McDonald’s Ireland has switched to Ballygowan as the exclusive bottled water brand for its 81 restaurants across Ireland. McDonald’s sells over 1.25 million bottles of water in Ireland annually and has used Vittel bottled water up until now. Commenting on the move, Adrian Crean, McDonald’s Ireland managing director, said the company likes to source Irish products whenever possible. The McDonald’s switch to Ballygowan means that all the beef, milk, cheese, eggs and water sold in their restaurants is Irish.
At the announcement of the deal between McDonald’s Restaurants of Ireland and Britvic Ireland, the UK group which owns Ballygowan, were some of Ireland’s Olympic hopefuls from the DCU Sports Academy, which McDonald’s sponsors. The athletes are part of the elite athletes programme in the nearby DCU Sports Academy. Ballygowan has a new bottle and brand identity devised by an agency in London. Its new TV ads were created by Cawley NeaTBWA, which, coincidentally, is also McDonald’s agency.
