Liquid Deathのマーケティング戦略
This is Reinamoto's podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about what the future holds at the
intersection of creativity and technology. I am Reinamoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Sometime last year, LinkedIn News published a list of the fastest-growing startups in the US
based on hiring data. Four out of the top five were tech startups, and no surprise there.
The only non-tech company that was growing as fast as those tech startups was a beverage
company called Liquid Death. From campaigns to partnerships and new product launches,
Liquid Death continues to put out initiative after initiative that captures the hearts and
minds of the audience with its quirky, unexpected, and humorous activities that help Liquid Death
defy the odds. Today's guest, Andy Pearson, is the VP of Creative at Liquid Death. Andy and his
very small team of creatives continue to pump out work that is the envy of the industry. Everyone
wants to be a marketer like Liquid Death. I met Andy in 2008 as he was trying to break
into the industry and as one of the winners of a competition called Future Lions at Cannes Lions
International Festival of Creativity. I was then the chief creative officer of an agency called AKQA
and was running the competition. In part one of my conversation with Andy, fast forward 16 years
since I met Andy, we dive into how he and his team of creatives are rewriting the rules of brand
marketing. So let's get started. Andy, so good to see you. You too. Thanks for having me. It's been a while.
So just to get things going, you and I met, I think it was the Future Lions competition.
Gosh, I can't even remember. 2008. 2008. Yeah, it was us and then another team at the Creative
Circus once. School had two out of the five that year. Right. Just for the sake of the listeners,
most of people may not be familiar with the concept of Future Lions. So it was a global
student competition that we, when I was at AKQA, we started, I want to say back in 2006, 2007.
And it was a way for us and Cannes to recognize students to break into the industry because until
then, Cannes never had a category for students. So that was one. And then the other one was that
unlike the regular Cannes, which had real work attached to it, students never had the chance to
produce real work. So we gave a brief, which was to come up with an idea that wasn't possible
five years ago or for the brand of your choosing. So you could choose any brand and you can come up
with your own idea for that given brand. Wow. So that was 16 years ago. And 16 years later,
you're at Liquid Death. And you've been there at Liquid Death for how long now?
A little over three years.
Three years. And in that short amount of time, you've done so much.
Where was the brand when you joined and where do you think it is now?
The idea behind the brand, I would say was fully formed. Mike's vision, the founder and our CEO,
Liquid Deathの進化
he had a very strong sense of what this thing was and what it could be. So I think the idea
with the brand was very fully formed, but we were just, awareness was really low. We were,
at the time, we were not on store shelves. So it was only available through our website.
In these three years, it's, the growth has been explosive and, you know, we're everywhere now,
but to put numbers on it, I guess in a general sense, it was at like a three and now we're at
like 10, but we're hope, you know, we want to go to 50. I think the fun part is that it's a brand
and a business that is constantly evolving. And I think that's been the real great part of it,
is that it feels like every couple of months we're a whole new business and we're a whole
new company. And so there's all kinds of, for me, it's really fun because there's all kinds of
new challenges and new doors that we open up. So it just kind of keeps evolving, getting better.
But it was very funny because when I first joined, we had to get on calls and we had to
start every call off with whoever we're meeting with explaining what liquid death was.
And we're like, liquid death, it's this water in a can. And, you know, we'd have to like go through,
like tiptoe through this whole thing because everyone was super skeptical that they were
getting on this call with liquid death. We'd have people tell us, man, no one's going to
drink water out of an aluminum can. And then people just flat out were like, that's not going to
happen. Which is really funny because the psychology was because we were so ingrained
as consumers to think that bottled water had to be in this clear plastic bottle because the whole
marketing strategy was that you had to see it because that proves that it's pure, right?
But then meanwhile, people are drinking energy drinks with who knows what is in that thing. And
that's, you can't see anything inside, right? And if you pour it out, it's bright green or
whatever. Or, you know, you're drinking soda with all kinds of crazy stuff in it. So, it's very
funny. There was a psychological issue with people that we've been all literally trained for decades
that you don't drink water out of cans. And so, people would tell us that on calls sometimes.
