Liquid Death’s $1 Billion Anti-marketing Strategy

0:00Liquid Death kind of feels like something that would have been an SNL commercial, but it's actually real and you can go buy it off the store shelf somewhere.

0:11Hi, everyone, and welcome to Shopify Masters. I'm one of your hosts, Serena Smith. Anti-marketing might just be your next best strategy. Andy Pearson is vice president of creative at Liquid Death, and he's responsible for transforming a simple can of water into a phenomenon worth more than a billion dollars. After we'd had some of these bigger successes, we'd get on calls with people and they'd go, God, water in a can. It's so obvious. I can't I believe I didn't think of that. With a punk rock attitude and campaigns that dare to go where no other brands have, Andy's team has more than just a creative edge.

0:44They have the power to turn heads and open wallets. Make stuff that some people aren't going to like. That's the only way you're going to make something that a lot of people love. This cultural rebellion has unleashed a cult following that flocks to every product and every social post. Andy, it's great to have you here today. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for being with us. What is Liquid Death selling? Is Liquid Death selling water? Or are you selling something else? We're much more than water. We think of ourselves as a healthy beverage platform. So we have mountain water, we have flavored sparkling water, and we have iced tea.

1:17And part of that is all about giving people healthier and more sustainable options without making it feel like that, right? It's water that presents itself like a beer energy drink so that it doesn't feel like you're missing out. I think for decades, healthy brands have decided that they couldn't be compelling. They had to speak in a specific way to people and they had to look healthy and they had to feel healthy. And so what we did was just look at the fact that the most fun brands in the world also happen to be the ones that are maybe the worst for you, right? Beer and energy drinks and candies and chips.

1:55And these are always the brands that when you look at the Super Bowl have the most fun, crazy ads, right? And so we just sort of said, hey, what if we took that energy, but just pointed it towards something that was better for you? And that's really what liquid death is all about. It's radical, but it actually sounds so simple when you say it out loud. It's like, why does that healthy thing have to feel like spinach? Of course, if you make it fun, it's going to be more compelling for people, right? Speaking of, importantly, we should be having some fun of our own. Okay. Yeah. And let's give it a little ASMR, you know?

2:29There we go. There you go. That's, I think, the best sound on the planet. It's delicious. Ten calories. There you go. It's delicious. You didn't join right at the onset of the company. You came when it was, like, starting to build a little bit of momentum, right? Yeah. I joined in 2021 right as we were first starting to appear on store shelves. So it had been around available about two years prior, but just on a DTC basis. Mike, the founder and CEO, is a creative visionary of his own. You come in as VP of creative. Can you talk about what that world building looked like from a creative perspective?

3:09Yeah, I mean, Mike, the brand really and the idea really came from his head. You know, he had the vision on it. He was the one that kind of had that idea you're talking about that was so simple, but no one had bothered to think of it yet. So I stepped into that seeing there was the tagline Murder Your Thirst and we had this amazing logo. And there was so much work that had already been built. But to step into something that was really someone's pure vision and then to have to try to understand what that means and then not just take that baton and run with it, but like, you know, keep going. It was more difficult than I think I originally appreciated.

3:50But I think, you know, four years later, hopefully I'm doing a pretty good job. As a creative, it's like one thing to come into an operation where the CEO is functioning in more of like a traditional CEO capacity. And it's another thing to come in is like the head creative, but you've got this creative person above you. So what was that sort of learning curve for you as you tried to figure out how do I get inside this guy's brain? And also, I would imagine you're like, I also got to like be true to my own creative sensibilities and I want to put my own stamp on this thing. Like where do those two things meet?

4:21Yeah, I think I've looked almost at this thing we're doing with Liquid Death almost from like an anthropological standpoint where the brand and the fandom and everything we're doing, it's more that it almost reveals itself over time than starting out with this like strict, rigid point of view of like our brand talks like this. We say these words, but we don't say these words. That's really how brands are traditionally built, right? It's built in a very clinical way where you sit down and you decide these are the rules that govern our brand. And all that really becomes is that sort of it deletes what you can do as a brand.

