When considering who to learn from in the marketing space, one brand stands out: Liquid Death.
They’ve mastered the art of turning healthy beverages into a sought-after brand, making them ideal marketing mentors.
But they’ve done more than reinvent water — in many ways, they’ve reinvented marketing, as well.
I spoke with Greg Fass, Liquid Death’s VP of Marketing, to learn how he’s cultivated an anti-marketing approach, why some of his favorite campaigns involve Tony Hawk and Martha Stewart, and his belief that Liquid Death’s success comes down to understanding people aren’t “brainless consumers of products”.
How Liquid Death Wins at Anti-Marketing — And What You Can Learn from Them
1. Don’t overcomplicate your target audience.
Most target personas are awfully specific: “Marketing Melvin likes long walks on the beach, reading true-crime thrillers, watching videos on TikTok, and is interested in budget-friendly ways to grow his e-commerce startup.”
And there’s power in identifying a few key characteristics of your buyer – but it’s also inherently limiting.
Fass believes there are plenty of reasons why someone might connect with your brand.
For instance, Fass believes his target audience could be any of the following:
- Someone who likes entertainment and humor
- Someone who appreciates the sustainability angle (i.e. “bringing death to plastic”)
- Someone who acknowledges that Liquid Death is the reason their child is finally excited to drink water
- A sober-curious individual who wants to have a fun-looking drink while at a party
- People who like skulls
I’ll add one just for fun: Thirsty people.
Granted, water arguably has the biggest demographic of any product out there. But his point still holds true: Get too hyper-focused on building up your ‘target persona’ and you could be missing out on all the different reasons someone might connect with your brand first – and your product second.
2. People aren’t brainless consumers.
Here’s a fun fact: At Liquid Death, they don’t use the word consumer. Ever.
Instead, they have a team called “human insights”.
Fass is proud to work against the mindset that people are just “brainless consumers” whose sole purpose on Earth is to consume products. (Yep – that’s a direct quote.)
Instead, he says, “At Liquid Death, I’m proud that we think of our audiences as people. And when you think of them as humans, you understand they’ll get a piece of copy that isn’t straightforward, or jokes other brands are afraid to make. They’re intelligent, and have a sense of humor.”
It’s a philosophy that has served them well. Just consider the commercial where Martha Stewart is a serial killer chopping off hands to make candles — not exactly something that would go over well in a standard marketing pitch.
Liquid Death has done more than reinvent the better-for-you beverage category — they’ve reinvented marketing, as well.
Embracing their anti-marketing approach can help you discover fresh and novel ways of connecting better with, well, other humans.
3. People will buy your product if you can make them laugh.
A Liquid Death marketing meeting sounds like the beginning of a very odd joke: The lead singer of a punk band, an ex-Onion writer, a co-creator of adult cartoon Mr. Pickles, and a former competitive snowboarder all walk into a conference room.
Fass says it resembles an SNL writers room more than a marketing department.
“We’re not just a brand that’s a funny brand,” Fass tells me. “We put out true comedy. That’s the bar for us. I’m proud to work on projects that compete with real entertainment that exists on the internet, because that’s why most people are on the internet in the first place. Not to buy a product.”
You’ve got to hand it to them: It’s not easy to create a hilarious ad for water or iced tea. But it works because Liquid Death’s content isn’t really about the product. The product is an aside to grandiosity and playfulness. That’s what they’re selling.
Like their recent campaign where a fan could win a $400K fighter jet along with six months of free hangar space (pilot not included); or Ozzy Ozbourne reminding youths not to snort Liquid Death’s new hydration powder.
For Fass, it’s simple: “When you can make someone laugh, they’re more likely to give your product a try.”
4. Don’t post if you don’t have anything worthwhile to say.
Fass hates the conventional wisdom that you should “always be posting.” For Fass, an obsession with quantity can very quickly diminish good content.
At Liquid Death, they won’t post for two weeks if they don’t feel they have anything worthwhile to say.
“There’s celebrities and hilarious meme accounts on social media — that’s why people are on there,” he says, “The bar on social is very high. So you need to be competing at that highest level with everything you do.”
He also tells me he can’t believe when big brands push aside social as a “nice-to-have” or something for the interns to lead.
“You should be putting your top brains in creative on social,” he fervently believes. “There’s a feeling like, ‘Well, it’s just social.’ At Liquid Death, social is a major priority for our entire brand and creative team.”
5. Humor comes down to tension.
Fass believes there’s a certain comedic science behind Liquid Death’s success, and it’s relatively simple: Tension.
In other words — two things that shouldn’t go together, but do.
Case-in-point: A healthy beverage with a skull on it; e.l.f. Cosmetics and black metal corpse paint; plush sea creature stuffed animals that have been heavily mutilated by single-use plastic.
You get my drift.
“What it comes down to is we have these ideas that other people would never try,” Fass says. “They’d think, ‘no way a client would ever approve of this’, or ‘our CEO will shut it down’. Those ideas never get to see the light of day — but at Liquid Death, we’ve created a culture where we celebrate those ideas and go forward with them.”
And you know,“ he adds with a grin, ”Sometimes we end up winning the internet that day.”
