Fitness influencer Ashton Hall is all over X right now. The man’s got a morning routine that has him waking up at 4 a.m. and spending a full six hours doing normal things like brushing his teeth and working out, but also performance-y things like ‘daily journaling’ in what looks to be a completely untouched journal, recording himself talking vague business jargon, and, for some reason, rubbing a banana peel on his face. (There’s also the weird manosphere-flavored ‘faceless offscreen woman wordlessly serving him’ part of his shtick, which other influencers in his niche do, too.)
But out of all the things in Hall’s two-minute video–reposted by X account @tipsformenx–perhaps most noticeable are the blue glass bottles he carries everywhere.
Those blue bottles? They’re the signature of Saratoga Spring Water Co., a New York-based water company that’s seeing a boost in stock price (and maybe in sales?) thanks to Hall’s viral moment.
In his videos, Hall (who has 8.5 million followers on Instagram, 4.8M on TikTok, and 2.9M on YouTube) churns through bottle after bottle, using them for drinking, mouthwashing, swigging at the gym and pool, and dunking his face. The bottles get the kind of glamour treatment you’d expect from a typical influencer-brand partnership: Hall often places them alongside him in the center of the shot, and is always careful to turn the label to face the camera.
Because of that, some of the nearly quarter billion people who watched Hall’s videos reposted on X assumed he was in fact an official partner. But Saratoga’s parent company, Primo Brands, has since confirmed it’s never paid Hall to market its water. He’s just doing all that to do it.
“As a marketer, you’ve done something right when your brand becomes a part of someone’s life and their story,” Kheri Tillman
, Primo Brands’ CMO, told The New York Times. To Business Insider, Tillman added, “He’s clearly meticulous in what he does and cares about his entire health. The fact that Saratoga Water plays a role in that is amazing.”Primo Brands also confirmed to BI that it’s reached out to Hall to talk about a brand deal. We’re not surprised the company wants to capitalize on this; though much of the response to Hall’s video has been mocking, he’s still been X’s most-viewed meme main character for days, and that kind of attention is hard to buy. According to X’s analytics, 732 million people have watched @tipsformenx’s repost of Hall’s video, and Saratoga is clearly aware of what that amount of eyeballs can do for a brand.
And, for the record, so are some savvy local marketers:
Primo Brands hasn’t commented on potential sales lift, but it did say its Instagram following grew by 10% over the weekend, and that “Saratoga” was the #7 trending topic on X.
While we can’t say for sure if Hall’s routine will put a spring in Saratoga’s sales, we do know its stock price jumped. MarketWatch saw a 16.2% surge in premarket trading directly attributable to Hall’s virality.
MarketWatch also points out that even before Hall’s moment, Primo Brands considered Saratoga one of its “rapidly growing premium products.” (It retails for around $38 for a pack of 24 on Amazon, btw.) To give you an idea of its growth, Saratoga sold $13 million worth of product in 2021, which is the year Primo Brands bought it. By 2024, it was selling $71 million annually.
We’re curious what it’ll do after this. Just like content creators, brands can struggle to keep long-term momentum and audience-building going after a brief burst of virality. But Primo Brands seems keen to jump on Hall’s endorsement, so chances are we’ll see more blue-bottle face-dunking from him in the near future.
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