This video explores the marketing phenomenon behind Liquid Death, a beverage startup that achieved extraordinary growth and brand recognition through its unconventional, comedy-centered campaigns. By approaching marketing as entertainment rather than traditional advertising, Liquid Death has managed to rapidly disrupt a crowded market dominated by established multinational brands. The company’s unique branding—leveraging humor, parody, and headline-grabbing stunts—has fostered both viral success and an enthusiastic fan base, helping it stand out in the saturated bottled water market.

Liquid Death’s strategy is built upon a blend of art and science, utilizing in-house creative talent, real-time audience feedback from millions of social media fans, and nimble production to constantly test and refine their content. Instead of focusing solely on metrics or industry norms, they prioritize ideas that elicit genuine laughter and engagement. Their agile, small team structure encourages innovation and enables them to rapidly execute bold marketing initiatives, including viral promotions like giving away a fighter jet. In doing so, the company uses its cultural insight, proprietary data systems, and collaborative, ownership-driven environment to ensure both creativity and measurable business impact.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. proprietary [prəˈpraɪəˌtɛri] - (adjective) - Owned by a specific company or individual and not shared with others; exclusive. - Synonyms: (exclusive, patented, private, restricted)

We have our own proprietary weighting system, and occasionally we'll put things out that get a one to one, like to share ratio.

2. valuation [ˌvæljuˈeɪʃən] - (noun) - An estimation of the worth or value of something, especially a business or asset. - Synonyms: (appraisal, assessment, estimation, evaluation)

Yet in its first three years, Liquiteth grew to a valuation of $700 million.

3. divergent [daɪˈvɜːrdʒənt] - (adjective) - Tending to be different or develop in different directions. - Synonyms: (different, disparate, opposing, various)

To the traditional advertiser, their work is in many ways the exact opposite of what would be deemed as brand safe. (Connected as divergent approaches to marketing.)

4. quantify [ˈkwɑːntəˌfaɪ] - (verb) - To express or measure the quantity of something. - Synonyms: (measure, calculate, enumerate, assess)

In recent years, marketing has leaned heavily on a more analytical approach, obsessing over large amounts of data that attempt to quantify marketing's effectiveness.

5. monopolize [məˈnɑːpəˌlaɪz] - (verb) - To have or take complete control of something, to dominate exclusively. - Synonyms: (dominate, control, own, command)

You could monopolize it, you could own it, you could be there in the commercial break.

6. stunt [stʌnt] - (noun) - An unusual or difficult act, often done to attract attention; in marketing, a bold or attention-grabbing activity. - Synonyms: (feat, trick, exploit, publicity stunt)

You have done a number of headline grabbing stunts and when I say stunts, I don't mean them in a derogatory way at all.

7. ecosystem [ˈiːkoʊˌsɪstəm] - (noun) - A complex network or interconnected system, especially in a cultural or business context. - Synonyms: (network, system, environment, community)

You have actually created literally not just a product or a new category, but an entire cultural ecosystem.

8. incubate [ˈɪŋkjəˌbeɪt] - (verb) - To nurture and develop an idea, process, or organization before it is fully formed or launched. - Synonyms: (nurture, cultivate, foster, develop)

Maybe innovation trails over time or that Creativity isn't incubated the way that it can be.

9. vetting [ˈvɛtɪŋ] - noun (from verb 'vet') - The process of carefully examining or evaluating something or someone before making a decision. - Synonyms: (screening, evaluating, checking, scrutinizing)

We do have a vetting process. It's kind of like Saturday Night Live in its stage.

10. intimately [ˈɪntəmətli] - (adverb) - In a close and personal way, with detailed knowledge. - Synonyms: (closely, personally, deeply, thoroughly)

It's, you know, people that understand the brand quite intimately.

11. challenger brand [ˈʧælɪnʤər brænd] - (noun phrase) - A company or brand that is not a market leader and seeks to disrupt the industry or challenge established competitors through innovative tactics. - Synonyms: (disruptive brand, upstart, disruptor, contender)

Not all brands can do the things a challenger brand like Liquid Death can.

12. barometer [bəˈrɑːmɪtər] - (noun) - A standard or indicator to measure change or trends, especially in social or cultural contexts. - Synonyms: (indicator, gauge, measure, benchmark)

We have an amazing team that understands that barometer and will go to where energy is.

