Mark Wahlberg is owner of a water company called Aqua Hydrate.He may have jumpstarted his career with an iconic underwear campaign for Calvin Klein back in the day, but the actor-producer isn’t looking to have his likeness grace billboards again anytime soon similar to what Jennifer Aniston does for SmartWater. “I don’t think anyone wants to see me on a billboard anymore. But we do want the top athletes and we’ll have very interesting people endorsing the product.”
For the past few years, the actor has been working to relaunch Aqua Hydrate, the water brand he owns. (Jack Nicklaus, Ron Burkle, and Sean “Diddy” Combs all sit on the board of directors). “I got into this by accident. I had no desire to be in the beverage business.”
“I was training for The Fighter and a friend brought this guy in with a case of water. He started telling me about reverse osmosis and all of this organic stuff and I said, ‘Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Leave the water and I’ll try it.’ I started drinking the water—I usually drink a gallon or a gallon and a half of water a day— and I immediately recovered quicker, started running eight instead of seven miles a day. So I said I love the product but wasn’t in the beverage business so I couldn’t help them. But then I started talking to people and decided I wanted to get involved somehow.”
How Diddy became involved.
“I was in Vegas at a fight and Diddy comes up to me and goes, ‘Where’s that water? Where’s the water?’ And I told him not to worry about it since it was for me not for him. He said he always wanted his own water so we started talking and then Ron Burkle came on. We feel like we have a special product and we did all these clinical tests against all the premium waters and energy drinks. There are a lot of big athletes who drink the water even though they get paychecks from other drink companies. There is no shortage of people who want to be the face of the water. We’re talking the biggest and the best.”
Unconventional uses.
Wahlberg told a story of helping a director recover from a very raucous night in Las Vegas. When the director was in bad shape after a long night of drinking, Wahlberg had him drink the water. “The next day he was on the set at 7 am. He had written a song called Aqua Hydrate and was singing it with one of my co-stars. And one of our partners who likes to drink vodka, he owns a vodka company, drinks the water to recover as well. It’s pretty good stuff. Someone also says if you have the blue bottle, you don’t need the little blue pill.”
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