5:00And so the amazing thing was I was stepping into something that still from day one is we're building a ship as we're sailing it a bit. But that's the fun part of it because we can adjust to whatever opportunities we see in front of us. We can adjust and adapt. And so for me walking in where we don't have this brand book, we don't have any real codified sense of what it is. I think I kind of began to realize that that's actually the power of what we're doing, letting this thing really be organic. And to kind of what you said, I realized somewhat early on that if I could get, if he hears this, he'll be like, oh, that's what you're doing.

5:39If I could get inside Mike's head and understand his perspective on things, then I could start to understand what the brand was trying to do. And I think that's why liquid death feels so compelling to people is because, again, it's not this like sterile thing that was conceived as like a hole in the market that we're going to fill with this one very engineered brand, right? It's sort of this amalgamation of like stuff that Mike likes and stuff that I like and stuff that other people in the marketing team and our sales team. And it's just sort of this combination of all these things that we're into.

6:15and that's what the brand is built on. So that's why we always get, you know, brand is feeling authentic and it's like, oh yeah, because it's just, it's built from a bunch of people who like stuff and have specific senses of humor and want to do interesting things. And so that's what guides the brand is sort of all the people behind it and not this like PDF of all these rules that have been decided on somewhere else in a room somewhere. Which is like pretty antithetical to creativity. in the end, right? Creativity is like fundamentally about being in a sort of lawlessness, you know? Especially nowadays, especially the way you look at the way brands and businesses have to operate on social media, you have to have something that can feel living and organic, right?

7:02And so when I first started, I was working with Mike, we would be working on something and I would sit down and I'd like make a note to myself of like, oh, here's one of our rules or here's something we believe or whatever. And my idea was I was going to build this brand book for just for my own sense to kind of try to wrap my arms around what this thing was. And man, I, I worked on that thing for months and I kept writing stuff down. And every time I'd look at it, I'd be like, I hate this. Like every page I was like, as soon as you put something that interesting down on paper and try to put it in a quippy little headline, it loses all the power and thing that makes it interesting.

7:45So I just kept looking at this document and getting angry every time as I'm trying to build this brand book. And so finally, I don't know, like five months in or so, I was just like, screw it. I'm not, we're just not going to have it. We're just not going to have a brand book. And there was kind of this funny unlock for me that that was an okay thing to do because my kind of training had been that we have to have this guiding light. And then later on, that evolved into this realization that rather than being a brand, Liquid Death is kind of almost more of a character. And because we would write in these different tonalities that all came from the same place, but we would have different tones and different characters that we would write in, which is antithetical to the way you ever build a brand, right?

8:35we have two logos we use on stuff. Like you're not supposed to have a brand with two logos. Right, it's like totally against the rules. That doesn't make any sense. But it was because that, as you're talking about, like that kind of lawlessness was, it just, it made sense to us and it was more fun that way. So kind of in the same way, I realized that rather than trying to build this brand, we thought of it more like a character that just gets inserted in these different situations. Meaning like, hey, we want to talk about iced tea or like, hey, we're going to do a partnership with Elf Cosmetics or whatever the scene is, if we were writers on a show, we would just write for what that character would do in that scene.

9:13And so you're not trying to figure out like what marketing thing we could do. We're just trying to answer the question, what would Liquid Death do? And so that was like a big unlock for me that there's just a right answer. And I don't think that that's like not something that's talked about in marketing. It's very subjective and you can have opinions and you like this thing and somebody else likes this thing. But we've started to understand that there's like a right answer for what we should do or what liquid death would do. And so it just means we all can look at that and agree that that's the right answer.

9:52And it takes all the subjectivity and all this like personal inputs out of it. And that's what we're trying to find that thing. And so that's how we can function much more quickly and efficiently by just like answering the question, what would Liquid Death do? It's fascinating to hear you say this because it is, it's like, it's like the screenwriting process. Much more than it would be like a, the traditional like creative marketing process. It sounds like it like narrows the field for you. You're just like, oh yeah, well, what would this person do? Did you spend actual time sort of developing the idea of who this character is?