How Liquid Death Turned Advertising Around - Quantum Marketing

All marketing is a bit of art and science, right? You know, you can run the numbers and you can focus group and you can, you know, try to beat the algorithm that way. But the art of it in our case is very simple. Did it make us laugh? They're taking my blood and we're gonna use it for skateboard graphics. Liquid death, brother. You're done. You're done, bro. Yeah, dude. Sweet. Don't snort that stuff. We weren't planning on snorting it. Don't try freebasing it. Free what? Liquid Death is many things, but its core business is simply selling water. That's a category already crowded with large, well established multinational brands, making it a significant challenge to carve out a new seat at the table. Yet in its first three years, Liquiteth grew to a valuation of $700 million. Just two years, that's doubled to $1.4 billion. This surge of success came from breaking the norms of traditional marketing. People don't like marketing. It's why we don't make it. We make entertainment, we make comedy. We treat our marketing like a product and we want it to be great. We're not competing with other brands in terms of our content. We're competing with the Internet.

I am Raja Rajaman, Chief marketing and communications officer of mastercard and a best selling author writing about our industry's future. Marketing as we practice today was founded on theories and principles from more than six decades ago, long before the advent of the Internet, social media, or artificial intelligence. I have had a front row seat as new technologies, cultural shifts and an explosion of data have disrupted the ways of traditional marketing to connect with the savvy consumers tomorrow. Marketing as we know it must take a quantum leap forward. This is quantum marketing.

Liquid Death's headquarters is everything you might expect from the ironically named startup. There is a giant skeleton, a conference room themed around the film Caddyshack, a coffin, and even a half pipe. But I'm not here to shred. I'm here to talk to Dan Murphy, Liquid Death's senior vice president of market. I ended my skateboarding career at age 6 trying to skateboard on a Tonka truck. If you remember those big old yellow kids, Tonka trucks and you know, broke my arm. So yeah, it sounds like an excuse. Don't believe it. I know. Well, maybe I will. We'll see. Good, good, good, good. So tell me, let's get with the origin. What drew you to this company? Liquid Death is a thing that kind of hadn't been done before. It's rare that the sheep dons wolves demon infused liquid death. If you drink it, will you become possessed? We operate in three categories right now. Premium mountain water, sparkling flavored. It's kind of like a healthy soda replacement and iced tea. One of our missions is death to plastic. Are those your bottles? Yeah. Well, and we're also here to kind of have a bit of fun. Comedy is our North Star. We want to be the most fun thing you see in your feed. So all those things come together. Why wouldn't I want to be a part of this? I was fortunate to be an early investor before I even came onto the company. And I noticed every single water brand looked the same. It was about purity. It was all in plastic and it was in that, you know, the famous marketing 2x2 4x4 matrix and it's all kind of up there. And there wasn't any party water, there wasn't anything that had the aesthetic, that had the look. And in the early days I thought, this is either going to make it or not. And if it makes it, it's going to be huge.

You have done a number of headline grabbing stunts and when I say stunts, I don't mean them in a derogatory way at all. These are really headline grabbing initiatives or things or activities and everything from hiring a witch to fix a Super bowl match, which is phenomenal, to using a popular adult film star to deliver your sustainability message. When you talk to many of the classical or traditional marketers, firstly, many of them would cringe at the thought of having got to do something like this. One bold decision after another bold decision. You would say this is radical marketing. What was it like to take these kind of decisions consistently? Well, look, we're a startup and the biggest risk we have is being ignored or conversely, flaming up cash without an effect, without moving the needle. Right. So being bold is a way to do that. Our North Star, like I mentioned, is comedy. We want to be the funniest thing in your feed that day. We want to be the most shareable thing. We want to put stuff out in the world that press has to write about that you have to talk to your friends about it. That's our free media. That's what we've been great at so far. So in a way it was the only discussion decision for a startup like us to do it.

Liquidith has been advertising since before they even had a product. Their first ad went viral with only a bottle mockup, using a digital first content strategy on platforms like TikTok to reach a new audience. I just Got pulled over for drinking this beer while driving. I found out it was water. To the traditional advertiser, their work is in many ways the exact opposite of what would be deemed as brand safe. From making a burping compilation to promote their entry into carbonized water to an animated mascot that inflicts graphic violence you won't see on this channel, it's an example of what is possible when marketers embrace the creative side of their brains.