And then after I'd been here maybe a year and a half, I just remember we had a bunch of successes
on the marketing side. We were getting more well-known, all this press, we were really starting
to make noise. And we'd get on calls with people. And then suddenly, it flipped where people would
go like, oh man, water in a can. It's such an obvious idea. I can't believe I didn't think of
that. Which is amazing. We went from like, no one's ever going to drink this to like, it's such an
obvious idea, right? Because we proved we had successes and we started to kind of change the
way that people viewed this whole thing. I've likened it to like the iPad in a way where remember
when first unveiled the iPad, everyone was like, iPad. And they laugh at it and don't know what to
Liquid Deathの啓発的な影響
do with it. And now you cut to today and it's like, oh, every coffee shop in the world has an iPad
sitting on the desk and everyone's parents are using them and artists are using them.
It's like, sometimes these radical ideas feel there's not a framework to understand them because
we've been conditioned a certain way to not accept this new idea. And so, that's been the fun part
is like, over three short years, really seeing like a super dramatic change in the way that
a lot of people view their choices when they go to a grocery store or gas station
and reach for something. So, that's been really gratifying. Yeah. And that shift of perception
from people being skeptical of the product itself to accepting it and then even admitting, man,
why didn't I think of that? Was that a gradual shift or did it happen rather suddenly?
I think, I mean, it felt sudden to me. I remember distinctly being like, oh, wow, people are just
getting on call saying that it's so obvious. But it was only because we'd suddenly had a lot of
really great marketing successes. And so, I think in the microcosm of like the marketing kind of
world, it felt like a kind of dramatic shift. But then, you know, to the general population,
obviously, they're not paying as much attention. So, it's been over time.
Yeah.
But even, I mean, just random people out of parties or out in the world or whatever,
and they express their love for what we're doing. And it's, they'll say things back to me that,
you know, we kind of have been the plastic thing or that whole mission. And it's very cool. And
because I think the question about sudden or not, I think it's sudden for everybody
because Liquid Death is inherently, I think of it as almost an interactive product. Because,
right, the first time that we hear this story again and again, and it's like the first time
someone sees it or hears it, they assume it's this energy drink or beer or whatever it is and
don't want to touch it. And finally, eventually, somebody will either order a water at a concert
or someone will give it to them. And they'll be like, oh, it's water. And they have a really
immediate change of mind in the way that they view Liquid Death. So, I think for everyone,
that shift is really sudden. And it's kind of very personal in a way that you don't have an
experience with a packaged good, right? That like totally shifts your perception. And then you're
like, oh, this is kind of cool. Yeah, you have this really funny experience where by the time
you finished drinking it, then you go to, instead of throwing it away, you go to recycle it, right?
And so, everyone has this very, they're like, oh, instead of throwing it away, I just recycle it.
Oh, right. Plastic, bad. And so, you have this really kind of, within the five minutes or
whatever that you're drinking the product for the first time, you really have a mind shift. And so,
I think for everybody, it's very sudden. It just kind of is dependent on when they have that
Liquid Deathのキャラクター重視
experience. This is a bit of an unintuitive and maybe even contradictory question because what
you do at Liquid Death, the way Liquid Death does marketing is anything but typical, right? But
what's the typical process that you go through to come up with such atypical marketing activities?
I think, first of all, we have a very small tight-knit team that it's just a few of us that
really get the brand. And a lot of us don't have backgrounds in advertising or marketing to begin
with. I'm probably like the most typical advertising person here, to be honest. I guess the way that
I've understood it is more about, I talked about this some, it's like Liquid Death is a character
rather than a brand. And what I mean by that is when we're working together, we have this idea of
this kind of character of Liquid Death in our head. And we don't talk about it quite in that
terms, but it helps frame my thinking. And so, then it becomes this question of looking whether
we have like a partnership we're doing or whether it's some campaign objective or whatever. The
question almost becomes like, what would Liquid Death do in that situation? And so, it becomes
less on like, oh, we can, as a brand and company, we could go off and do all these different things.