10:27or was it something that you all just sort of like inherently understand? Yeah, I think it's more that it revealed itself over time. Like I said, it's kind of, I honestly probably, I couldn't give you like a set of like beliefs or I probably couldn't succinctly do it. But to the same point, like describe your friend or yourself or describe another human being. Can you, and I don't want to get like super heady about it, But like, imagine you had to describe all of a person to somebody else. It's really hard because people are really complex and have a lot of different motivations and different parts of them.

11:05So I think that's in the same way, because this brand or character or whatever is built from a bunch of people, a bunch of us, it has all these weird quirks to it and these different sides that we can show when we want and when it makes sense. It's sort of more just like, you know that person or that friend, and you can guess how your friend would do something in a situation. Or if you're in a writer's room, if you know the character, you know how they would react in a situation or what they would do. Or sometimes they might surprise you and do something unexpected. That's the fun of watching a show is when a character shows you something that makes total sense, but you didn't see coming because it's kind of part of them.

11:44And so we'll do a lot of stuff like that, that like a traditional brand would never allow itself to do because, again, it's working within these rigid rules and guidelines. And ours is much more organic in that way. It's so fun to, yeah, to think about a brand as being a character. And also, I think so smart to think about it from the perspective that you were saying, like allowing also that character to be dimensional. Yeah. Right. And to not just be functioning in one capacity because that's not how human beings function. And also think about it this way. It's like if TV shows were inhabited by brands the way that we marketers generally write for brands, that shows would f***ing suck.

12:21No one would watch those shows because they would be completely one-dimensional and boring and you would know what they would do every time. But we're humans and we want to see interesting, flawed, weird people sometimes. And so I think it's just kind of showing that back to us a little bit. You were talking about it taking the subjectivity out of things. Yeah. But you've also very much built your brand on comedy, which is like one of, I think, the most subjective things on the planet. Do you disagree? I'm going to disagree there because I think comedy is the least subjective thing. Because comedy is based on two people looking at the same thing and agreeing that that's true.

13:01Like, I can't tell you a joke if we don't both agree that the subject matter and the conclusion that I'm coming to in that joke aren't true. That's why it floors me that more brands don't try to employ genuine humor because it's the fastest way to actually reach somebody and have a really powerful moment with somebody. I mean, laughter literally is an involuntary response to making a connection with somebody or something, right? And so I think like tastes obviously can be different and there's some subjectivity in comedy, of course. But I think like to get like the evolutionary origin of comedy is super objective in a way.

13:42Why don't you think more brands employ comedy? It's hard. It's scary. Scary. It's scary. And it necessitates a lot of putting yourself out there and trying things. And I think that's another part of the way that we work is we're just trying out stuff constantly. We're almost in the same way that a stand-up is getting up on stage and workshopping new material in front of an audience. We're just kind of doing that on our social feed constantly, right? A lot of brands will take work and then they'll pre-test it and then it goes into focus groups and it just kind of automatically gets watered down and edges around it off.

14:20and the way that we approach, we are scientific in some respects, but it happens after because the best testing you can do is try something, put it out in the world and see how people react. Trying something theoretically, theoretical humor doesn't work. But if you can try something in practice, try it, see how people react to it. And then we take all that stuff back. And now we learned a little bit of something for the next time we're going to go out and do something. And so we're just trying to do a lot of stuff quickly, as quickly and cheaply as possible to test things out and to kind of hedge our bets on what might work and what might not.

15:00But that's, again, not the way that a traditional marketing department or ad agency might work, right? They would work on these huge integrated campaigns for months at a time, dump millions of dollars into it, spend months developing it, and then you're like, here it is. Hope it works for the next four months for us. I mean, I've done that. My background is I was at ad agencies for years. And I mean, I remember shooting something and then getting into the edit bay and being like, oh no, this isn't good. And we sold them on this and this costs a lot of money and we have to live with this for, you know, the season or whatever it is.