In recent years, marketing has leaned heavily on a more analytical approach, obsessing over large amounts of data that attempt to quantify marketing's effectiveness. But Liquid Death's approach is much more balanced than it may seem. It is the science of Liquid Death's creativity that sets them apart. And this starts with knowing where their audience is. The chart crossed quite a long time ago when it came to daily consumption of digital media versus traditional media. I believe it was 2017. Since then, it has grown more than I think many people realize. Right. So we're finding you through your phone. TV might be on in the background, but you're on your phone. Especially a lot of Gen Z, huge audience for us, they're on their phone. So you are not able to get the mind share you used to. You could monopolize it, you could own it, you could be there in the commercial break. They had to suffer through it. Now you're a flick away. 200 milliseconds, you're gone. Skip in five, you're gone. So for us to win, we have to realize, okay, what are the things that are the real competitors? The crazy cat videos, the explosions, who knows what's in your feed? It's all individualized, personalized. We have to be that good or better. And again, we're not trying to do everything. We're trying to do comedy. That's why we have real professional funny people that work for us. People that have written adult swim shows, TV comedies, the Onion Riders. We have a distributed network of standup comedians that we will send little briefs to. They help us with names, they punch up a script here or there. We treat our marketing like a product and we want it to be great.

Classical marketing would tell you when you have a concept, you have a focus group discussion or you have a concept testing, quantitative, qualiquant, there are all kinds of things. But tell me about how you have approached. When you come up with a concept, you don't simply say, we are able to laugh and therefore we do it. There is a little bit more behind that, both the science and the art part of it. Our focus group, again, is our 10 million fans on social media. So we do kind of focus group things. We push things out on social. We see how people react to it. We have our own proprietary weighting system, and occasionally we'll put things out that get a one to one, like to share ratio. So that gives us a really good data point. It's like, okay, there was something funny in there that people loved so much. They're spreading it around the Internet. It's free, it's easy to do, and we generate a ton of content. We're all in house. We don't use external agencies from concept through to production. We have a great production company housed in these walls called Death Machine, and they can crank out content super fast for us. And there's a volume play. But again, I think as much as the metrics will tell a story, feeling it and laughing says a lot too.

So, in fact, when you say that your team is there, which is also doing it in house, not just on the marketing strategy itself, but also in terms of creating your campaigns, et cetera, how big is your team, if I may ask you? It's a pretty small team, believe it or not. I think the core creative group could potentially fit in an SUV legally. That's how small it is. And so it's an advantage. It's a hive mind. It's, you know, people that understand the brand quite intimately. We operate like a writer's room, you know, Again, some of the models that are out there are worth repeating. And I'll say this entertainment first model is not unique. Red Bull and Monster did it before us, except their Northstar. Their lane was action sports. For us, we've just taken that same notion, creating content that people would pay for, but giving it away for free, putting it out there on social feeds. We've done that with comedy. The Casket Cooler from Liquid Death. In Yeti, one of Liquid Death's main forms of content is the short comedy sketch video. They often parody common advertising tropes and occasionally poke fun at the ad industry itself. But one thing I noticed is that the productions are not expensive. My hypothesis is the marketing budgets are not gigantic now. Far from it. In fact, I think we're more or less best in class when it comes to marketing, percentage of net revenue. I think that actually when you have limitations, it forces creativity. It absolutely does. And so if the idea is strong enough, it need not cost a lot of money. I mean, we've done parody spots in House for 25 or $30,000. Again, we benefit from an in house crew. We own some cameras. We can go out there and do it. And. And some of these have gotten 5, 6, 7 million views organically. That's a great cost per view when you do the math. On an investment of $30,000, we'll take it all day long. Yeah. And so if the idea is there, it works.

