The Exchanges

Q You mentioned people thinking canned water. What? Like, what is this? I have to ask, when you speak to founders today, what do you advise founders when they're told that's a silly idea or why would you do that? What do you advise them when they're told that like you were for so many years?

A I think you have to be careful because I mean, the reality is Out of every thousand ideas, 998 of them are bad, and two are actually probably good. So I think you have to be careful that you're open to feedback and understanding what's happening and not just using the crutch of, oh, well, just because no one thinks this is smart. It is smart. You know, it's easy to just kind of lean on, well, no one else gets this but me. But who cares? I'm just going to keep going down this road. You have to know what are you measuring to know if this is good or not? Cause even though people were telling us, oh, this doesn't make any sense. We had mountains of data showing that it did, you know, they just, a lot of these people were not privy to that data just on the surface. It was, oh, this doesn't make any sense. But when you could see, oh, without even having a real product, In four months, we have more social followers than Awkwafina. And it's like, oh, look how, like, look how many people are messaging us asking where they can get this. Look how many people are sharing images of a beverage product. Like, who shares an image of a beverage and how often on social media? Not too often. So we had all this data, which I think to folks that understood the digital world more, like science and Some of the more tech side of things, I think they understood the power of that. Whereas like when we t…

AI assessment note: “You have to know what are you measuring to know if this is good”

Q Two things from that. Idea generation. You have very creative and unique ideas. Tasering, you know, water drink is one. Not that Tuesday morning in the office I thought about tasering people. Um, so how do you think about, like, idea generation in teams? Is it the responsibility of everyone? Is it the responsibility of a few? First, let's start there.

A Well, ideas can kind of come from anywhere. We think about our marketing team more like we are Saturday Night Live. You know, like, Saturday Night Live has a group of professional writers, comedians, who are writing these funny skits day in and day out. They have celebrity guests that come in. You have to write funny skits for this particular celebrity that's interesting. You know, if you think about, hey, Saturday Night Live, where do you get your funny ideas from? They don't say, oh, we ask everybody in every department from accounting to what it's like, no, no, no. We rely on the professional funny people to, to figure out what's going to be funny and what's going to work. And I think we take that approach to like creativity. We hold at a very high level, like, because we're trying to make entertainment. We're not trying to make marketing. We're trying to make actual entertainment that is in service of a brand. And we were talking about actual entertainment. That's way harder to do. Like, if you ask somebody, hey, do you think you could come up with a cool, cool idea for a commercial? Most people would probably say, yeah, I think I could do that. If you ask most people, could you write a hit television show and sell it to Netflix? They'd be like, no fucking way. Marketing is easy in people's minds because most marketing is so bad that it is, but when you're actually trying t…

AI assessment note: “We rely on the professional funny people to, to figure out what's going to be funny”

Q Final one before we do a quick fire. Someone said this on Twitter, actually. They said, you're often praised for the brand build that you've done with Liquid Death. What other than the brand build do you think Liquid Death doesn't get enough credit for?

A I think it, it would be just the execution of building a beverage brand in the insane beverage market. Like the, our sales team is Is top notch. You know, like we hired some of the best people. We, we invested in tons of bodies that are going into stores. Like the marketing and brand makes people love the product, but that's just the beginning. Then it's like when you're in the store, when a store orders product, oh, we need more liquid debt. They order liquid debt. A distributor comes, drops cases off in the back of the store. Store employees are busy with all kinds of other things. The shelves of liquid death might be sitting empty for days or a week because the product's just sitting in the back of the store because no one gives a shit. Unless you have a sales team where somebody is going into that target once a week to make sure, oh, what the fuck guys, there's nowhere liquid death on the shelf. Oh, it's in the back. And you have someone actually come put it on the shelf. Or you have other beverage companies and competitors, they'll come and literally move your stuff out of the way, and if you don't have somebody going in there to make sure your stuff looks good, you'll be like, oh, how come we have no sales at this store for the last month? It's like, oh, uh, there's even things that where, uh, competitors, that there's, um, these tags that, let's say, a retailer will stic…

AI assessment note: “just the execution of building a beverage brand in the insane beverage market.”

Q What's your lessons been in terms of making celebrity investors work? Do they have to share? Do they, is it discounted sharing for them? What's the lesson in terms of making celebrity investors work?