We have all these other, it's wider in a way where we go, well, what would Liquid Death do?
And we're often searching for like a single answer. And I always say, it's like, there's usually a
right answer, which I don't think you hear in, I don't think anyone in like creative advertising
says that, at least I've ever heard. But for us, it's like, what is the single right answer
in this situation that Liquid Death would do? And so, we're just trying to figure that out.
And because we're ingrained in this character that we're playing all the time, it becomes pretty easy.
Like in the same way that if you're writing a TV show, your given character is, it's like, okay,
we have this character, we know the character that we're writing for. And the plot line is,
this happens, they get evicted from their apartment or whatever it is. And so, as a
writer on that show, you go, okay, I know how they would react to that. I know what would happen.
And so, I'm just, that's what I'm going to write. And so, sort of, that's almost the way that we
work is more like, what would Liquid Death do? And then we're just writing that thing.
So, it becomes, the process is usually very fast. You don't spend a lot of time on that. And then
the other benefit of looking at it that way is it becomes more objective rather than subjective.
Where a lot of times, if you have a deck of 20 ideas, everybody has like their kind of favorite
thing over here. Oh, they want to do this. They've always wanted to try this thing out,
or they like this joke or whatever. And so, for us, when we're just trying to answer, well,
what would Liquid Death do? Everybody in the room can point to something and be like,
yeah, that's what Liquid Death would do. So, it kind of takes away all the subjectivity in a
プロセスの改善
way that allows us to work much more quickly than I think you normally would.
So, that's kind of like a little bit of how we get there. And then on top of that, like I said,
we control the whole process from start to finish. So, we don't just have do the creative. We also
have a production company in house, people. So, we go and we produce everything ourselves.
I've started to co-direct a lot of stuff myself just kind of out of necessity where it's just
like, it's easier if we stand behind the cameras rather than someone between the camera and us,
right? And then we do all the editing and all the posts and everything in-house as well.
So, we really get to see it from start to finish, which means that we have control. And then we also
learn all the steps along the way. And like I was kind of saying before, there's this, I see the
idea as this much longer form continuum. Every little step of the way is a chance to continue
to make this thing better and better and better along the way. So, it's kind of a process that
we leave intentionally loose to let us keep adding to and like letting the ideas come from
rather than have like a fully locked script that we hand over to a director and they're off and
running and now it's this immutable thing that we can't improve on because that's the thing we're
making. And it's like, well, let's keep making it better literally every moment along the way
we can keep building it. So, in some ways, ideas come very quickly. And then what happens after
that is, I don't know, it's kind of more improvisational in some senses where we're
still playing with stuff all along the way. Yeah. I would imagine for you as the head of
creative internally at Liquid Death to earn the trust of the team around you, including say the CEO
who also is a creative by trade. What was that process like? How did that happen?
Because I would assume, you know, it wasn't like, hey, day one, Andy, you're the creative director,
do whatever you want. Yeah. Mike has a very, very clear vision. When I came in, I was like,
I'm just going to be a student here and try to understand what this thing is, because I knew from
the outside seemed like a remarkable idea from the outside. And then when you really dive into it,
as I've been lucky to do, you realize you're like, oh, there's so much nuance. And again,
I'm not trying to like self aggrandize, but like a lot of brilliance behind this thing that we're
doing. And so I was just like, I want to come in and learn. And I had this idea. I remember
thinking, I was like, it'll take me about like a month to really understand it. And then I'll be
good and off running and I'll be all set. And I remember seven months in, I was like, I think I
get it now. I think I finally get everything. It took me, I was half a year off schedule,
but because there was so much stuff to learn from constantly that it took me so long.
