#168: Liquid Death

We assassinate assumptions of what bottled water should be by spotlighting a canned brand disrupting the industry with some killer marketing efforts.

Get show notes for this episode and check out past episodes of the Speaking Human podcast by visiting speakinghuman.com.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Speaking Human Today. On Speaking Human, we assassinate assumptions of what bottled water
should be by spotlighting a canned branddisrupting the industry with some killer marketing efforts.

(00:20):
Speaking Human. Welcome to Speaking Human, where we simplify the world of
marketing for humans. I'm Shad Conleyand with me as my co host,
Patrick Jebber So, Patrick, I'mgonna paint a little picture for you to

(00:42):
start off the show today. Allright, all right, You're on the
road, You've been driving for awhile. You feel your mouth, you're
parched so dry in there. Youstop at a gas station to get some
water. You walk in and seea cooler filled from Florida ceiling with bottled
water brands Fiji, Aquafina, SmartWater, Evian, Dasani, Vitamin Water,

(01:07):
Poland Spring Dear Park Nestley, Howdo you choose? Which one do
you pick? How do you know? You paint a picture much like Bob
Ross. Let me tell you,yeah, happy little trees, happy little
bottled waters. That's a great question, actually, and one that I don't
think a lot of people consider veryoften. To me, just even thinking

(01:30):
about that picture that you just painted, it's very foundational as a branding question,
what do I think of that water? There are a lot of judgments
and prejudices that we all have regardingwater brands, just like how some people
like coke and some people like PEPSIyou go into it, you already have
the prejudice, right, You alreadyknow how you feel about something. You

(01:53):
don't even necessarily know that you're doingit. Most of the time, you
feel a certain way when you seethose are bottle labels, and a lot
of this is all built on themarketing, the way they make you feel
about that brand. I think mostpeople would walk up to that cooler and
they have to know what they're goingto get. I can't imagine what the
experience would be like for the personwho has no context walking into it,

(02:16):
Right, Like if you were withsomebody and you said, hey, go
give me a bottle of water,and that person had never seen a bottle
of water before. So they walkup to that cooler with no context for
bottled water at all, and allthey see is this endless array of bottles

(02:37):
that look different in some way butmostly pretty much the same. How they
would make that choice, other thanjust blindly grabbing one because it's not even
like going to the pop cooler whereyou're like, oh, okay, these
are different colors and different you knowthings going on here. Yeah, you
look at the water, You're like, these are all water. They all

(02:59):
mostly have kind of similar labels.You know, they're mostly in like clear
containers. There's some size of variationhere, So maybe I'm picking one that's
bigger if I feel like I'm thirstier. Yeah, it's true. Packaging is
everything. No, we talked inthe past about milk jugs. You gave
somebody a green milk jug and awhite milk jug. What are they going

(03:20):
to pick? They're gonna pick thewhite one. It's that color and how
you perceive it. Yeah, whichis how we end up with, you
know, a thousand water bottle brandsthat look exactly same, very little differentiation
or distinction. You know, there'ssome they do as much as they can,
but they also don't want it tolose that water deal, right,

(03:42):
or they're afraid of doing that.They're afraid of going against that and having
people be like that doesn't seem likewater. Yeah, for the record,
smart water my go too. Ifor some reason, you know, buy
a little bit into the electrolyte bologna. I'm like, oh, I might
as well get the little something extrain there. You and my wife the
same, she always gets the smartwater. Smart. You wouldn't understand you're

(04:03):
not, you know, one ofthe smart people. I would choose aquafina
because I like the taste of that. It's a distilled water. The spring
waters, man, I just can't. I can't get over it for some
reason, something about spring water.You like, walk up to a natural
spring and you just start throwing upa gross I'm like, what do they
put in this water? Nothing,It's from the earth. Get it away

(04:28):
from me. That brings up anotherquestion. So if we took you know,
our time machine and brought back yourgreat grandfather, maybe he's riding in
the car with you, showed hima bottle of water, told him we
just bought this for two ninety nine, what do you think he would say?
Be like, why don't you justdrink it out of the tap or
the spring? Just drink it outof the hose like I did. You're

(04:54):
buying this are you're buying this run? They're paying money for water for water,
water that you can literally capture offthe roof of your house when it
rains, you could drink that.You're paying money for it. They told
you you need to buy this,So I guess we should get to the
topic today. What we're actually talkingabout a bottled water brand. It's doing

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things a little differently, not actuallyeven bottled, so that's one of the
ways it's doing things different. Itcomes in a can, can you believe
that, madness, an aluminum can, a recyclable aluminum can. This brand
is building up some buzz though,and some sales in the process by taking
a totally different approach to both packaging, branding and marketing in the bottled water