A It's finding folks that Truly love the brand and understand the humor and want to be a part of that. Um, and that's why they, they invest because they truly believe in the brand. Like they're like, Hey, I love this. This is hilarious. Like this is, you know, they want to be a part of it. Like I said, using the Saturday night, Saturday night live reference again. You know, they have these guest celebrities come on their show from all different backgrounds. They'll be professional athletes or professional comedians or actors or whoever, and the celebrity comes into their weird world and does some funny, weird things for a little bit that are out of character maybe for the celebrity, but that's what makes it entertaining. And that's kind of what we do. It's like, we don't have one celebrity that we try to make the spokesperson or face of liquid death. We have all these different folks And they come into our weird world and we make this funny, weird thing with them that they wouldn't typically make. And then people talk about it and share it because it, because it's interesting. Like Tony Hawk, for example, if we would have just posted a video of Tony Hawk doing a crazy skate trick, it would have gotten no engagement on our social, but we found a funny way to use him where we take his blood and mix it into ink that we printed limited edition skateboards with and filmed it all. To f…

AI assessment note: “It's finding folks that Truly love the brand and understand the humor”

Q is funny. Um, we put a lot of budget behind it. It doesn't work. You don't want to be a gaming studio in that kind of capital concentration way. Do you split test and do idea like 10 ideas, minimal budget, and then double down on what works? Do you concentrate budget to strong ideas that you just really like internally? How do you think about that? Kind of strategy.

A Well, we don't do any big budget things. Like even the Superbowl commercial that we did, that was the beer commercial with the kids. I think all in, we spent a hundred grand on that commercial when other companies are spending millions of dollars. And, you know, we're able to do that one because, you know, we have a really strong creative team. So it's like, oh, we don't even necessarily need some big fancy director for this thing. It's like, we just need someone Who knows how to shoot this and help arrange it. And then our team can kind of, our creative guys have the power to direct this thing. And it's like, oh, we know how to creatively cut corners. Like, oh, if we film it like this, it's going to be way cheaper than if we try to film it like this. And it's like, we have like good producers that know how to produce things very cheaply so that we're very rarely making big bets. Like, We've never produced a single piece of content that is like a million dollars. Like we've never done something like that. We probably, we might not ever do that. When you have a really good idea, you could film it with an iPhone sometimes, and it'll actually still be good. But when you have an idea that's not very good, you have to start throwing all this production value at it to have something that people care about, right?

AI assessment note: “Well, we don't do any big budget things.”

Q completely what you're saying, but Liquid Death is a great brand because you, you feel, or Regardless if you like it or you don't like it, but you definitely feel, but did you ever worry about brand alienation, which is like people who otherwise might've liked it might've been put off by a skull or the quite hard color schemes that you have. Did you worry about that brand alienation?

A No. And like, again, to bring back the entertainment thing, it's like the same reason that. Whatever movie studio releases a blockbuster horror movie, like do they worry? How much do they worry about brand alienation? You know, Hey, is, is this, is this kill scene in here gonna, like, turn off some people who would, you know, really like the movie? It's like, on the extreme ends, you have to be careful of that. Like, we always, like, what we do is not easy, which is why a lot of other people don't do it. It's like, if you go a few degrees this way, it could be very distasteful, and you have a problem. If you go a few degrees this way, it's just not funny, it's lame, and no one cares. So it is kind of hard to To find that right target where it's provocative enough that you have a ton of people who love it, think it's the greatest thing ever, but you always have a healthy amount of people who are like, how could this be? This is the worst thing ever. Like, I always say, it's like, if you, if there are people who truly love something, there has to be people who truly hate it. It is not possible to make something that Everybody loves. All it's possible is to make something that everybody doesn't really give a shit about one way or the other. That's possible. Where you're just like, no one really cares about you. They don't love you. They don't hate you. You're just there. You know,…

AI assessment note: “No. And like, again, to bring back the entertainment thing”

Q That is absolutely fucking bizarre. He needs to see a therapist straight away. Um, uh, tell me, I want to move into a quickfire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. What book has currently almost recently captured your heart? Or piece of content? We've talked about entertainment. Fuck book. It could be book, could be TV show, movie, I don't care.

A A movie I just Saw last week was something that stood out. I hadn't seen anything like it. I thought it was so great, so funny. That new movie on HBO called The Menu. It's kind of like a horror movie, but a dark comedy. Like, it's not supposed to be scary. It's horror, but it's supposed to be funny, and it's basically taking the piss out of, like, high cuisine culture. Like, fancy pairings and You know, multi-course meals, and like this high society dining culture, it uses that to make this really funny horror movie. I just thought it was so funny, so creative, and the fact that it's super successful, like I think it's got like a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and people are talking, and it's not a high budget thing either, like if you could tell this was all filmed in like one location, they probably did not spend a ton of money on it, and then the main star of it I forget the actor's name. He's the British guy who plays Voldemort in Harry Potter. He plays like the main chef, and he's incredible.

AI assessment note: “That new movie on HBO called The Menu.”

Q Two things from that. Idea generation. You have very creative and unique ideas. Tasering, you know, water drink is one. Not that Tuesday morning in the office I thought about tasering people. Um, so how do you think about, like, idea generation in teams? Is it the responsibility of everyone? Is it the responsibility of a few? First, let's start there.

