Last month I pulled you in with the canny controversial, clickbaity subject line - ‘marketing is proper boring’ - and you know what, I stand by it! 99.9% of marketing is trash, filled with waffle, dribble and masked by a thick stench of corporate, c-suite and legal team pleasing bullshed (we keep it PG round ‘ere). 

I’m making no apologies, and this month I’m continuing my campaign to put an end to dead marketing, one small newsletter at a time…

Speaking of corporate suits watering down brand activity and washing out any personality in the process, there aren’t many industries as boring as water, sorry Water Sommeliers💧(yep, that’s a real thing).

Don’t get it twisted, I’m proper partial to a bit of high quality H2O, I like it ‘still’, I like it ‘sparkling’, and I don’t even mind a glass of council pop (that’s tap water for anyone not in the know). But, there’s not a lot to get excited about really is there? 

When you think of water brands, you probably picture; mountains, fresh springs, icebergs and ​​glaciers, maybe even a little water droplet or two. 

So if you’re launching a new brand to the water market, how do you stand out? 

Answer: You whack a massive melting skull on the packaging and call it LIQUID DEATH! 💀🤘

Back in ‘09, Graphic Designer and ex-ad agency wonderboy Mike Cessario swindled a backstage pass to the Vans Warped Tour. One of the big festival sponsors was Monster Energy, and Mike noticed that whilst the bands all had cans in hand when they rocked the stage, they weren’t actually drinking the caffeine packed, taurine riddled liquid - they were filling the cans with water instead! 

Contractually, the bands needed to be seen with the sugary supercharged juice, but they didn’t actually want to drink it. They wanted something healthy to swig to get them through the packed out 46-date tour, and Mikey C’s saw an opportunity. 

His idea was to create a healthy brand with a ridiculous name and branding, a product that looked like something you probably shouldn’t drink. He questioned why there weren’t any options for healthy drinks with cool, funny, irreverent branding - that type of branding seemed to be reserved for junk food brands.

Early in his advertising career he worked with Virgin America airlines, and Virgin’s business strategy stuck with him - ‘find a really stale category of products and be the one really cool, exciting product in it’.

Over the next few years whilst working at different agencies, Mike slowly developed his idea on the side. To prove the concept was viable, he decided to produce a commercial for it using a 3D render - he didn’t even have a liquid at this point, never mind a product!

Once the commercial was ready, it was uploaded to Facebook as a Paid Ad and in just four months it hit 3 million views, and the page amassed 80,000 followers! Consumers were engaging, and stores reached out wanting to stock it!

Mike had what we needed to go and get funding, securing $150,000, and after finding an Austrian supplier, he produced the first run of Liquid Death, selling cans through his own website as a D2C business.

His first big customer was none other than Whole Foods, they loved that the product was in a can, and backed-up with the message of ‘death to plastic’, Liquid Death secured a national contract.

In the first month they made $100,000 revenue, and in 2022 they hit $130 million!

Liquid Death is unapologetically brand over product. Their packaging stands out from the pack, and pops out of the shelf space so much that people can’t help themselves but to pick it up and find out more. It’s a real innovator and a true disruptor in a boring industry. 

So ask yourself this question - Is your brand an innovator, or is your business just the same as every other in your industry?

To be a real innovator you need to act differently. As Mike puts it: “Our brains are wired to just repeat things we’ve seen be successful in the past. You kind of have to trick your brain to come up with a bad idea to truly be thinking in innovative territory.”

His ‘bad idea’ turned out to be not so bad after all. 

You’ve read enough now anyway, so here’s some nice pictures of their marketing:

A couple more things to read 📚:

Go against the norm  - Don’t Panic - Disruptive Advertising and Cutting Through the Marketing Noise 📚

Think different  - Steve Harvey - 25 Disruptive Brands That Changed The World You Live In 📚

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Thanks for reading, this issue was written by Dominic Apes (NORTH - Senior Marketing Manager). If you fancy a chat, then please reach out!