Trish May, ceo of Athena Partners, is taking a commodity product -- bottled water -- and using it like a Trojan Horse in the battle against women's cancers.


As metaphors go, that one works incredibly well.

You see, Trish's brand of bottled water -- Athena -- is named after the goddess of strategic warfare, courage, wisdom and health. Athena, as you may know, had a hand in inventing the Trojan Horse, which if you remember your Greek mythology, was a giant, hollow, wooden horse, used to sneak soldiers inside the City of Troy.

The same sort of strategy, so far, is working for Trish, who previously was a marketing executive with Microsoft for some 14 years, beginning when Microsoft had only about 500 employees (today it has something like 60,000). She's already "sneaked" Athena bottled water into distribution at Safeway, Albertson's and a division of Kroger, among other retailers -- for a total of about 75 percent of the market in Western Washington State.

Trish's battle plan, however, is not about defeating Coke's Dasani or Pepsi's Aquafina bottled waters. Her battle plan is to beat cancer -- by giving 100 percent of profits to fund women's cancer research. Her passion for that idea could not be more personal; Trish was herself diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993, just a couple of months following her mother's death from ovarian cancer.

"What I've learned," says Trish, "is that while a lot of progress is being made against cancer, the solution is not as close as one would like it to be." So, Trish decided that she would use her skills and resources to try to accelerate progress. Her vision -- her goal -- is that the Northwest will become the leader in raising funds for women's cancer research.

Trish's skills include marketing and a business background, as well as an MBA and a BA in economics. One of her first jobs out of business school was with a food company called Golden Grain, now owned by Quaker Oats. She spent about four years there, taking a grass-roots approach in the Northwest and learning all about distribution and marketing.

That was in the early '80s and at the time Trish was using an Apple II computer at Golden Grain, doing spreadsheets and using a program called Chart Master to make graphics and create schematics for the grocery industry. That was fairly innovative in those days, and Trish parlayed it into a job at Microsoft in January of 1985. The IBM PC had just been invented and in those days, Microsoft was thinking that the answer to selling software was to understand packaged-goods marketing.

"Those were the days," says Trish, "when we would have pizza parties every Friday with Bill." In those days, says Trish, Microsoft had a speed dial to the Burger Master next door and that's where Gates had a good deal of his lunches. Burgers and milkshakes were the fare of the day. "We were so small we didn't really have a cafeteria. We just did what we could to get by."

Trish was at Microsoft, in a range of sales and marketing capacities, until 1999. For the next two years or so, she became involved in philanthropy by joining various organizations, one of which was called Social Venture Partners. It was started in Seattle, founded by some primarily high-tech executives who wanted to apply traditional venture capitalist approaches to assisting charities.

She also joined a number of boards and started volunteering -- basically building a greater sense of how she might contribute time and money to causes about which she was passionate. Her number one cause, naturally, was finding a cure for cancer.

"I kept looking at what Paul Newman had done, which has always been in the back of my mind because I'm a marketing person by nature," she explains. "He is incredible. He has essentially defined the category and the practice of cause marketing to the ultimate degree by giving away 100 percent of the profits.

"At first I thought, well, maybe I could donate 50 percent or 75 percent. Then I thought -- no, for this to truly have a point of differentiation it had to be 100 percent." Then she started to look at what kinds of product categories she might bring to market in that context.



Why did you choose water?

For several reasons. One, it had to be a product category which was healthy. It also had to be something that was frequently purchased so that consumers could become accustomed to contributing to the cause on a daily basis. If it was something they could do everyday -- as opposed to going to an auction or event -- it was something with which they could make a difference.

But just as importantly, it's an easy choice to make because it's essentially a commodity. By virtue of the fact that it's a commodity, the cause in and of itself becomes more important. It's wonderful that Paul Newman has great salad dressings and spaghetti sauces. He has some unique formulas, which make his products extraordinarily good. That is a key part of his brand strategy. But I didn't want to get involved in building unique recipes because that's extremely difficult to do.