A Well, ideas can kind of come from anywhere. We think about our marketing team more like we are Saturday Night Live. You know, like, Saturday Night Live has a group of professional writers, comedians, who are writing these funny skits day in and day out. They have celebrity guests that come in. You have to write funny skits for this particular celebrity that's interesting. You know, if you think about, hey, Saturday Night Live, where do you get your funny ideas from? They don't say, oh, we ask everybody in every department from accounting to what it's like, no, no, no. We rely on the professional funny people to, to figure out what's going to be funny and what's going to work. And I think we take that approach to like creativity. We hold at a very high level, like, because we're trying to make entertainment. We're not trying to make marketing. We're trying to make actual entertainment that is in service of a brand. And we were talking about actual entertainment. That's way harder to do. Like, if you ask somebody, hey, do you think you could come up with a cool, cool idea for a commercial? Most people would probably say, yeah, I think I could do that. If you ask most people, could you write a hit television show and sell it to Netflix? They'd be like, no fucking way. Marketing is easy in people's minds because most marketing is so bad that it is, but when you're actually trying t…

AI assessment note: “We rely on the professional funny people to, to figure out what's going to be funny”

Q Final one is 20, 28. Where's liquid death then Mike? Five years out. Yeah.

A I like to think that we're, you know, Not that far off from what you see in a brand like Monster or Red Bull, you know, just a, you know, much bigger brand, um, known for sort of blurring the lines between being an entertainment company and a beverage brand. Like, look at Red Bull. It's, they, they have a very specific genre of action sports entertainment, but most people you think of Red Bull, you think of both the entertainment side and the beverage side. And I think that that's ultimately what our goal is. Like, how, how can we become a multi-billion dollar beverage company that is also in service of creating really great entertainment that people would consume even if they didn't consume the beverage? They're like, oh, but we're going after comedy. You know, Red Bull's not funny. That's action sports. We're all about being funny and Comedy and irreverence and all of that, and I think there's a lot of room for, for that kind of entertainment.

AI assessment note: “Not that far off from what you see in a brand like Monster or Red Bull”

Q You mentioned people thinking canned water. What? Like, what is this? I have to ask, when you speak to founders today, what do you advise founders when they're told that's a silly idea or why would you do that? What do you advise them when they're told that like you were for so many years?

A I think you have to be careful because I mean, the reality is Out of every thousand ideas, 998 of them are bad, and two are actually probably good. So I think you have to be careful that you're open to feedback and understanding what's happening and not just using the crutch of, oh, well, just because no one thinks this is smart. It is smart. You know, it's easy to just kind of lean on, well, no one else gets this but me. But who cares? I'm just going to keep going down this road. You have to know what are you measuring to know if this is good or not? Cause even though people were telling us, oh, this doesn't make any sense. We had mountains of data showing that it did, you know, they just, a lot of these people were not privy to that data just on the surface. It was, oh, this doesn't make any sense. But when you could see, oh, without even having a real product, In four months, we have more social followers than Awkwafina. And it's like, oh, look how, like, look how many people are messaging us asking where they can get this. Look how many people are sharing images of a beverage product. Like, who shares an image of a beverage and how often on social media? Not too often. So we had all this data, which I think to folks that understood the digital world more, like science and Some of the more tech side of things, I think they understood the power of that. Whereas like when we t…

AI assessment note: “You have to know what are you measuring to know if this is good or not”

Q What do you think are the biggest mistakes that founders make with brands today? You see many founders, I'm sure you get many founders ask you for advice. What are the big brand mistakes you see founders make?

A Not being honest with themselves about what their true, you know, differentiation really is. And it's not just founders. I think it's, it's people at most companies is you're so close to your own product. You've spent night and day. Formulating whatever it is, you know, designing the bottle and all of that stuff, and you've thought through everything, and you think this thing is so unique and special, and all you need to do is just tell people about the stuff you put in it, and it's gonna sell. And it almost never does. Like, it's when you back away from your own product. Okay, here's my product. Let me put it next to all the other products I'm gonna see, And then take somebody who doesn't work in marketing or branding and doesn't know anything about your product, put them in front of all those products. And what, what is their perception of your brand and all those other brands? I guarantee you it's nothing close to what you think it is. It's like to truly stand out or to truly own something. It is hard, you know, and it's not what you think it is. Like brands will say, oh, well, Our brand is differentiated because we have this, we have this ingredient in it that's, that's new and nobody has it. It's like, okay, yeah, you can, that can be a differentiating thing for a few moments, but the minute you have any success, any other brand can put the same ingredient in there. And if…

AI assessment note: “Not being honest with themselves about what their true, you know, differentiation really is.”