15:36And so this is again, like the opposite of that thinking or let's rapidly try, let's almost prototype ideas live and then see how they work out. I think also as a human being, it's just like actually so much more satisfying to be in a space of action versus inaction and just like constant planning. It's fun for us. That's why it's really fun to work on this is because it's way more satisfying for the people behind it. And I think we're genuinely having fun. And I think that's the best compliment I get from when I talk with people is when someone goes, man, you guys really look like you're having fun.

16:16I'm like, yes, it's working. Because if you feel like the people behind it are having a good time, you will too. So I always get really stoked when I hear people say that about it. What are your metrics for success when you put a piece of marketing out there? Is it wide the viewership is? Is it the shares? Is it sort of like the way you're sort of feeling it travel around the zeitgeist? Like what's giving you the indicators? And then what are you doing with that information? Are you parlaying that into like larger ads? We can measure things differently. So like when you talk about organic social, which is what we built a lot, most of our business on, frankly, we have kind of a proprietary formula where we look at the different metrics from a post and then, you know, kind of analyze and rank how those perform against something else.

17:05And so then we can obviously take that data back and decide like, hey, we learned that, you know, if we partner with this type of brand or this celebrity, like, hey, there feels like there's even more juice here, you know. So that's one way, you know, you get higher shares are way more valuable than a like, you know, comment. So you can kind of begin to rank some of these things and then really figure out how well something performs. And we can tell usually within the first couple minutes It's that when we post something, how well it's going to perform. Liquid Death has this like almost mythical reputation for just like flinging out hit after hit.

17:45Yeah. Have you had some things that haven't really performed? Yeah. You know, not many. But yeah, you know, here and there, there'll be stuff that don't go as well as we wanted them to. But again, because the whole point of the way we work, we talk about like small bets. So again, we can afford to have a failure every once in a while because we didn't spend that much time or money on this thing. And likewise, when we have a huge hit, we also didn't spend much time or money on it, right? So as long as we keep stacking the hits and then we have a couple of failures, like, man, you're going to – same thing.

18:23Like, you're a comedian. You're not going to have all your jokes land. And then you just learn how to phrase that thing differently next time, how to compose it differently. And suddenly you unlock a new way to work. So we're fine with the little flops here and there. Yeah. Good learning experiences. Absolutely. Yeah. Your Super Bowl ad, on the other hand, was a sizably larger bet. Sure. Did the process feel different? Did the stakes feel different? Or did you sort of approach it in the same fashion? It's funny, when we were on set, I remember just being like, God, I hate knowing that this is a Super Bowl ad.

18:58But at the same time, I think it is obviously a big bet for us. But there was a lot of strategy that went in from, you know, looking from where we're at, out of business, what our goals were. It made a lot of sense to jump in and do that spot. But then also, not to denigrate anybody else's work, but I think this people are tuning into the Superbowl to be entertained by the ads, right? A lot of people are looking for that. And so we've gotten this place with Superbowl ads where they're so over the top trying to entertain you with these like flashy, shiny things that for us, that's of course like an opportunity to do the opposite of that, which was like, let's write a, make a dumb looking beer commercial with a jingle with no celebrities that feels like it's something totally else and kind of punk people that don't know what liquid death even is.

19:50And so I think that's like a more meta level of entertainment. Cause if you know who we were at that point, it's pretty funny. You're like, Oh, it's liquid death. They're making it look like a beer commercial. And some people will think that it's not. And then if you don't know who we are, you're like, what is this? How are they showing all these people drinking these cans on the Super And then at the end, you learn. And anecdotally, I heard so many stories about people who were like, oh, I was in my living room and I was with my aunt and she had no idea what it was. And then I turned to her and then we talked about liquid death for 10 minutes.

20:29right and so that's part of the fun is where the brand is always kind of like revealing itself in these interesting ways that are unexpected that make your interaction with it much deeper when you learn that it's just water or iced tea in a can or whatever you have a much deeper kind of relationship at that point because you've had this flip in perception so you know again so big bet but we wanted to make something that really made sense in that context. And it was, according to EDO, it was the number three most effective ad in the game. So maybe it didn't make like the ad meter, but that's not what we're chasing.