Is there any science behind how you identify the areas in which you'll create extraordinary comedy? Sure. I mean, we have all manner of different partners that we concept around. Some are celebrities. Many of those celebrities are investors in Liquid Death. That was an kind of gating factor to bring people on as brand ambassadors. You know, we work with other brands to do fun stuff. We did something wild with Elf cosmetics. Whoa. Corpse ain't cool. We look for creative tension. Liquid Death plus heavy metal band expected. Liquid Death plus cosmetics company. Completely unexpected. There's creative tension that produces awesome ideas and comedy out of that. We do have a vetting process. It's kind of like Saturday Night Live in its stage. You can step into our world and have a little bit more license, maybe more brand license than you normally would to do something more humorous, a little different. You know, we choose those folks very strategically. Again, we're looking at always exposing Liquid Death to new audiences, different types of people. Data certainly informs that. And we also understand what's happening in culture. Keebo, Ocean's beautiful. We have an amazing team that understands that barometer and will go to where energy is.

Who is your audience? Because for something like water, everybody is a consumer or a potential consumer. Who are you trying to appeal to? Anybody who's thirsty and has a sense of humor. But look, we look like a beer. And we market like the fun stuff. I mean, our founder, Mike, that was one of his early insights. How come it's only junk food and energy and booze that gets to do the fun? Interesting marketing. What we have found along the way is, yeah, we're great for party occasions. You can hold us and fit in at nightlife, bar, festivals. Live Nation is a great strategic partner of ours. We're the official water of all their venues and festivals. And you fit in holding it because we market in this way, kids think we're dangerous. So when has a kid ever begged mom or dad for water? Well, now they do. We have folks that love our environmental message. It's the Prius driving farmer's market goers that are happy. They have an option now that's infinitely recyclable. We have people that don't drink for whatever reason. Again, that can fit in. And then we just have everyone who in a way, appreciates our marketing and a bit of what we stand for, which is really fascinating how you have actually created literally not just a product or a new category, but an entire cultural ecosystem.

I would say cultural ecosystem because I always used to look, throughout my growing up years at Harley Davidson as one of those culturally iconic brands, it was so powerful, so impactful, that people would even tattoo the brand on their bodies. Do people now tattoo Liquid Death on their bodies? I feel like you know the answer to this. Yeah, I mean, we're well over 300 at this point, and I would say we exceed Harley Davidson in the number of face tattoos. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, you should look on our social, especially Instagram, there's somebody who has it all over the top of their head and neck and throat. I mean, it's pretty wild. We have some very passionate fans. When you can have your fans do the work for you, spread the message, we can put something out on social media for free. Our 10 million plus fans will spread it. When we can do something, that press has to write about it. They hear that we're giving away a fighter jet, they have to write about that. This summer, Liquid Death is giving away an actual jet. The more Liquid Death you buy, the more chances you have to own an actual. What the.

For its 2024 summer promotion, Liquid Death set out to do what another beverage brand famously did. Not give away a jet for free. Netflix had one of their biggest documentaries. I believe it was Pepsi Where's My Jet? No fine print came up. I don't care what anybody else says. That is a legit offer that went through that saga of the 90s where they tried to give away a Harrier jet. It didn't end up happening. And away we went. And so, yeah, this right here, I remember going back to it, and it was just before our holiday break where CEO and founder Mike saw that documentary and said, you know what? We should do it. Let's actually give away a Harrier. Let's see if we can do it. So I spent the better part of that break trying to source a Harrier. And it turns out a lot of them live in the uk. It turns out because the thing was a military aircraft, you needed Department of Defense clearance to import the thing. That takes quite a while. A lot of red tape, as one could imagine. It also has to sit on a boat since we weren't able to find a local Harrier. And by the time all of that was going to happen, it Was six to nine months away. And Mike felt correctly, the moment would have passed by then. You know, we believe that a lot of great ideas have a short shelf life. And if you can't do it, it goes. But if it sticks around, maybe there's a reason, maybe there is still energy there and it's worth doing. And so just this year, that slack came from Mike, you know, at the beginning of the year saying, wait a second, maybe we should try that jet thing again. So that kind of kicked off what was a pretty wild and furious sprint to get this live. We had to find a jet. We needed to have the thing painted and recertified, I believe by the faa. Anytime you modify a plane so. So that we could photograph it, so that we could create point of sale that takes a while to print, that takes a while to ship, that then rolls out into our 125,000 plus stores, coast to coast retailers that we're in. And then of course, because the documentary centered around a lawsuit and centered around a contest that kind of wasn't. Everything needed to be buttoned up with this. We needed to post bonds for this crazy prize in most of the 50 states. We found one that was outside of Chicago, in fact in Rockford. Hangered out there. So that was easy place to shoot. We found somebody to get this thing going and we needed that thing painted and shot by April 5th. Again, we're kind of just entering these contracts and figuring this out in March to roll out just but a month later. So from concept to execution, let's say February, and then we were live May 20th. So just under 90 days. Yeah, amazing. So we were up against it. And I'm telling you, if everybody at this company didn't believe there's always a way to do it, it wouldn't have gotten done certainly in that period of time. But we did. And we had a funny spot that went out, went over the Internet. It's sitting at probably 10 million or more views right now. And it was a ripple coast to coast through all these different local markets of people talking about the crazy thing that this crazy beverage brand is doing. And that chart at the very top shows just even in the first couple months or weeks, the early days, how as soon as we dropped it, we saw site traffic nearly double and sustained. Significant lift. Yeah, yeah. And it continued at that level. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think there are so many elements, not just marketing elements, but you got legal elements and clearances and insurances. Everything has to be done without missing a beat across all the 50 states, so to speak, in the United States. It's just incredible how beautifully it's all sort of orchestrated. And having accomplished it in 90 days from concept to in market, that's extraordinary. Sometimes when you jump out of the plane and know you have to stitch the parachute on the way down, it's a great motivator to succeed, but really it's truly the team. It's everybody here at Liquid Death. We're inspired by the mission. And when you get to do things that are this fun, that have never been done before, you find a way to do it. I wish I could give away a jet every year. Is this place even open?