Q them, I think, a thousand dollars, or whatever, and bluntly, it was probably the, the funniest thing I'd seen in the day, getting, seeing two guys get tasered for water, um, my point is, you said before, everyone hates Your marketing. And I thought about that, and I was like, huh. And I thought, it's a great opportunity to ask, what did you mean? Why does everyone hate your marketing?

A I don't remember saying everyone hates our marketing, unless it was in some weird context. I don't think, I think people love our marketing. I think that's why we're so successful, is everybody loves our marketing. And I think at the end of the day, that's really what Liquid Death is. It's, The universal thing that connects all of us, and there's plenty of data to show that, we all hate marketing. Like, look at the data, it's like, 90 plus percent of people just hate marketing. We will pay a premium for ad-free services, you know. My wife, when we're watching sports, she's a big sports person, she gets mad if I don't mute the commercials when they come on, because it just annoys her to hear commercials. It's just like, I think people are so over this toxic waste marketing that has just been around for decades. And now I think it's even, it's even getting worse. Like you're seeing less funny commercials. You're seeing more shouting, hard selling things where what we're really doing as a brand is we're sort of making fun of marketing. And I think that's what people really identify with. It doesn't matter if you like heavy metal or skulls, if you think us Putting a skull on a can and calling it liquid debt is funny because we're sort of making fun of all this marketing bullshit. You can identify with that and be all for it. Oh, I'm not a skull person, but this is funny. I see what…

AI assessment note: “I don't remember saying everyone hates our marketing... I think people love our marketing.”

Q Final one before we do a quick fire. Someone said this on Twitter, actually. They said, you're often praised for the brand build that you've done with Liquid Death. What other than the brand build do you think Liquid Death doesn't get enough credit for?

A I think it, it would be just the execution of building a beverage brand in the insane beverage market. Like the, our sales team is Is top notch. You know, like we hired some of the best people. We, we invested in tons of bodies that are going into stores. Like the marketing and brand makes people love the product, but that's just the beginning. Then it's like when you're in the store, when a store orders product, oh, we need more liquid debt. They order liquid debt. A distributor comes, drops cases off in the back of the store. Store employees are busy with all kinds of other things. The shelves of liquid death might be sitting empty for days or a week because the product's just sitting in the back of the store because no one gives a shit. Unless you have a sales team where somebody is going into that target once a week to make sure, oh, what the fuck guys, there's nowhere liquid death on the shelf. Oh, it's in the back. And you have someone actually come put it on the shelf. Or you have other beverage companies and competitors, they'll come and literally move your stuff out of the way, and if you don't have somebody going in there to make sure your stuff looks good, you'll be like, oh, how come we have no sales at this store for the last month? It's like, oh, uh, there's even things that where, uh, competitors, that there's, um, these tags that, let's say, a retailer will stic…

AI assessment note: “execution of building a beverage brand in the insane beverage market. Like the, our sales team”

Q How many of your content best work versus don't? What's the ratio? Is it like the classic, oh, 10% work and 90% don't?

A No, I think we have, um, we have a really healthy track record. It's like almost every, you know, like we call like big thing has, has essentially hit. And I think that's it. And that's just because of our approach to how we think about these things. Like we don't like, you know, for instance, like that Superbowl commercial with the kids drinking beer, we didn't just come up with that out of the blue. It was, we were seeing on social tons of people were posting photos of their kids with liquid death, thinking that it's funny. Like there was hundreds of them like, oh, this is a thing that people think is funny. Let's just turn it into Something else funny, and it's sort of like, you know it's gonna work, because you're basing it on something that you know to be true, versus just like, hey, I wonder if people would think it's funny. That kids are drinking Liquid Death. You know, that, that, that's different.

AI assessment note: “almost every, you know, like we call like big thing has, has essentially hit.”

Q It is not. Tell me, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

A I've, we've, Kind of dramatically changed our approach to, um, to content and not to slander either of these two companies. It's just two different strategies. Moving more from the Netflix approach to the HBO approach, meaning Netflix puts out, they produce tons and tons and tons of series of stuff, like cheap things, expensive things, like they make all these things. So you're kind of making a ton of bets. And you hope that like a couple of them hit, which is kind of like the VC realm of things, right? It's like, Hey, you bet on all these things and then one thing takes off and that's supposed to pay for kind of the rest of them. Um, and I think a lot, a lot of brands have been doing that in the social space where it's like social is about always on. You need to post something every day. It's all about just getting lots of content out there. And I think, you know, we took that approach as well. Like, Hey, let's just put tons of little things out there that, you know, And, you know, we'll see what works and what doesn't, but the reality is doing a little thing often takes as much time and headache and even budget sometimes is a big thing. And it's like, you have all these things to manage and it's sucking everybody's time up and You know, by design, most of it's not going to be like a home run. And then like, you're like, wait, do we need to hire more people so that we can make…

AI assessment note: “dramatically changed our approach to, um, to content”

Q And that's the worst. But I want to ask, when you look back at the brand decisions that you've made with Liquid Death, if there was one which you could reverse or was a mistake, what would it be? Hmm.