21:11From a personal perspective, how does that feel for you? Do those moments, do they hit? Do you savor them? Like, is that what matters, you know? I mean, I guess on a personal level, having spent so much time in advertising and marketing, I've seen so many things done wrong or done the way that it's sort of assumed that it's supposed to be done that I think we personally take real joy in proving that there's other ways to think about this stuff and kind of inventing, again, new ways to think about brand and media and all this stuff. Like I always say, I think liquid death, the premise is there's always a better way to do something.

21:54I think like if you go back to our origin story of, hey, what if junk food didn't have all the best, most fun marketing? What if healthy food didn't have to suck in the way it's branded? What if instead of putting water in plastic bottles, it was put in infinitely recyclable aluminum cans? Like these are just sort of some little observations on like, hey, there might be a better way to do this, but we haven't bothered to pull our heads out of the sand and think about it for a second. And so I think that's the fun of what we're doing with Liquid Death is looking at every decision along the way from brand to business to product development and saying like, hey, what if there was another way that someone hasn't thought of yet?

22:35So that's what I find gratifying. I mean, I'm like, I'm a creative, creative, I hate that term, but I'm, that's in my title. But like the whole businesses run in a very creative way where every decision can be made in a more interesting way that maybe someone hasn't decided to think of yet. Yeah. And it sounds like it's sort of just on a really simplistic level, like it sort of just necessitates questioning a lot of things that we just take at face value, you know? Why is all the water in plastic? You know, it's just these things that we just were so used to having as like the sort of mainstream accepted culture that we don't stop to ask the question so often.

23:15It was crazy. When I started, we would get on calls and people, we would have to, because we were so small and no one knew what liquid death was. And so I'd be like, hey, we're from liquid death. And, you know, we put water in cans and we'd have to explain what it is. And we would have people like straight up to our faces be like, no one's going to drink water out of a can because we've been trained for literally decades that you only drink water out of plastic bottles. And I could go into that whole thing. It's all because water had been marketed based on purity and no one had decided what if it wasn't marketed on purity.

23:49And in order to be pure, you have to see it. And there's, I mean, you could go way back and say there's some sort of like evolutionary thing of like drinking scummy pond water that you, you know, if you can't see, you don't know that it's pure. But meanwhile, you go into a convenience store and grab whatever energy drink off of the shelf, which has God knows what chemicals in it and is in an opaque can. And you don't question that. But we get on these calls and people are like, water out of cans. That's not the way God intended to do it or whatever. Then a very funny thing happened where, I don't know, a year, year and a half in after we'd had some of these bigger successes and had started to make a name and did something with Martha Stewart or whatever, we'd get on calls with people and they'd go, God, water in a can.

24:34It's so obvious. I can't believe I didn't think of that. And it just flipped from like, this is the dumbest idea to this is the most obvious idea that no one had thought of yet, right? And I think everything can be stupid until one day it doesn't become stupid. Someone has seen something that no one else saw. And for a long time, and you can talk to any founder about this, it's like people are going to say your idea is stupid. And if you know that you have something magic in your hand, one day that's going to flip. I mean, I remember when iPad came out, when Apple announced the iPad and everyone was like, everyone thought it was the dumbest product and you didn't know what to do.

25:11And now it's literally sitting on like every coffee shop counter, right? It's ingrained in all of our lives in an amazing way. And so ideas sometimes like that just take a little time to catch on. Yeah, it's incredible. And I can also see why it can be a tough proposition in moments, right? Because it's like you have so much belief in this thing. but if people are telling you it's it's crazy you hope you hope that you travel around the bend yeah to that flipped perception where's where everybody gets it yeah but there's always the there's always the chance that but that doesn't happen but it's fun I mean I think that's what makes the brand fun is it like it feels like we have a little chip on our shoulder in a way and And that like you're kind of rooting for us because we are doing something different.