As I sipped my coffee, I observed the communal table in front of me — two men were sitting surrounded by various coconut water and water bottles. I counted at least seven different kinds of water. Initially, I assumed they were just avid water enthusiasts but I was wrong. These were men in the business of selling water.

One of the gentlemen was what I can only assume was an industry water veteran. He wore a black pullover sweater and dark denim jeans and had the kind of carefree confidence only someone who had been successful in selling water to people who had the stuff running out of their faucets could have. Resting against his left leg was a well-worn leather brief case. He looked a bit like what you would imagine the child of Eugene Levy and Harvey Keitel to look like.

This was a man with answers and the man sitting across from him, wanted those answers, desperately.

Clearly the younger of the two, he wore a navy blue and white striped button-up shirt and dark pants. He was nursing an iced coffee and an orange juice and was an obvious member of the Patrick Batemen hairstyle aficionado club, his blonde hair was slicked back ever so slightly to give the impression of caring, but only just.

The young tech bro had a startup, of course he did. He was the young founder of a sports drink, water that wasn’t just water, it was more than water (though it was mostly just water).

The industry veteran held up two empty containers of water and asked, “Why am I going to choose this water, over this one?”

Ah. The question of the day, how do you successfully market water?

They sat there for a time throwing around the kind of buzzwords that would invoke thirst in a consumer:

“Superior hydration.”

“Natural hydration.”

“Quench, nutritional, hydration.”

Hydration was evidently going to play a big part in this marketing plan.

The startup bro attempted to clarify his target audience, which was described as a: weekend warrior, businessperson, athlete-triathlete, health-conscious progressive with an attention to detail who was both aspirational and locational (meaning they lived in San Francisco).

The water-veteran held up a bottle again, which he did whenever he wanted to make a point, “You want to create a sort of harmony, you have to have a sense of purpose. Water has to be functional.”

Apparently you had to tell the consumer exactly what function the water served, as if the product being labeled “water” didn’t make that function clear enough.

The expert plunged into a discussion about how marketing water wasn’t simply about what was in the bottle, but what was on the bottle.

He grabbed an empty bottle for a popular alkalized brand with a pH level of 9.5 and pointed to the label, “People essentially have no idea how labels work, they think: ‘Oh I need that much fiber or that much protein,’ But they get very confused by it.”

The two went on to discuss how consumers can’t understand Federal Drug Administration guidelines, labels, or nutritional values. Which, according to the older man, meant marketers could throw the word “potassium” on a bottle and people would buy it because they knew they needed potassium, even if they didn’t understand how much or from what source that potassium should be derived.

The young founder made a non-sequitur to discussing his sports-water again. He wanted to talk about their target demographic: triathletes. This was a segment he believed to be grossly underserved by the sports water community (which is a thing that exists).

Ignoring him, the veteran unloaded another water bombshell. “You have to have minerals, minerals must be there. Purified water is science, use science to help you, it’s a very technical scientific process and consumers don’t understand that.”

The Eugene-Levy look-a-like raised his voice slightly, “Viscosity, you know what that is?”

This was apparently a rhetorical question because he didn’t give the other man a chance to respond.

“Viscosity, like the fluidity, it’s going to be very big, it’s an emerging trend. What you want to do is establish your baseline viscosity for your post-workout…”

I tuned out at this moment, only to tune back in just in time to hear the three qualities that make up any successful sports water drink: taste, packaging, and functionality. And of course, don’t forget the following: “Water should be non-intimidating.”

I had never come across intimidating water in my life and thought for a moment about what that would even look like. A gigantic, imposing water bottle came to mind, but that was about it. Their conversation had nearly come full circle but the two had still not landed on a good catch phrase.