A It's a good question. You know, just think, I mean, when you can see the future, you kind of know, but it would be, you know, which hires we made and when, you know, like if we would have hired more of a kind of retail expert early on, we probably could have made some Even if we weren't, even if retail wasn't going to be for a year to have a retail expert on early to help you understand the space so that you didn't like, you know, we got into bad distributor contracts in the early days where it was like, you sign these contracts with these distributors. They're terrible distributors. And literally there's no way to get out of them unless you have to pay them to get out. And it's like, when you don't know the nuance of what's a, Bad distributor. What's a mediocre distributor? What's a good one? Who do you need to be with to get to the retailers you want to be with in the future? You end up, you know, having to spend a lot of money and go through a lot of headache to learn that yourself. Um, but had we, you know, been able to see the future and known, hey, we would have brought a retail person on way earlier to help us navigate this space, um, that, that definitely would have been something we, we did.

AI assessment note: “it would be, you know, which hires we made and when”

Q I wish you could tell my mother that about Chanel, but, um, hopefully she'll listen. Um, when you sit down in a meeting with the team, what are the reasons why Liquid Death resonates from a brand with the people that buy Liquid Death?

A I think there's a bunch of different, there's a bunch of different reasons for different people and why they, why they gravitate towards the brand. You know, I think there's folks who, whether they have some amount of alternative background, like, oh, they grew up listening to punk rock music or, you know, and now they're moms or have families or now, I mean, or they're still in bands and it feels like, oh, finally, A mass thing that is made by someone or people from our culture of, of stuff. Like, they just instantly identify with it. Like, oh, this is awesome. This is cool. I've been very familiar with this since I was young. Like, this is great. And then I think you have the people who, it gives them a little piece of rebellion. It's like, if you, for most things that are cool cans to walk around with, like a Pabst Blue Ribbon, Or, you know, a monster energy. If you want to participate in that brand, you have to like drinking cheap beer, or you have to like drinking sugary energy with 300 milligrams of caffeine. And not everybody likes that. But when you're water, everybody can drink water. So now all of a sudden, anyone who likes drinking water has permission to kind of be a part of this fun thing. Like, I use the example of, uh, the motorcycle brand Harley Davidson.

AI assessment note: “there's folks who, whether they have some amount of alternative background”

Q completely what you're saying, but Liquid Death is a great brand because you, you feel, or Regardless if you like it or you don't like it, but you definitely feel, but did you ever worry about brand alienation, which is like people who otherwise might've liked it might've been put off by a skull or the quite hard color schemes that you have. Did you worry about that brand alienation?

A No. And like, again, to bring back the entertainment thing, it's like the same reason that. Whatever movie studio releases a blockbuster horror movie, like do they worry? How much do they worry about brand alienation? You know, Hey, is, is this, is this kill scene in here gonna, like, turn off some people who would, you know, really like the movie? It's like, on the extreme ends, you have to be careful of that. Like, we always, like, what we do is not easy, which is why a lot of other people don't do it. It's like, if you go a few degrees this way, it could be very distasteful, and you have a problem. If you go a few degrees this way, it's just not funny, it's lame, and no one cares. So it is kind of hard to To find that right target where it's provocative enough that you have a ton of people who love it, think it's the greatest thing ever, but you always have a healthy amount of people who are like, how could this be? This is the worst thing ever. Like, I always say, it's like, if you, if there are people who truly love something, there has to be people who truly hate it. It is not possible to make something that Everybody loves. All it's possible is to make something that everybody doesn't really give a shit about one way or the other. That's possible. Where you're just like, no one really cares about you. They don't love you. They don't hate you. You're just there. You know,…

AI assessment note: “No. And like, again, to bring back the entertainment thing”

Q What do you think are the biggest mistakes that founders make with brands today? You see many founders, I'm sure you get many founders ask you for advice. What are the big brand mistakes you see founders make?

A Not being honest with themselves about what their true, you know, differentiation really is. And it's not just founders. I think it's, it's people at most companies is you're so close to your own product. You've spent night and day. Formulating whatever it is, you know, designing the bottle and all of that stuff, and you've thought through everything, and you think this thing is so unique and special, and all you need to do is just tell people about the stuff you put in it, and it's gonna sell. And it almost never does. Like, it's when you back away from your own product. Okay, here's my product. Let me put it next to all the other products I'm gonna see, And then take somebody who doesn't work in marketing or branding and doesn't know anything about your product, put them in front of all those products. And what, what is their perception of your brand and all those other brands? I guarantee you it's nothing close to what you think it is. It's like to truly stand out or to truly own something. It is hard, you know, and it's not what you think it is. Like brands will say, oh, well, Our brand is differentiated because we have this, we have this ingredient in it that's, that's new and nobody has it. It's like, okay, yeah, you can, that can be a differentiating thing for a few moments, but the minute you have any success, any other brand can put the same ingredient in there. And if…

AI assessment note: “Not being honest with themselves about what their true, you know, differentiation really is.”