By choosing a commodity, I thought I could create a brand where the cause would be the celebrity. And then on top of that, we would build an idea that could be so compelling that it would lead people not only to try it, but continue to purchase it.

So, the idea is that there is nothing special about this water except the cause it represents?

The qualities of the water -- while they're very good -- are not the central focus of our marketing. One of the early decisions, in terms of what the product would be, was do we go purified or do we go spring? In the last couple of years there has been kind of a dichotomy -- historically, spring water, and where the water originated, was a key primary point of differentiation.

Here in the Northwest, if the water comes from a glacier, from Canada or a unique spring -- that has always been an important point of differentiation. Then, Coke and Pepsi came in and essentially validated the fact that purified water was okay. That sort of took the wind out of the sails of a number of the spring brands. Coke and Pepsi, using that approach, have enabled themselves to go national much more easily, leveraging their distribution system. So, we were fortunate to really be on the coattails of Coke and Pepsi, having created that perspective that purified water was okay.

Then, within that, we have a very good quality of water. We use all the same processes -- reverse osmosis, and so forth, and then we add minerals back in which gives it a very good taste. We were fortunate to find a supplier here locally that made a very good, high-quality refreshing-tasting water. So, once people try it they will be very satisfied, but the refreshing taste is probably fourth or fifth on the list in our messaging.

How did you come up with the name Athena?

Oh, that was a real challenge. We spent a number of months trying to figure it out. We started with the brand attributes that we wanted to communicate. We had five attributes in terms of the brand personality -- strong, real, caring, uplifting, and trustworthy -- in that order of priority. We first went down a path of made-up names, because just about every name has pretty much been selected or copyrighted.

So, we went down this whole avenue of hybrid names and combining different word parts and we spent a good deal of time on root words that have to do with live and life and they just weren't resonating. We had words like cistern and vivre. It just didn't feel like a bottle of water to cure cancer. So we came full circle and went back to a name that we had on a list -- we had a brainstorming session one day over lunch -- and just wrote down on the whiteboard a bunch of words.

One of them was Athena. It's a woman's name that immediately evokes the image of power and strength and courage. She is the goddess of strategic warfare, courage, wisdom and health. I thought bingo! It has this character and quality that makes it feel strong and yet uplifting. It has proven to be really appealing to people. At the end of the day, it was a bunch of women who just kind of dreamed it up.

Once we selected the name Athena, we then went to work in terms of building the package design, which features an image of a woman throwing the spear. That's a nod to the Greek image, but in a very contemporary pose. She's throwing the javelin for strength and speed and distance.

Were there any other special considerations that went into the packaging?

There were several issues that we had to address in the package design with Girvin, our design firm. The pink ribbon, for example, needed to be on the package. But the question was, because the pink ribbon is symbolic of the breast cancer, how prominent should that pink ribbon be? How prominent should pink be in general?

Another debate was to what extent should we feature the word "cancer" on a brand that's a food product? Another discussion was the "power of one" versus a community of people coming together to make a difference.

At the end of the day, water is a very broadly consumed product and we wanted Athena to be a mainstream product -- not a product that would only appeal to women. We wanted a man to feel very comfortable picking up this water bottle in a gym and taking a swig out of it and feelin' like it's okay to drink this water. So our whole strategy was focused around being a product for everyday use that would appeal to women, but not alienate men.

Is it a premium-priced product?

Our pricing is targeted to be at the midpoint. At the low end you have private labels. Then you have your close-to-private-labels, like Arrowhead, and Crystal Geyser. Water is getting to be a very price-competitive category.

Then you have your middle-tier mainstream waters, like Dasani and Danone. Then, at the higher end, you have Evian and Pellegrino. We're targeted at the mainstream level. So, for example, in the grocery store a six-pack would be selling for $3.29 everyday, but on feature it would be $2.50.