There's so much nuance. And like I said, going back to the character thing,
ブランドの深さとユーモア
if it was a brand, it would be like, cool, this is how we talk. This is, you know, who our spirit
animal is. And we do this and we do this and then we do this. There's so much more depth and different
nooks and crannies to just, again, like an interesting character on a television show
that has a lot of different places that they can go. Characters are nuanced and flawed and
interesting and they have all these pieces to themselves, which is what makes them interesting.
And so that's where we've allowed Liquid Death to go is to go on all these spaces that don't
neatly fit into this very orchestrated idea of a brand. When I started, like I said, I was trying
to take notes and I would either like stuff I'd picked up when we'd post stuff to our social
accounts or talking with Mike or whatever, I had this brand book I was kind of just building in
Google Slides of all these rules and things I was learning along the way. So anytime I'd get
something, I'd note it down really fast because I was just trying to build for myself to try to
codify all this stuff together. And I hated this document.
I would look through it and I would just be like, this sucks. I hate this. Because once you take
these really interesting ideas and then you put them on paper and they just become very inert.
And they don't have that living juice to them. And I tried my darndest for months
to build this brand book just kind of for myself and just hated it. And so I eventually,
I realized I was like, well, why isn't this working? And it was like, well, because
we can't contain all this stuff in like a simplified pithy brand book. And even if we
tried to, once it's on paper, it just becomes lightful. And so I just gave up on it. And
once I gave up on it, I think that's where I started to understand it more. And if that
makes sense, I think I gave it up around probably seven months in or so. And so that's what's been
fun is it's been this journey of understanding this thing that both we're building and then
outside the community around is building. And I always say, I feel like sometimes more of an
anthropologist than anything else because we're kind of uncovering these little interesting
things along the way. And so I think going back to your question about getting trust, I think
the fun is that we're all in this together and we're kind of all, we're testing stuff out and
uncovering things. And that's what the real joy is behind the brand and for working on it. And
I think for the public too, is that we're kind of continuously finding new expressions of it.
Yeah.
That's what makes it fun. And then I think we're just, also part of it is we're just trying to
make ourselves laugh because if we can genuinely like make something funny, that's genuinely funny,
not just like advertising funny, but genuinely funny. We can make ourselves laugh. I would say
it's like the oldest technology we have is humor. It's like the ability to elicit, and this is going
ブランドの新しい視点
to sound really cold and calculated. I mean it that way, but also I don't, is like when you,
humor necessitates that two people look at the same thing or hear the same thing and agree to
that being true, right? The humor can't exist without two people agreeing to something. And so
if you can share a laugh with somebody, you've had a really powerful emotional experience with
something that's literally a visceral emotional experience that you can't contain. It comes out
of you. And then you both share this connection because you both looked at something and said
like, yes, that is real. So I think like both from an outside perspective and internally,
it's like, we're just trying to bring humor into people's lives. We're trying to make people laugh.
When we do that, it's a really kind of wildly powerful experience that a lot of advertisers
and marketers have kind of forgotten how powerful that can really be. I see. I see.
So that was part one of my conversation with Andy Pearson, VP of creative at Liquid Death.
He's got over 80,000 followers on LinkedIn, making him a bit of an influencer in the marketing and
branding industry. But if you look at the profile photo of him on his LinkedIn page,
it shows his portrait. Half of his face is covered with very long beard. And then half,
the other half of his face is shaven, not cleanly, but much shorter.
And LinkedIn as a professional network is not necessarily the place to be playful,
to show a photo of yourself being goofy. But he's not afraid to show who he is,
even on a very formal platform like LinkedIn. And if you don't follow him already on LinkedIn,
I definitely encourage you to do so because you get to know who he is from the platform and from
the things that he posts, either about his career and or what he's doing at Liquid Death.