Q them, I think, a thousand dollars, or whatever, and bluntly, it was probably the, the funniest thing I'd seen in the day, getting, seeing two guys get tasered for water, um, my point is, you said before, everyone hates Your marketing. And I thought about that, and I was like, huh. And I thought, it's a great opportunity to ask, what did you mean? Why does everyone hate your marketing?

A I don't remember saying everyone hates our marketing, unless it was in some weird context. I don't think, I think people love our marketing. I think that's why we're so successful, is everybody loves our marketing. And I think at the end of the day, that's really what Liquid Death is. It's, The universal thing that connects all of us, and there's plenty of data to show that, we all hate marketing. Like, look at the data, it's like, 90 plus percent of people just hate marketing. We will pay a premium for ad-free services, you know. My wife, when we're watching sports, she's a big sports person, she gets mad if I don't mute the commercials when they come on, because it just annoys her to hear commercials. It's just like, I think people are so over this toxic waste marketing that has just been around for decades. And now I think it's even, it's even getting worse. Like you're seeing less funny commercials. You're seeing more shouting, hard selling things where what we're really doing as a brand is we're sort of making fun of marketing. And I think that's what people really identify with. It doesn't matter if you like heavy metal or skulls, if you think us Putting a skull on a can and calling it liquid debt is funny because we're sort of making fun of all this marketing bullshit. You can identify with that and be all for it. Oh, I'm not a skull person, but this is funny. I see what…

AI assessment note: “I don't remember saying everyone hates our marketing... we all hate marketing.”

Q uh, you know, Bluntly where short form is bigger than ever. TikTok has created this rise that's been unprecedented, but it's, you know, parallel with YouTube shorts, Instagram reels. How do you guys sit internally and think about marketing strategy with the rise of different social channels, where you're going to place your emphasis, where you're going to place budget? How do you think about that in changing content landscapes?

A Because we're a startup and, you know, especially in beverage, it's, it's one of the few industries where Four or five big players literally own 98% of the market between Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors. I mean, that is 98% of the beverages you see on a shelf in a store anywhere. So we are up against a massive, massive behemoth. So the only way we can really survive is we have to be ultra efficient with our marketing. For every dollar we spend in marketing, you know, we need to generate X amount of dollars in awareness. So we have a very much, you know, we're very much an earned media approach to marketing. Like we know, Hey, it's not enough. Like if we post a Tik TOK video or if we post an Instagram video, we need that video to be shared without us paying people to share it. It's gotta be that interesting that people are sharing it or that, Way more people are commenting on it, because it's so funny, it actually gets a couple of the real people that don't typically comment, it's actually enough for them to be like, this is fucking amazing, um, which generates the algorithms for the social to show it to more people for free, um, or to get, it's so interesting that press has to write about it, like, you know, Forbes says, hey, did you see the, Tik Tok that liquid death just did with, you know, Martha Stewart or whatever. That's all free eyeballs, free awareness that we…

AI assessment note: “These social platforms are really just vehicles for how these ideas get out there.”

Q That is absolutely fucking bizarre. He needs to see a therapist straight away. Um, uh, tell me, I want to move into a quickfire. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. What book has currently almost recently captured your heart? Or piece of content? We've talked about entertainment. Fuck book. It could be book, could be TV show, movie, I don't care.

A A movie I just Saw last week was something that stood out. I hadn't seen anything like it. I thought it was so great, so funny. That new movie on HBO called The Menu. It's kind of like a horror movie, but a dark comedy. Like, it's not supposed to be scary. It's horror, but it's supposed to be funny, and it's basically taking the piss out of, like, high cuisine culture. Like, fancy pairings and You know, multi-course meals, and like this high society dining culture, it uses that to make this really funny horror movie. I just thought it was so funny, so creative, and the fact that it's super successful, like I think it's got like a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and people are talking, and it's not a high budget thing either, like if you could tell this was all filmed in like one location, they probably did not spend a ton of money on it, and then the main star of it I forget the actor's name. He's the British guy who plays Voldemort in Harry Potter. He plays like the main chef, and he's incredible.

AI assessment note: “That new movie on HBO called The Menu.”

Q What's your lessons been in terms of making celebrity investors work? Do they have to share? Do they, is it discounted sharing for them? What's the lesson in terms of making celebrity investors work?

