydration, but it ended up as a great case study in how a decent idea can fail in execution.

The brand of water behind it is invisible. The international alignment to other English speaking markets is non-existent. And the entire campaign illustrates exactly why marketing bottled water might just deserve its reputation as the “marketing trick of the century.”