(05:42):
space. So we want to kindof shine a spotlight on and talk about
some of their best marketing efforts they'vecome out with to date. And that
brand, which we haven't said thename of, but you have clicked on
this so you obviously know it's inthe name. It's in the name,
guys, so we don't really haveto say it, but I will anyway.
Liquid Death. Liquid Death. LiquidDeath a little different than Fiji or

(06:09):
Aquafina. Yeah, very very different. It's created a lot of controversy in
the wake of its naming of itsmarketing, and that's one of the reasons
why we talked about today. Imean, we're not covering this new brand.
I mean it's been around now fora few years. So we just
decided that it is a brand thatwarrants discussion because of the way that they're

(06:30):
doing their marketing. It is veryagainst the grain of what typical water brands
are doing in the bottle water industry. It's definitely making some waves. And
I used waves because I see whatI saw what you did there. Yeah,
Every once in a while on theshow, we liked to spotlight some
brands that you know, are justpopping up on our radar, and this
is one of those that repeatedly.You know, we've been kind of sharing

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or talking about things they've been doingmarketing wise, you know, commercials that
have been coming out online, effortsthat have kind of gone viral, and
so we just want to kind ofshare some of that today and talk about
the things that they're doing. We'llstart giving you a little background on Liquid
Death. So this brand dates backto twenty eighteen, founded by former Netflix

(07:16):
director Mike Csario, So that's interesting, has kind of ties to Netflix in
some way. What they do.They make water in a tall Boy,
can they also have their roots goingback to a little bit of punk rock.
Mike Sasario said that during the twothousand and eight Warp tour, he

(07:38):
noticed that energy drink companies were heavilysponsoring rock bands, and when he spoke
to the bands, he learned thatthey actually preferred to drink water while performing.
So some of them because they weresponsored by these energy drinks. We're
taking the cans, pouring water inthe energy drink cans. So that's kind
of the light bulb moment where he'slike, what if I just take the

(08:01):
energy drink style, you know,marketing messaging, you know, kind of
whole brand philosophy, mix that withkind of the bottled water business, and
that's essentially what Liquid Death is doing. This is novel because nobody else is
really doing anything. As we've discussedwithin the bottomed water space, there's kind
of a tried and true formula.People are doing like subtle variations on that,

(08:24):
but for the most part, nobody'sdoing anything majorly different. Like this,
the brand, the packaging, Imean, it's in this tall boy,
can you know you have to sortof preface that this thing does look
like an energy drink as sort ofalso some of the confusion I think some
people have right when they see it, they think it is an energy drink

(08:46):
or they think it's got out alcoholin it. Yeah, it's true.
It's made the brand very unique inthe space, but it's also been a
hurdle they've had to overcome because ifI saw this, even if it's sitting
next to Aquafina, I would belike, somebody put that at the wrong
spot. That is not water inthere. You know, even some of
the reviews you'll see online and stufflike that. People, I think there's

(09:09):
been a lot of confusion that thebrand has had to deal with over the
years as they've kind of had touse their marketing and their branding, their
messaging to make people know this isactually water and that's what they've done,
and they've done in a pretty funnyand unique way I think. Yo.
Yeah, speaking of that, youknow, they shot their very first commercial

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for fifteen hundred bucks, spent threethousand dollars on paid ads, and then
within three months of that they hadmore Facebook followers than Aquafina. You know,
my water bottle of choice if I'mwalking into that gas station or whatever,
and the ad had more than threemillion views, So they're doing some
really crazy things that are getting attention. They do not do anything status quo.

(09:52):
I haven't seen one marketing effort thatyou go that's not ruffling some feathers.
Everything that you see from them,you go, somebody's going to be
upset about this. That's what Ifeel like most of the time. Yeah,
it's kind of that punk ethos.They incorporate a little bit prime example
of that twenty twenty release an albumon Spotify called Greatest Hates, made up

(10:18):
of haters, comments and product reviewsthey received online. The heavy metal album
included songs like fire your marketing guyand you know, as we just talked
about, I thought this was alcohol, you know, actual comments people gave
them online. Oh yeah, that'sgood stuff. And they definitely have fun,
and they definitely play with this ideaof doing things differently. But they're

(10:43):
very, very serious about and thisis something you find in most of their
marketing efforts. The idea of reducingplastic killing plastic, as they probably like
to say more often, because youknow, it's liquid death. They want
to kill it. The idea behindthe aluminum can, it's recyclable, it's
way better for the planet, thatkind of thing. And so almost every

(11:05):
single marketing effort they talk about thisin some way, shape or form.
Yeah, that's a big deal.That's key part of their messaging. And
you think since we were kids,how bottled water has just become everywhere?
Right, everywhere you go there's bottledwater. You go, you have a
work event, there's bottled water.You go to a picnic, there's bottled
water. It's really just it's everywhere. And you think, what happens to

(11:26):
all these bottles? They say,they're not really getting recycled like they should
be. CNN reports the bottled waterindustry generated roughly six hundred billion plastic bottles
and containers in twenty twenty one,which resulted in around twenty five million tons
of plastic waste, most of whichis not recycled and ends up in landfills.