A It's finding folks that Truly love the brand and understand the humor and want to be a part of that. Um, and that's why they, they invest because they truly believe in the brand. Like they're like, Hey, I love this. This is hilarious. Like this is, you know, they want to be a part of it. Like I said, using the Saturday night, Saturday night live reference again. You know, they have these guest celebrities come on their show from all different backgrounds. They'll be professional athletes or professional comedians or actors or whoever, and the celebrity comes into their weird world and does some funny, weird things for a little bit that are out of character maybe for the celebrity, but that's what makes it entertaining. And that's kind of what we do. It's like, we don't have one celebrity that we try to make the spokesperson or face of liquid death. We have all these different folks And they come into our weird world and we make this funny, weird thing with them that they wouldn't typically make. And then people talk about it and share it because it, because it's interesting. Like Tony Hawk, for example, if we would have just posted a video of Tony Hawk doing a crazy skate trick, it would have gotten no engagement on our social, but we found a funny way to use him where we take his blood and mix it into ink that we printed limited edition skateboards with and filmed it all. To f…

AI assessment note: “It's finding folks that Truly love the brand and understand the humor”

Q And that's the worst. But I want to ask, when you look back at the brand decisions that you've made with Liquid Death, if there was one which you could reverse or was a mistake, what would it be? Hmm.

A It's a good question. You know, just think, I mean, when you can see the future, you kind of know, but it would be, you know, which hires we made and when, you know, like if we would have hired more of a kind of retail expert early on, we probably could have made some Even if we weren't, even if retail wasn't going to be for a year to have a retail expert on early to help you understand the space so that you didn't like, you know, we got into bad distributor contracts in the early days where it was like, you sign these contracts with these distributors. They're terrible distributors. And literally there's no way to get out of them unless you have to pay them to get out. And it's like, when you don't know the nuance of what's a, Bad distributor. What's a mediocre distributor? What's a good one? Who do you need to be with to get to the retailers you want to be with in the future? You end up, you know, having to spend a lot of money and go through a lot of headache to learn that yourself. Um, but had we, you know, been able to see the future and known, hey, we would have brought a retail person on way earlier to help us navigate this space, um, that, that definitely would have been something we, we did.

AI assessment note: “it would be, you know, which hires we made and when”

Q Does the criticism grind you? Does it hurt you? Like when I get criticism for whatever, um, happens often, um, uh, it, it hurts me. I'm like sad. Does it hurt you? And how do you develop that thicker skin to respond and reflected in a like bluntly continuous positive way?

A Yeah, no, you're right. It's hard. Like anything, it's like we're human beings. Like there's not, we don't, you know, we, we work hard on things. And when you see that somebody Totally shits on your idea or your product or whatever. Yeah. You have this initial emotional reaction of, uh, to it, but I think what we've had to do and what I've even had to help train our marketing team on is like being able to take a step back and look at everything in context. Like if we post something and we have. 10,000 likes on it. And in the comments, there's five negative comments. 10,000 people said, this is awesome. Five people said they did it. 10,000 to five is a pretty good ratio, no matter how you, how you strike it. Imagine you're a football team in a giant stadium. There's 50,000 people, and they're all screaming and chanting your name, and their faces are painted, and like, they love your team, but then there's a small little section That doesn't like your team. How much should that actually affect the team on the field? Like they don't care. You don't, you don't care about that. Look, you have a whole stadium of people. This is their whole livelihood. They love you. Those couple little people, like you're not going to ever please anybody. So I think in social, you're in this very small thing where you just see a number and you see these comments. And because, uh, the internet, the wa…

AI assessment note: “You have this initial emotional reaction of, uh, to it, but... look at everything in context.”

Q Why do you think it's getting worse, specifically ads? I think we all agree, actually, that the creativity behind ads are getting worse. When you look back at the nineties, though, Mike, I mean, maybe I'm speaking from a UK and European perspective, but ads used to actually be quite creative, quite witty, um, and now they're not. Why?

A I think a big part of it, and this is, you know, a guess, is the current, two things, the current state of data. People are trying to make too many decisions based on data, rather than insight of what's funny. It used to be like people in an agency were saying, oh, this is funny, we should make this. Now it's like, okay, well, let's run this through a bunch of testing and see at what point do people's eyeballs go to this thing, and then, hey, uh, you know, data shows that if we show the pizza in the 1:03 seconds, people's feelings towards hunger are higher. So, you know what I mean? It's, it's letting data shape these things, and it's losing some of that human spirit that I think is what makes things clever. Or funny. Um, so things just become very, what's the word?

AI assessment note: “People are trying to make too many decisions based on data, rather than insight”

Q I wish you could tell my mother that about Chanel, but, um, hopefully she'll listen. Um, when you sit down in a meeting with the team, what are the reasons why Liquid Death resonates from a brand with the people that buy Liquid Death?

