Insight
Cessario: Brand Is the Moat Because Giant Corporations Can't Create Brands
“Brand is the moat, and I think it's hard for people to wrap their head around what that means, but there's a lot of Sort of historical precedents to show that that's the case... It shows that giant companies are really bad at creating brands. Like they, there'…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Sponsored action sports athletes do not actually drink energy drinks
“The reality was, it was all bullshit. Like, these guys are actual athletes. Like, they have trainers. They will not be drinking this much caffeine and sugar.”
Insight
Cessario: Action sports entertainment used by Red Bull is a limited genre
“All we are doing is we just want to make legitimate entertainment, not marketing. And it's a tried and true Approach that Red Bull was very successful with, Monster was very successful with, where they blur the lines between an entertainment company and a beve…”
Opinion
Cessario: The era of brands lasting 50 years is over
“Yeah, I mean, I do think that the era of brands lasting 50 years are no more. Because of the internet and technology.”
Insight
Cessario: Early alcohol brands succeed through bartenders and tastings, not brand marketing
“What I realized then was, with alcohol, so much of it isn't marketing. It's like this, Getting it into like the cool craft cocktail bars and getting bartenders on board and doing tastings. Like it wasn't really at that level about, you didn't have the money fo…”
Insight
Cessario: To make teens think a product is cool, market to twenty-somethings
“If you want teens to think something's cool, you actually market it to people in their twenties.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Liquid Death made $100K first-month sales on $2.5K ad spend
“I think the first month, we only spent maybe 2500 bucks in paid media to generate a 100,000 dollars in sales.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Whole Foods was the only retailer willing to stock Liquid Death
“It was the only retailer who would even give us a chance. I mean, we had talked to, I don't know, like a broker for Target, and they were like, ah, yeah, guys, we don't think this is the right fit for mom. And, like, any of these other big retailers, like, wou…”
Assertion Supported
Cessario: Liquid Death is tracking significantly more than $100M in revenue
“Oh, yeah. Significantly more.”
Insight
Cessario: Challenger brands fail when copying big corporate sponsorship playbooks
“Like if we start trying to play The same game as the big guys, where it's like, oh, let's go sign a two million dollar athlete endorsement deal, or let's go wrap a NASCAR for a million dollars. Like, that stuff is not gonna move the needle for you, and you're …”
Assertion Supported
Cessario: Monster Energy Made Canned 'Tour Water' for Warped Tour Musicians
“I saw they had these, you know, they were all drinking these cans of Monster Energy, but really small, on the bottom of the can, it said, Tour water. And they were like, yeah, because I thought they were drinking energy drinks, and like, no, no, no, like, this…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Liquid Death's 'sell your soul' campaign was originally pitched to Callaway
“What's funny is it didn't get made. And then, whatever it was, 10 years later, I finally made the idea myself for Liquid Death, and it's one of our most successful things that we've done.”
Insight
Cessario: Bottled or canned water only makes economic sense packaged at source
“When you create a bottled water, or a canned water, the only way it makes economic sense is you have to basically bottle it at the source.”
Assertion Supported
Cessario: Aluminum can makers required minimum production runs of 200,000 units
“The minimum, minimum you can produce is, like, 200,000. And so you're talking about a quarter million dollars or 150 grand, something like that, just to do the bare minimum run of a canned product.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Liquid Death produced its first viral video ad for $1,500
“No, we made this whole thing for 1500 bucks. My wife, Carly, edited the whole thing. She actually edited almost all of the early liquid death video stuff.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Liquid Death Received Distributor Inbound Before Producing Inventory
“I literally had a seven 11 franchisee from Michigan who said, hey, I own three seven 11. How do I get this in my stores? I had the biggest non-alc distributor in New York called Big Geyser. One of their people reached out saying, hey, can I talk to a sales rep…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cessario: Liquid Death Transatlantic Shipping Costs Surged From $3,500 to $12,000
“Literally over the course of two months, ocean freight costs went up like five X or something insane. And all of a sudden we started getting killed on ocean freight costs in the back half of 2021 where, you know, we might have been spending You know, 3500 doll…”
Assertion Supported
Cessario: Liquid Death Generated About $45M Top-Line Revenue in 2021
“In 20, 20 20, 21, I think we, you know, we did I think it was like 45 million in like gross top line revenue.”