(11:50):
So that's a lot of plastic wastethat was not there before and that
it is there now and just seemsto keep on growing over time. So
a good kind of message behind youknow, a lot of their marketing and
just brand itself. So what doyou think, Patrick, what can you
sum up before we start talking aboutsome of their marketing efforts. What do

(12:11):
you think makes this brand kind ofunique and interesting and different. I would
say that they don't care about beingpolitically correct. They go against the grain,
as I said, and hard.It's not like we know where the
line is and we sort of likejump the line a little bit. They
go, we know where the lineis and we bust through it with a
wrecking ball crashing through it. Justlook at their tagline, murder your thirst,

(12:35):
and they take that very literally,like the murder idea, this idea
of death, which is kind ofthe opposite of what you think is water,
right, Water is life, andyou're thinking about this product and you're
going, oh, it's a liquiddeath. It's the opposite. Everything about
it is the opposite of what youwould think they should do, and that's

(12:56):
kind of the route they take.I feel like, yeah, no,
that's well said. They really planttheir flagon with the tagline, and I
think that is a really good point. I think you summed it up well
in the fact that they don't justgo over the line. It's not just
counter positioning to the market. Theylike leap across the line. They've taken
this punk energy drink esthetic and broughtit to that quiet, clear, calm

(13:18):
world of bottled water. If youlook at the logo alone, they could
have just called it liquid Death.But they have like this logo that's like
a dripping skull. What they're doingwith their ads and commercials, they want
to make you laugh by being youknow, outlandish and offbeat, over the
top, sort of like old spice. You know that you can recognize their

(13:39):
commercials by their like tone and senseof humor, even though they're very different
from one another. You're right,they're jumping across this line and they're saying,
not only are we different, butwe have our own style that you
can recognize. Yeah, So we'regoing to talk about what we consider the
best of Liquid Death marketing efforts,and we pick five out of a lot

(14:01):
of choices. So the show noteswill have a full list and we'll have
some links for you guys to checkout. But these five, I think,
you know, really encapsulate a lotof the different things that we liked
about what they're doing. Number one, Chad hop right into these. We
talked a little bit about this atthe beginning. They're Greatest Hates. They
just released Greatest Hates Volume three,so now they have three albums introducing their

(14:28):
hate mail and comments and online reviewsand stuff like that. The description for
it bop to ten delightful spiteful tracksfeaturing lyrics written entirely by real Internet haters.
They also released at the same timehilarious music video from the album that
has what looks like pilgrims and they'rerebelling against Liquid Death through the hate lyrics

(14:56):
that obviously came from real commenters andstuff. So it's kind of a must
watch because it's just very interesting interms of you're like, what is happening?
Yeah, the lyrics and the visualsvery contrasting. Yeah, it's unexpected,
but it's also kind of a goodjam. As you keep listening to
it, you're like, all right, I think I'm kind of into this.

(15:16):
Yeah. But there's people like TonyHawks sings a song on here,
Yeah, Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray, Sugar Ray is out of here.
There's some interesting celebrities who pop upthroughout this thing. It's definitely explicit the
song titles alone. Whoever started this? The name of the music video is

(15:37):
one of the titles, how aboutyou deserve your mouth stin? How about
rather cut my own cough. Imean, whoever thinks that they'd a lot
of hate, that's some serious hate. You know. That's when you know
you really don't like Liquid Death.Yeah. Yeah, the fact that there
are people who feel that strongly,it's so absurd. Just a sampling of

(16:04):
some crazy, crazy titles on thisalbum. Yeah, and it's like being
polarizing as part of our brand.So our next effort is, of course,
Martha Stewart's Dismembered Moments candle, whichis a great ad where she's selling

(16:26):
a candle, but you can alsobuy the candle that she's promoting in the
ad on their website, which islike nothing I've ever seen before. It's
a luxury candle that adds an enchantingaccent to your home. It's in the
shape of a human hand clutching acan of Liquid Death, which calls back

