Drinking In Publicity : Folksy Perrier Ad Stars O.C.’s Shake Shack

What image comes to mind when you think of Perrier mineral water? Chichi restaurants? Yuppies sipping the nonalcoholic bubbly with a squeeze of lime?

How about a hole-in-the-wall sandwich stand by the beach? No? Then you’re the very audience Perrier is targeting in its current ad campaign, which features Orange County’s well-known Shake Shack.

The bright-yellow building--the color of highway stripes--is perched on a cliff at Crystal Cove State Park, a few miles north of Laguna Beach. The wood-frame hut, no bigger than a lunch wagon, turns heads only because it is the sole structure along an undeveloped patch of Coast Highway.

For 50 years, beach-goers have been drawn to the roadside eatery by its date shakes. But it also serves peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips, quesadillas--and Perrier.

That last menu item, the sparkling French water usually associated with fancier digs, won the Shake Shack an ad spot now running in just about every magazine in the newsstands. There it is, in all its golden glory--with longhaired local Doug Boyce leaning against the pickup window, a bottle of Perrier at his side.

The advertisement is one in a series aimed at dispelling the notion that Perrier is strictly a country club drink, said James Caporino, creative director of Waring & LaRosa, the New York agency behind the campaign.

“During the ‘80s, Perrier developed an image that wasn’t an altogether honest representation of it,” Caporino said. “The reality of Perrier is that it’s sold at supermarkets as well as at Spago. Our desire was to shift the perception of the brand.”

So the advertising firm went hunting for unexpected places that serve Perrier: a sidewalk cafe in Manhattan, a fruit stand in Santa Fe, a pub in Boston--and a date-shake shack in Southern California.

“The ads put Perrier in a more casual mode,” said Jan Lazgin, spokeswoman for Perrier Group of America Inc. in Greenwich, Conn. “They make it friendly and approachable, rather than just a special-occasion beverage.

“We wanted to position Perrier as a universal product that shows up in interesting and colorful places everywhere. The Shake Shack was perfect for that. It is an infusion of color and folksiness.”

Starring in a national ad campaign certainly hasn’t hurt business, said Katie Flamson, the Shake Shack’s concessionaire. How often, after all, does a humble sandwich stand enjoy slick publicity in such widely circulated magazines as Esquire, GQ, Cosmopolitan and the New Yorker?

“A lot of customers have mentioned that they’ve seen the ad. The response has been incredible,” said Flamson, who leases the Shake Shack from the Department of Parks and Recreation. “Sales have definitely picked up. But we’re entering our busiest time of the year, so it’s hard to tell how much of the increase is due to warmer weather and how much is due to the ad.”

It was the ad campaign’s photographer, Stephen Wilkes, who suggested the Shake Shack to Waring & LaRosa. The New York resident discovered it five years ago while shooting pictures for his book, “California 1.”

“The Shake Shack is the quintessential beach stand,” Wilkes said. “It’s a real treasure. You can’t find many places like it in the United States anymore.”

Wilkes looked for local characters to put in his Perrier photo. He asked around at Laguna Beach surf shops and was steered to Doug Boyce, a 22-year-old artist and professional skater for Rollerblade Inc.

The young man’s initial appeal was his “Rolls Boyce,” a 1974 Plymouth Scamp painted brightly from front to rear in his Picasso-like style. Wilkes planned at first to use the car in the ad but later settled on Boyce’s similarly decorated surfboard.

Wilkes also liked Boyce’s looks: scrubbed, athletic and wholesome despite the ring through his nose and below-the-shoulder blond hair. “Doug was such a unique person that I just had to use him,” Wilkes said.

The photo shoot took place in December on a chilly morning at sunrise. So, no, Boyce had not just trotted up from the ocean for a bite to eat after catching some waves, as the photo suggests. Nor did he choose to be clad only in a pair of cutoff jeans.

“I was freezing,” Boyce recalled.

Furthermore, until the photo session, he had never been to the Shake Shack. “It’s stuck in the middle of nowhere,” he explained.

But the ad was not based entirely on illusion: Boyce does, in fact, drink Perrier. “I’m a vegetarian, and I like healthy things,” he said.

The $1,000 he earned from the ad hardly constitutes a fortune, and he probably would have done the job for free. A natural ham, Boyce travels across the country for Rollerblade, demonstrating his skating prowess.

“I was happy to sign on the dotted line,” he said of the ad contract. “I thought it was a way-cool opportunity.”

Way cool, indeed: The ad has generated two more gigs for him. He recently taped TV commercials in which he’s surfing and skating for Pacific Bell Telephone and for the HBO cable-TV channel.

The magazine ad, Boyce said, “was as much an advertisement for me as it was for Perrier.”

So the eye-catching display served as three promotions in one: for Perrier, the Shake Shack and Boyce. And all concerned couldn’t be happier.

“The ad has a very classy, elegant feel to it,” Caporino of Waring & LaRosa said. “It’s absolutely my favorite in the series.”