The Ledger
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Liquid Death outsells Monster's canned water 4-to-1 in a major southern chain
“And, you know, we just looked in a recent in a convenience store, a big chain in the south, and like, even at more money, Liquid Debt is out selling it like four to one.”
Cessario: Negative initial reactions often indicate true innovation
“When you kind of know you're on to something, when people sort of have a really emotional, even if negative reaction to it at first, you know that you're probably in good territory. The stuff when you come up with something and people you talk to say, oh yeah,…”
Cessario: Liquid Death reached #1 flavored sparkling brand in convenience store channel
“And then by the end of last year, so that was like not even, maybe a year and a half of the, of that product being on the market, we were the number one flavored sparkling brand in total dollars in the entire convenience store channel.”
Cessario: Liquid Death would have died in every traditional focus group
“Clinical focus groups, I don't think really work. Like you can learn a little bit from them, but it's, liquid death would have died in every focus group.”
Berman: Liquid Death has no invention, succeeding solely on branding and packaging
“I mean, liquid death is a great example of this, right? It's water. It's water. There's no invention in this. It is entirely in the packaging and the marketing and the branding”
Kawasaki: My success came from evangelizing great products, not fixing bad ones
“Guy's golden touch is whatever is gold, guy touches. So I touch Macintosh, and I touch Canva, I would touch Liquid Death. It's because it's easy to evangelize great stuff, and it's hard to evangelize crap.”
Amoruso: Invested in Liquid Death at $50M Valuation, Now Over $1B
“So I invested in Liquid Death when it was, like, worth, like, fifty million. And they're, like, over a billion now.”
Cessario: 7-Eleven franchisees DMed Liquid Death before product was manufactured
“We actually had seven, 11 franchisees DMing us, Hey, how do we get this in our stores? We had a distributor from New York say, Hey, can we talk to a salesperson?”
Plain still water accounts for only 30% of Liquid Death's retail sales
“Like, I think right now, if you look at our scan sales for the last year, just plain still water is like, Maybe 30% of our total sales.”
Cessario: Without ad spend, the product itself must be the marketing
“All the shareability and marketing firepower has to be in the product itself. It can't be just a, yeah, that's an okay product. And then you have to spend to build something interesting around it. It's like, no, the product itself has to be the marketing in a …”
Liquid Death gained 80,000 followers from a $1,500 video before having product
“We made a Facebook page for liquid death long before we ever had real product. And we made a 1500 dollar funny video that got a couple million views. The page had like 80,000 followers.”
Liquid Death uses Saturday Night Live as its content guardrail
“Hey, we're writing Saturday Night Live skits, and that's how we've always used the guardrails, like mainstream broadcast television show, mass Consumption across America. It's been around 40 years for a reason. It's like, if Saturday Night Live would do it, we…”
Cessario: Massive marketing ROI requires entertainment that does not feel like ads
“You don't get that kind of ROI without doing something that almost doesn't feel like marketing because nobody wants to share run of the mill marketing. No one wants to talk about it. Most people skip it. You have to truly kind of entertain people and make some…”
Cessario: Healthy Products Are Rarely Marketed in a Funny, Cool Way
“Healthy products are really never marketed in a funny, cool way. It's always unhealthy stuff that's really funny, like beer and candy and junk food and all of that.”
Cessario: Liquid Death raised its initial $150K seed from former agency bosses
“So then I went out trying to raise just from Former bosses I had that were, you know, executive creative directors, probably pulling in 350 plus grand a year. Like they had, they could write a check for five grand on a, you know, as a gamble. And I always had …”
Cessario: Liquid Death's logo was drawn by Mr. Pickles creator Will Carsola
“So then he drew the first skull that's our now logo as just like, hey, I drew this funny skull. I thought it could be cool.”
Whole Foods launched Liquid Death nationally right as COVID-19 lockdowns began
“When Whole Foods finally launched us nationally in March of 2020, literally the day after the lockdown started was when we were supposed to load into Whole Foods.”
Cessario: Liquid Death requires almost all employees to watch 'Stay Tuned'
“There's this great movie that I think is underappreciated that we make almost all do liquid death employees watch called stay tuned.”
Cessario: Liquid Death generated just under $3M in revenue in 2019
“Well, 2019 was year one. We did like just under Three million.”
Cessario: Liquid Death flavored sparkling water hit #2 on Amazon within three months
“Within three months, we were like the number two flavored sparkling brand on Amazon.”
Cessario: Liquid Death iced tea became #1 tea on Amazon within months
“But again, launch T goes on Amazon within a few months where the number one T on Amazon”
Cessario: Liquid Death sold out initial supply in one month, leaving it stockless for two months
“We sold out of all the product we had in the first month and we thought it would last like three months. So we actually were sold out, had no product for almost two full months because it took so long to get more from Austria.”