(16:48):
to the ad where you see aperson actually get there their hand chopped off.
Well, I don't know if youactually see their hand getting chopped off,
but you hear the sounds of choppingand then you see a person with
a dismembered hand. Yeah. That'sthe one common thread that I've noticed is
that the commercials and the marketing effortsthemselves. There's a lot of whatever it

(17:10):
is that you think is reality andtwisting it. For example, Martha Stewart
wholesome good. You would never imagineher doing something like that. I mean,
I know she went to prison,but you know what I mean.
Yeah, no, that's a goodpoint. They do like to play with
these contrasts a lot, especially asyou know it's going to go some are

(17:30):
you know, kind of dark ordifferent or I would say off the beaten
path than which you would get normally. Another thing I'll point out is this
is an ad So it's kind ofa joke that there's this candle of the
Dismembered Moments. Candle exists, butthey actually made it. So they have
this merch you could buy it.It costs almost sixty dollars. It's actually
super cool. You know, it'san all black and it's a hand holding

(17:55):
like a can of liquid depth thathas a wick coming out of the top.
The hand is you know, cutoff, there's like a bone hanging
out of it. It's super cooland it calls out another thing they do
well, which they have this wholemerch store where they sell some really cool
stuff. It's all at peace withtheir brand. You know. I think
this is one of those brands thathas a following now where most of their

(18:15):
stuff sells out. It's like thestovetop stuffing pants. Yeah, how can
we forget that, Jim, That'slike a novelty. But this stuff they
make is very specific to them,very fitting with who they are as a
company too. Yeah. So thenthat brings us to the third on the
list, Don't the Planet? Alot of censorship going on parental advisory explicit

(18:37):
lyrics got to appreciate any brand thatwould just swear as much as they do
in the title of their ads,right, Don't the Planet? It's pretty
straightforward. Yeah. This commercial followsan adult film star Cherry de Ville.
I don't really know. You're notfamiliar with our work. I'm not familiar,
but I will say there are peoplewho probably are, and I would

(19:00):
be honest, I would tell youif I knew who that was. Cherry
or Cherry. We don't know.I want to say it's probably Cherry just
knowing the industry, but maybe it'sCherry. I don't know, Shari,
is that what it says? Ijust watched the beginning of the video and
she's like, I'm Shari de Ville. Okay, so there you go.

(19:21):
It's officially Shari. I would alsolike to just point out that I didn't
know how to say it, soobviously I'm not as schooled and I'm clean.
I'm super pure and innocent. Thecommercial follows her through a set.
There's not a lot going on otherthan there is a famous porn star delivering

(19:41):
the message of liquid Death. Andthat's sort of the beauty of what they
do is that they take these thingsthat brands typically avoid. They typically avoid
at all costs, anything like thisthat would cause them grief, right,
they don't care again, going backto this idea of fearless. But when

(20:04):
you watch the commercial, you knowthere's nothing overtly sexual in there. They
you know, just kind of pokefun, well done at the concept of
the adult film industry. Yeah,this one is it's pretty good. Can
you imagine Aquafina getting an adult filmstar to be in one of their commercials.

(20:26):
You just wouldn't. And that's whatmakes Liquid Death different. You know,
they specifically corded this person. Theirwhole idea being you're not going to
listen to scientists, but maybe you'lllisten to this person. Maybe this one
person will catch your attention. Andyou're right, there's some tropes of the
adult film industry. I think sheintroduces herself as stepmother to the Internet.

(20:48):
Things like that, you know,just kind of little jokes, but it's
well put together. It's not overthe top with the adult film stuff.
It's more just like, we havethis person to grab your attention so that
we can kind of get our messageacross. And it's one of these commercials
that's really focused on the kill plasticaspect of the brand. It's like you're
reading between the lines the whole time. Yeah, and maybe the expectation that

(21:11):
people have with the brand and theperson, what am I going to get
from this ad? They know thatthe people who see that are going to
watch the ad and maybe expect somethingand then get something else right right,
again, playing with contrasts a littlebit again. This is going back to
this idea of why I think theyget so much flak, why they get
so much hate. This is reallyhard for people to overcome this concept of

(21:36):
a brand being this abrasive, ifyou will. In the world of marketing.
This is not your grandfather's water company, you know, not that he
would have one, he'd be like, what are you doing? Pain for
water? But now you've got anadult film star. What you know?
That's why this seems, in thewords of the haters, satanic, you

(21:56):
know, demonic. They see thisand they just can't get over it,
you know. Yeah, so yougot Martha Stewart, you got an adult
film star. What's next on thelist? Next up, we've got Tony
Hawk the Hawk Blood Deck. Andthis is actually they used Tony Hawk's blood,
mixed it in with some paint anduse that paint then for some custom

(22:21):
made skateboards that you could get.So I think you see the actual paper
and it says I have given myblood and in parentheses it says soul question
mark to Liquid Death, signed byTony Hawk, and it says, you
know, the world's only skateboard infusedwith one hundred percent real Tony Hawk.