So the three key takeaways from part one of this conversation with Andy were number one,
brand as a character. Number two, don't market, but entertain. And number three,
the power of small ideas. Number one, brand as a character. This point that Andy made,
brand as a character, came out when I asked him about the way he thinks about Liquid Death as a
brand. And when you ask such a question to brand marketers and creatives, you tend to get a list
of traits of the brand that we're talking about. But in this case, he doesn't necessarily think of
Liquid Death as a brand, but he thinks of it as a character. And even though there's a minor
difference between brand versus a character, because brand has traits that make and define
the brand. In this case, he thinks about Liquid Death as a character because he asks himself and
his team, if Liquid Death was a character, would it do this or would it do that? And he uses that
as a way to measure if the idea is far enough, the idea is crazy enough, if the idea is unexpected
enough to engage and involve the audience. So first and foremost, this very specific way of
framing the brand of Liquid Death as a character is asking this question, what would Liquid Death
ブランドとしてのキャラクター
as a character say or do? And then he pushes, is it crazy enough? But not in a way that might harm
others. So point number one, brand as a character, I think it's a very subtle but definitely useful
device for us to think about when you are doing brand marketing. Point number two,
don't market but entertain. So this is an extension of the first point that I made.
Andy doesn't approach marketing as marketing. His advice to marketers is to stop marketing
and start making stuff people love. One of the missions of Liquid Death as a brand is,
the way they phrase it, is death to plastics. So when Liquid Death started as a company almost 10
years ago, one of the important things that they focused on was the wasteful consumption of
beverage bottled in plastic bottles. And 99%, if not almost 100% of water sold on the market comes
in a plastic bottle because you can see through the transparent water inside the bottle and that
is the product you're buying. So the visibility of the water makes it more marketable and more
likely to encourage the consumer to buy that particular product, in this case, water.
Instead, what Liquid Death did as a brand was to turn that into something completely different,
which is this aluminum can. And you can't even see the inside of the can. And on top of that,
they printed this very unexpected brand name, which is Liquid Death, and then certain stories
that they have as a brand onto the can. And if you happen to take a can of Liquid Death in your hand,
I encourage you to read it because it's not typical marketing copy that you would read on
packaging, but it's actually funny, quirky story that they printed. So even something as minute
as a piece of copy or text on the package, they approach it as entertainment, not as marketing.
持続可能性とエンターテインメント
Another important point that I would make is that sustainability as a topic is a serious topic,
and many brands do approach that with a certain degree of seriousness and even education. But
way Liquid Death approaches sustainability as an initiative and as a topic, again, as entertainment,
and Andy proves that sustainability as a corporate initiative can be entertaining. You don't need to
be preachy about it. The final key takeaway from this conversation is the power of small ideas.
The days of doing big, splashy campaigns and wishing for a home run a few times a year are
long gone. Instead, Andy is aiming to get a single every time. Just to illustrate that point, a recent
example of a campaign that he did was a collaboration between Liquid Death and Yeti, the
famous outdoor equipment company that's famous for coolers. So recently, Liquid Death and Yeti
collaborated to introduce casket cooler. So this casket is a massive cooler box in the form of a
casket, which usually houses a dead person. But instead, it's a cooler with ice that you can store
your drinks. And an idea like this is not necessarily a million dollar campaign with a lot
of media buys, where you try to spread the word by buying media. But instead, that somebody paid
Liquid Deathのマーケティング戦略
$68,000 to pay and buy this casket. Now, it's pretty difficult to imagine your audience willing
to pay to be part of your marketing campaign and pay this kind of money to get that is different
from the main product that you're buying, in this case, water. So can anybody be a marketer like
Liquid Death? The answer is yes, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to do. You just have to be
willing to commit to creativity to the extent that Liquid Death is. It's easier said than done.
So to summarize the three key takeaways from my conversation with Andy Pearson, the VP of Creative
at Liquid Death. Key takeaway number one, brand as a character. Key takeaway number two, don't market
but entertain. And key takeaway number three, the power of small ideas. If you're listening to this
on Spotify, there's a Q&A field. So please do send us your questions and comments. And if you like our
podcast, please leave us a five-star rating. We'd be so grateful. In the next episode, we talk about
the importance of doing it to the max, not just as a brand, but as an individual building your career.
I'm Reina Moro, and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