A I think there's a bunch of different, there's a bunch of different reasons for different people and why they, why they gravitate towards the brand. You know, I think there's folks who, whether they have some amount of alternative background, like, oh, they grew up listening to punk rock music or, you know, and now they're moms or have families or now, I mean, or they're still in bands and it feels like, oh, finally, A mass thing that is made by someone or people from our culture of, of stuff. Like, they just instantly identify with it. Like, oh, this is awesome. This is cool. I've been very familiar with this since I was young. Like, this is great. And then I think you have the people who, it gives them a little piece of rebellion. It's like, if you, for most things that are cool cans to walk around with, like a Pabst Blue Ribbon, Or, you know, a monster energy. If you want to participate in that brand, you have to like drinking cheap beer, or you have to like drinking sugary energy with 300 milligrams of caffeine. And not everybody likes that. But when you're water, everybody can drink water. So now all of a sudden, anyone who likes drinking water has permission to kind of be a part of this fun thing. Like, I use the example of, uh, the motorcycle brand Harley Davidson.

AI assessment note: “anyone who likes drinking water has permission to kind of be a part of this fun thing”

Q is funny. Um, we put a lot of budget behind it. It doesn't work. You don't want to be a gaming studio in that kind of capital concentration way. Do you split test and do idea like 10 ideas, minimal budget, and then double down on what works? Do you concentrate budget to strong ideas that you just really like internally? How do you think about that? Kind of strategy.

A Well, we don't do any big budget things. Like even the Superbowl commercial that we did, that was the beer commercial with the kids. I think all in, we spent a hundred grand on that commercial when other companies are spending millions of dollars. And, you know, we're able to do that one because, you know, we have a really strong creative team. So it's like, oh, we don't even necessarily need some big fancy director for this thing. It's like, we just need someone Who knows how to shoot this and help arrange it. And then our team can kind of, our creative guys have the power to direct this thing. And it's like, oh, we know how to creatively cut corners. Like, oh, if we film it like this, it's going to be way cheaper than if we try to film it like this. And it's like, we have like good producers that know how to produce things very cheaply so that we're very rarely making big bets. Like, We've never produced a single piece of content that is like a million dollars. Like we've never done something like that. We probably, we might not ever do that. When you have a really good idea, you could film it with an iPhone sometimes, and it'll actually still be good. But when you have an idea that's not very good, you have to start throwing all this production value at it to have something that people care about, right?

AI assessment note: “Well, we don't do any big budget things.”

Q uh, you know, Bluntly where short form is bigger than ever. TikTok has created this rise that's been unprecedented, but it's, you know, parallel with YouTube shorts, Instagram reels. How do you guys sit internally and think about marketing strategy with the rise of different social channels, where you're going to place your emphasis, where you're going to place budget? How do you think about that in changing content landscapes?

A Because we're a startup and, you know, especially in beverage, it's, it's one of the few industries where Four or five big players literally own 98% of the market between Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors. I mean, that is 98% of the beverages you see on a shelf in a store anywhere. So we are up against a massive, massive behemoth. So the only way we can really survive is we have to be ultra efficient with our marketing. For every dollar we spend in marketing, you know, we need to generate X amount of dollars in awareness. So we have a very much, you know, we're very much an earned media approach to marketing. Like we know, Hey, it's not enough. Like if we post a Tik TOK video or if we post an Instagram video, we need that video to be shared without us paying people to share it. It's gotta be that interesting that people are sharing it or that, Way more people are commenting on it, because it's so funny, it actually gets a couple of the real people that don't typically comment, it's actually enough for them to be like, this is fucking amazing, um, which generates the algorithms for the social to show it to more people for free, um, or to get, it's so interesting that press has to write about it, like, you know, Forbes says, hey, did you see the, Tik Tok that liquid death just did with, you know, Martha Stewart or whatever. That's all free eyeballs, free awareness that we…

AI assessment note: “These social platforms are really just vehicles for how these ideas get out there.”

Q Why do you think it's getting worse, specifically ads? I think we all agree, actually, that the creativity behind ads are getting worse. When you look back at the nineties, though, Mike, I mean, maybe I'm speaking from a UK and European perspective, but ads used to actually be quite creative, quite witty, um, and now they're not. Why?

A I think a big part of it, and this is, you know, a guess, is the current, two things, the current state of data. People are trying to make too many decisions based on data, rather than insight of what's funny. It used to be like people in an agency were saying, oh, this is funny, we should make this. Now it's like, okay, well, let's run this through a bunch of testing and see at what point do people's eyeballs go to this thing, and then, hey, uh, you know, data shows that if we show the pizza in the 1:03 seconds, people's feelings towards hunger are higher. So, you know what I mean? It's, it's letting data shape these things, and it's losing some of that human spirit that I think is what makes things clever. Or funny. Um, so things just become very, what's the word?

AI assessment note: “People are trying to make too many decisions based on data, rather than insight”