Not all brands can do the things a challenger brand like Liquid Death can. However, all marketers are facing struggles with hiring and maintaining top tier talent. The world is becoming increasingly complex. This is being driven by technological innovations like AI and an abundance of data, as well as cultural shifts in how and where we receive information. But how companies choose to leverage all of these changes ultimately comes down to people. You really need fantastic talent. In your case, you said you've got a small team that can fit into an SUV legally, some of the core creatives of the core team. Obviously there's many other people in marketing and in the company, but the sense I get is that your team is not a gigantic multinational team, but it's probably distributed, but still relatively a small team, which means that dependence on each one of these individuals is so much more higher and the quality you need from each and every one of them has to be right at the top. So with all these changes happening around us, how do you enable your team to make sure that they remain at the cutting edge? I think what's unique about Liquid Death is that because creativity is one of our products, those folks are not the same minds necessarily than the people in the finance department. I think a lot of organizations have this kind of gravity over time to the spreadsheet, and it puts everybody into expenses and timesheets and checking tickets to do your work. And that's not the way the artistic mind works. We have created an organization that can take those best in class minds and make them at home, give them the models that have worked in this world again, the writer's room, the concierge service, around timing and schedules and to dos and things like that. So I think a lot of organizations when they're small, start out with those people. But as the gravity pulls them into this spreadsheet world, they self select out and they go. And maybe innovation trails over time or that Creativity isn't incubated the way that it can be. It's part of our superpower of being creatively led from the top. Our CEO Mike as well. And all these people are fully vested in the company in terms of. Are they all also equity holders in the company? That's absolutely right. Yeah. Every Liquid Death employee you know also has options and shares in the company. That makes such a huge difference. Right. You are a part of the ownership of the company as opposed to just an employee of the company.

So you are already today in different types of water, you're in iced tea drink mixes and you're also into merchandise. Do you also have plans? If it is confidential, you don't have to tell. But do you also plan on getting into energy drinks or alcohol as a brand extension? I don't think alcohol, I don't think energy in any unhealthy way would be a part of our future. Because again, when liquid death can actually kill you, it's no longer funny. If a kid can drink five of these things and be an trouble, it's not good.

As you look out into the future, what is your vision, long term vision for this brand called Liquid Death. There are massive global trends happening with or without liquid death. There is more health consciousness than ever before. There is consciousness around alcohol consumption. We're not against it at all. We in fact have cocktail recipes with our drinks. But Gen Z looks at alcohol the way my generation looked at some cigarettes. Like maybe not for us. There is more consciousness globally around the environment and sustainability. Liquid death is a huge sale and we catch all of this momentum. Liquid death is also a thing that's just trying to make you laugh. You put all this together, there's a lot of energy and honestly, I don't know where it can't go. Sam.

MARKETING, INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, VIRAL CAMPAIGNS, BRAND STRATEGY, LIQUID DEATH, BLOOMBERG ORIGINALS