In the water business, we're on feature almost as much as or more than we are everyday priced. So, that would put us at about between 40 to 55 cents a bottle in a six-pack. Then we're at $5.99 a case, which puts us at 25 cents a bottle.

Normally, one would expect to pay more for a product that supports a cause, but you haven't taken that approach.

Being mainstream-priced actually makes Athena more expensive than a large majority of what's being purchased. So, in effect, we are hoping that people will pay a few cents more, but not too much more.

The question is, how much more is someone willing to pay on an everyday basis? Our guess is it's really maybe five percent to 10 percent more -- but not that much more. Our goal is to be as competitive as we can be. But we also have challenges in terms of distribution and visibility on the shelves that need to be addressed. So, we have to fit in as much as we can.

What is your distribution strategy?

Our distribution strategy, first and foremost, is to start regionally. We are focusing on the western Washington area because, from the standpoint of the story and the message and our relationships, we can build off of the western Washington connection.

Then, within that regional focus, it is on both grocery and non-grocery. We've been approaching that on a dual path. On the grocery side, it is to build credibility through going into major chains, which would validate what we're doing and also build enough volume to start to cover fixed costs.

So, we approached the very largest chains, and we were very fortunate to get accepted by both Safeway and a major local company called QFC, which is a division of Kroger. At the same time, we're also going toward the smaller stores that are affiliated with independent grocery stores to try to round out our distribution.

Is the plan to stay regional or is the hope that you'll roll this out nationally over time?

Within the first two years, the plan is to stay in the Northwest. We've been asked to go national by customers, but that is a very significant challenge. We have to get significant momentum going here before doing that.

On the non-grocery side, which we're finding is just as interesting and successful, we're picking up some great accounts in the way of food service and coffee shops. One of our best accounts is Tully's, which is a local coffee shop with a number of outlets.

Tully's employees got really behind us and embraced Athena and had contests to see who could outsell the other stores. In one store they had "Athena Day." Employees painted their hair pink and we got this giant blow-up bottle. Forty-three percent of their sales that day were in water and it was incremental sales to the coffee and the pastries being served. So somebody would walk in to buy a cup of coffee and they'd walk out with a case of Athena. They literally bought cases.

We've also just instituted a program called adopt-a-store. We can't afford a sales force. We have a broker that's in the store once a month, but that's not enough to give the product the visibility and the support at the store level that we need. So, we now have 25 volunteers who have agreed to go into the stores, meet the managers and tell them why it's personally important to them that they carry Athena.

They also will be telling other people in the neighborhood about the product to build demand into that store. They want to get permission to talk with the employees, hand out cold bottles of water and buttons and bandanas and then that they will be back in that store every week looking for it. We're pretty excited about it. I don't think that's ever been tried.

In addition, we have people contacting us who want to champion the product within their organizations. For example, there is a hospital where a physician championed Athena to get it adopted by the entire hospital as the water sold in their cafeterias and in all their catering activities.

How does your website fit into your strategy?

Our website is a key part of our strategy to advance education. It's also part of our marketing strategy because the website is focused on a directory of cancer resources and information. That's something that I personally wished I had when I was diagnosed. When you talk with most individuals who have cancer, after they've gotten over the shock of having cancer, the first thing they want to do is get information on how to fight it.

So we hope to become a key resource that people will turn to first. We're not trying to create new information, but we have an organized search directory of all the best information, both nationally and locally. As we go from city to city and expand our distribution of water we'll be expanding our distribution and coverage of the local resources on the website.

And this speaks to our core audience of people directly touched. We want to help support them emotionally and with information and become that name that's associated with support, and caring, and trustworthiness.

Ultimately, what is it that you hope that you are able to accomplish through this venture?

I hope we carve out a place in people's minds and hearts that will galvanize this community around breast cancer awareness and around women's cancer awareness.

Hopefully, we can raise a good amount of money. But I hope Athena will also give us a platform to bring people together around the cause and to support some path-breaking research.