Water Kills

What does punk rock and sustainability have in common?

Well, that’s the $700 million question that Liquid Death’s CEO, Mike Cessario, has answered.

By now, most people in North America have heard about the brand–crazy ads, obnoxious branding, and unconventional approach to promotion that has gotten millions of people to idolize it. What Liquid Death has done is essentially the Shangri-La of marketing: moving a water brand into cultural icon status.

In nearly 10 years working on and with CPG brands, never have I seen a water brand go through such a meteoric rise to fame like Liquid Death has. For starters, water is a commodity, what makes it even harder to market in any compelling way. Secondly, water is widely available at no cost for most people in North America. Right from the jump, these two simple category truths should be enough to keep any sane brand manager from ever entering this space–making Liquid Death’s story even more fascinating.

After attending the Warped Tour in 2009, Mike–a then seasoned creative director in the L.A. ad scene-noticed that although rock bands were sponsored by energy drink companies, they favored drinking water during their performances. However, sponsorship commitments required them to use energy drink cans for their water.

That simple observation, paired with Mike’s philosophy about advertising, gave birth to the most hardcore water brand the world has ever seen.

It’s worth remembering that the bottled water category was quite competitive–between Aquafina (Pepsi), Smart Water (Coke), Dasani (Coke), and Private Label, no sane category manager would dare recommending their company to start a water business. These giants roamed the water world, and they had the capital to segment the category into various niches to further consolidate their market position-such as artistic water (Life Wtr), bubbly water (Bubly), purified water (Fiji), healthy water (Vitamin Water), European water (San Pellegrino), and more. So, what position in the market was left to be taken?

Brand positioning is often seen as a dead-end exercise by many brands–unless they’re willing to take on some level of risk, they often end up exactly where they started after all the research is done. But the great strategists understand that if this portion of the strategic plan isn’t bang on, the rest of the journey will be a Sisyphean uphill battle. So, why do so many get this wrong?

For starters, if I asked you how many brands of toilet paper you can think of on the spot, most people will be able to think of 2, maybe 3. If this consumer packaged good, used by all of us several times a day-which, if depleted, is enough to wage panic and unmeasurable distress on the bravest souls–is so easily forgotten, you can bet the farm that your brand is likely not top of mind in most people’s heads.

Humans’ mental storage of brands isn’t that big–if you’re a toilet paper brand you’re fighting for the top or second spots in people’s minds. If you fall outside of that, you’re a commodity. Brands have the ability to carry meaning, history, and attitudes all within its intangible existence-this baggage is known as “brand equity”.

When people go to a bar and order a beer, their decision might be based on calories, taste, and brew type. But by the 3rd or 4th beer, they can’t taste the difference anymore–they’re now ordering a brand, one that has captured their imagination at some point or another and made them relate to whatever it stood for at the time. But here’s the tricky part: people don’t know what your brand stands for and likely don’t give two dungs about its existence. Their interaction with your precious product is a short moment in their daily lives, therefore it’s up to you to determine what it will stand for.

In other words, a brand is the most valuable piece of real estate in the world: a corner of someone’s mind.

So, back to Liquid Death. They figured that if their water brand was to claim a share of someone’s mind, it needed to stand for something so clearly defined that there would be no questions about it. And that’s when a star was born–Liquid Death = Hardcore.

So easy to remember. If I asked you today, before you read this article, what’s the most hardcore water brand in the world, you’d answer Liquid Death without hesitation–even if you’ve never drank it.

This is the result of consistent execution on what their brand stands for. When that adjective is so clear, media frequency of ads is not as important; as long as you hit your reach targets, you’ll make such an impact upon first impression that it will stick in people’s minds.

So, now this brings us to Liquid Death’s marketing philosophy. Mike Cessario’s time in the ad business gave him a front row view on how crappy advertising had gotten over the years. Most ads suck, therefore most people hate them. To counter that, he decided to hire people that had stints in the entertainment business to build his marketing team. The bar for creativity was going to need to be high in order for their water brand to stand out.

If you take a step back from Liquid Death’s business, you’ll notice that they focus more on entertainment than on anything else. Visit their website and you’ll find an endless stream of hilarious videos, a merch catalog larger than Hudson’s Bay, and weird culty pledges to “sell your soul”. As for their products? They sell water, sparkling, and iced tea, all the while being environmentally conscious by not using plastic bottles. That’s it.

This is a masterclass in demand generation, PR, and advertising in an age of crowded media channels.

Scroll down LinkedIn on any given Liquid Death commercial drop day, and you’ll find thousands of comments, likes, and shares hailing their marketing team as “geniuses” and that they “deserve a raise”. 

This doesn’t surprise me–when creative takes the driver seat amazing things can happen. In today’s hyper competitive and data-driven world where you can monitor every eye movement on a screen, it can be difficult to convince brand managers that their budgets do not need to be entirely funneled into lead-gen campaigns.

But here’s the reality: most brands are running this outdated playbook, so those that go against the grain easily stand out among the crowd.

In the crappy advertising age we’re living in today, it’s never been easier to stand out. Pick your spots wisely and take the plunge.

PPA