Brand Growth Hacking behind Liquid Death
Hiya 👋
I’m finally (almost) back from my travels, and it’s time to go back to the newsletter to find out what growth strategies successful companies use!
It was great to talk to many of you in Las Vegas on Atlassian Team24 this week. It’s always inspiring to meet with the Community 🫰
And if we haven't met, you can see what I’ve been up to on LN 👀
Amazing AtlassianCreators I got chance to meet on Team24 💙
Anyways, back to the growth strategies…
🥕 5-second insights 🥕
No time to read the whole newsletter? Here are key growth strategies we'll talk about 👇
Challenger Brand Mindset: Dare to be the opposite of everyone else to stand out from the crowd.
Brand over Product: Grow a loyal community; it's harder to replicate a brand than a product.
Market Validation via Social Media: Use low-budget campaigns and social media buzz to validate and hype your product before launch.
We’ve got a new unicorn! And nope, this time it’s not a software company.
You’ve probably heard of Liquid Death. They sell water. Yes…water.
A few weeks back, Liquid Death broke the internet (again) after they closed their latest investment round, valuing the company at $1.4 billion.
Liquid Death is known for its hilarious marketing campaigns and for going against the mainstream—something my punk rock soul loves to see. But how did they come to be?
Mike Cessario worked in a marketing agency but got frustrated with so many of his great ideas not being used. He realized that if he wanted his ideas to go through, he simply needed to start his own company.
And so, Liquid Death was founded back in 2017, but they didn’t sell their product until 2019, making the internet think that the whole thing was just a joke. At the end of the day, who would name water "Liquid Death" and put it in a tallboy beer can?
This is Mike Cessario - founder of Liquid Death living and breathing his brand.
You can listen to the story behind Liquid Death on the Uncensored CMO podcast and let’s have a look at the 3 growth strategies they used.
1️⃣ Challenger brand mindset
If everyone else is doing it, you should do the exact opposite!
In a world where companies end up being vanilla, it’s not that hard to stand out…if you’re brave enough.
Challenger brands are companies that disrupt the category through unique branding, marketing, or products, challenge the status quo, and gain market share from established competitors.
Liquid Death took this to the next level by branding water as if it were a beer or energy drink and selling it as if it were the coolest thing. And it worked.
The latest example of their challenger marketing was their position on Super Bowl ads. Instead of spending tons of money on a 6-second Super Bowl ad, they decided to auction ad space on their water twelve-packs on eBay. In case you’re wondering why it all makes sense, Liquid Death packaging is seen by over 200M people weekly in American Superstores. Coinbase won with a $500,144 bid!
Why it’s great:
Fast growth
High brand reach
Clear value proposition
Coinbase paid over $500k to appear on the Liquid Death packaging in a satire campaign against Super Bowl ad prices.
2️⃣ Brand over Product
You can copy the product, but you can’t copy the brand—more specifically, a brand that has a loyal community.
In the case of Liquid Death, this is even more important. At the end of the day, they only sell packaged water. Creating unconventional and highly relatable branded content helps make your brand part of customer identity.
To prove this point, they created a campaign where they picked 2 haters from the internet who publicly stated that Liquid Death was the worst water they ever drank.
The haters were supposed to identify which water was Liquid Death in a blind test. If they were right, they would get cash. If they were wrong, they would get tased with an electrical taser.
Both were wrong, of course.
This generated curiosity and buzz among those who had never heard of the brand before. I mean, who doesn’t want to see people getting tased for picking the wrong water can?
Why it’s great:
Community building
Brand loyalty
Stability
One of many viral campaigns. Identify Liquid Death in the blind test or get tased.
3️⃣ Market validation on social media
We all know that validating ideas before jumping into product development is so important. To do that, you can use early sign-up landing pages, ads, Kickstarter, or even social media.
Liquid Death started with a campaign “Murder Your Thirst,” portraying water as one of the most dangerous things on earth. They first attempted to raise money to make the actual product wasn’t successful, but they didn’t give up and continued to post on Facebook and grow their following.
Fast forward a few years, the audience was large enough for investors to take Mike’s idea seriously, and he finally managed to raise enough to create the first batch of Liquid Death canned water. It sold out instantly.
Creating low-budget campaigns and growing a following on social media can help you build a trusted brand and excitement for your product before you even launch.
Why it’s great:
Risk reduction
Pre-launch hype
Low-cost market validation
Their first ever video "Murder your thirst" got 3M views before they sold a single can of water.
Well, now I’m feeling FOMO and I really want to try one of the Liquid Death cans. Shame they don’t sell in the UK 🥲 See? Brand marketing works.
Let me know what company I should do a deep growth dive into! I’ll see you in the next Workaholic Club newsletter.
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