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Also one of those merch items thatyou like. I would just get this
just to have it. I don'tskateboard anymore, I haven't since I was
a teenager, but I would definitelyown this board just for the fact that
it's pretty cool. The Hawk BloodDeck, priced at five hundred dollars each,
and they sold out from the LiquidDeath website under twenty minutes, painted

(23:03):
with a mix containing the blood ofFame Scanner Tony Hawk. So they were
five hundred dollars. There's one goingon eBay for fourteen thousand, five hundred
dollars. Is there any bids?No, No, there are no bids.
There are twenty five people watching it. But you have to pay fifteen
eighty for shipping. I can't evendo free shipping. Huh, fifteen thousand

(23:26):
and you're not gonna ship it tome for free, like I want that
Hawk blood Tony Hawk, great brand, ambassaard to get. Yeah he's a
legend. Yeah, he's got agood personal brand. He's legit. And
not only they get him, theygot his blood. Yeah soul. So
the last one on our list isthe Blind Tay's Test, an effort where

(23:47):
they put two guys from the internetwho said that Liquid Death was the worst
water. Yeah, they didn't likeit. They didn't like it, and
so they lined up a bunch ofbottle waters and the guy had to taste
them and decide which one was LiquidDeath because they said it was the worst.
And if they got it wrong,they got tased they got electrocuted.

(24:08):
Essentially, they go through this wholeprocess, they both get tased because they
picked the wrong water, and apologizeat the end of the commercial. It's
pretty good the tas test, youknow. I think one of the guys
said, literally the worst water I'veever tasted. Of course, watching somebody
get tased. They don't get shotwith the taser. They have like things

(24:29):
hooked up to them to get electrocuted. As they say, we combined a
blind taste test with fifty thousand voltsof electricity. I could watch that all
day. I think the most enjoyablepart of that is how confident they are.
What are the chances that either oneof them is going to pick the
right one? I mean, theodds are pretty slim. Yeah, so
it just runs the gamut. Allthese, you know, are worth watching.

(24:51):
If you check out liquidak website liquiddeathdot com, they have an actual
tab on the top of their menucalled the Time Waste or five thousand where
you can just scroll down and checkout like every marketing effort they put out.
You can go to their website directly, or you could just go to
the Speaking Human page, go toour show notes we'll have a link there.

(25:11):
Yeah, I don't know why I'mtelling people to go to their website.
That's crazy. Give us a littletraffic in the process. You know,
you were listening to the podcast,you know, come here first.
No, but either way, theyjust try different things every time. Blind
Day's Test, the Blood of TonyHawk, Martha Stewart looking like she's murderous

(25:33):
with a knife, and candles formerch music hate music. It's just it's
a nice variety of craziness in away of crazy creativity, just being like,
Okay, what are we gonna do? Completely the opposite of what you
think of when you think of brandingfor a bottled water business. Kind of
the beauty of it. Yeah,just one of these great brands to watch.

(25:55):
We like to see as these brandskind of emerge and you know,
catch our attention, especially when theyhave you know, you're like, okay,
here's a everybody can have kind ofa one off marketing effort. But
once you see like two, three, four and people are kind of still
talking about these or sending you somethingthat they're doing, that's when you stand
up and pay a little bit ofattention. You're like, Okay, this
brand. They're sticking with it,they're consistent, they're really trying to build

(26:17):
something here, and that's what thiscompany is doing, and I think you're
seeing sales as a result. They'reone to watch, especially on the marketing
front. Well, we'll be interestedto see what's next from Liquid Death.
We should put a little asterist innote that we are not brand ambassadors of
Liquid Death. It does seem thatway the way we talked about Liquid Death
to day, but we are notgetting paid by Liquid Death. There is

(26:40):
no sponsorship, there's no I've neverdrank a Liquid Death. I have had
it. Okay, you're in theirpocket under the table. They're paying me
five dollars worth. It totally worthit. So we hope you enjoyed it.
If you've got other questions about LiquidDeath, don't ask us. Go
to their website. That's it fortoday's episode. If you can. You

(27:02):
can find current and past episodes ofthe podcast on Speaking human dot com.
You can. That's what I hear. I don't know. Yeah, I've
heard that from a lot of alot of people are talking about that it's
making a surge. It's yeah,like covid, it's breaking through. We'll
be back in two weeks with anotherepisode of speaking human Catch You, then

(27:22):
Humans speaking Human