For former advertising executive Mike Cessario, a desire to execute disruptive, creative campaigns, but have clients lean toward a less disruptive option, motivated him to create a business where he could focus this vision on one entity, explains Marisa Bertha, chief strategy officer at Liquid Death, Los Angeles.

“In the same time period, he loved music, he loved metal, he loved going to concerts, and he constantly kind of saw, like, why do all the brands like junk food or soda or beer, why do they get to have all the fun with marketing and branding?,” Bertha says. “And why do they get to work with all the celebrities and spend millions of dollars on those deals?”

This served as the launching point for Liquid Death, a healthy beverage company that Cessario founded in 2019 and currently serves as CEO.

Initially operating in the canned water space ― still and sparkling ― Liquid Death also has lines in canned iced tea and drink mixer segments, making it a growing presence in the healthy hydration space. Given the maturity of these non-alcohol beverage categories, Bertha explains that Liquid Death leaned into branding and marketing to help the brand stand out.

“I think it’s really a testament to what differentiates Liquid Death, it’s the staying power of the brand; it’s the conversation starter when you’re holding a can; it’s the fun interactions that people have, whether it’s at home or out socializing,” Bertha says. “And I think there’s something to that, and it’s the branding, it’s the can.

“And we love that there’s also kind of the playful juxtaposition of there’s nothing harmful in the liquid, but we have really bold branding,” she continues. “And I think people get that and they like that because the brand is fun. And that resonates in the occasions in which people crack open a cold one of Liquid Death.”

Bertha explains that the company’s decision to differentiate itself through its branding versus packaging or ingredients was it wanting to put the focus on what its team does best.

“We feel really strongly that we’re doing it in a kind of new way of marketing and connecting with consumers in an authentic way, and doing it really fun and humorous, which candidly is not often the voice or tone of other companies,” she says. “So for us, we differentiate on marketing. Some brands try to differentiate on functionality or vessel, but we feel like those are harder to own, and you have to spend a lot of time, of marketing dollars for that, but you’re actually marketing for other companies, too, if you’re talking about a functional benefit or a form factor. So for us, we’re going to focus on what we feel like we do best, which is marketing.”

Among Liquid Death’s iconic marketing collaborations include Corpse Paint, a limited-edition coffin-shaped makeup kit crafted with e.l.f. Cosmetics and the Freeze to Death Cold Plunge made in collaboration with high-end brand Plunge to create the world’s largest ice-cold can of Liquid Death.

That marketing also is highly tied into Liquid Death’s packaging, which Bertha notes that the messaging on the cans and secondary packaging are executed with much intentionality.

“Young brands have to use every asset as an opportunity to connect with consumers,” she says. “For us, we want the can and the case to be a billboard for the brand because everything we have to use has to work and has to give outsize return on the marketing side. So [there’s] a lot of intentionality around the script on the can … [the] copy on the can, copy on the case, unique custom art on one of the panels.

“And it’s all of that work, all of that design that really stops people in their tracks when they’re shopping, because you and I both know it is so hard to really get in the mindset and the consideration set of consumers, that’s why marketers spend, in some cases, billions of dollars,” Bertha continues. “We don’t have billions of dollars in marketing budget, far cry from that, a sliver of that. And so, every asset that we have from the can, from the case, from all the work, that content that we do on social media and mass media really has to bat 1,000 and the packaging and the branding is working because we’re able to stop people in their tracks.”

This bold approach has helped Liquid Death outperform in the categories and segments it plays in, Bertha notes.

“In terms of total category performance, Liquid Death continues to outperform versus the total category across flavored sparkling and tea,” Bertha explains. “That’s really a testament of outpacing the category growth rates pretty significantly across flavored sparkling and tea.

“I think some people often forget that we’re the No. 9 flavored sparkling company in the country,

as well as the No. 9 iced tea company and strong double-digit growth relative to the peer set, not just in that Top 10, but total category,” she continues. “So, it feels really good to be delivering what consumers want, and that’s confirmed by outsized performance and results in the categories in which we play.”

Bertha admits that she has been blown away by the company’s success from its line extensions of Flavored Sparkling and Iced Tea.

“Seventy percent of our retail scan sales now come from flavored sparkling and tea, which is mind-blowing when those are so young in terms of us being in marketplace,” Bertha shares. “This is only year three for us in brick and mortar for iced tea, well, all retail for iced tea, and [now] year four for flavored sparkling [in brick and mortar].

“That really is a testament to, we have been given the permission by all of our fans and consumers to enter new categories and not just enter, but be super, super successful,” she continues. “There are so many young brands out there that like won’t even scratch the surface of being a Top 50, Top 20 brand. In the third category we launched, we were a Top 10 brand already in year one. And obviously, I mentioned to you, that’s iced tea, we’re the No. 9 iced tea in the country. This is what is so special, so differentiated about Liquid Death.”

Healthy drive

Although marketing serves as the differentiator for Liquid Death, its products are designed to serve the macro trends that are driving consumers today: health and wellness and sustainability.

Bertha highlights data points of consumers wanting to make better eating and drinking decisions as well as more consumers drinking less or fully abstaining from alcohol consumption as trends that are here to stay.

“We are an alternative to drinking alcohol in social occasions, whether it’s a house party, whether it’s at a bar,” she says. “Certainly, you can see Liquid Death out at performances with many of our partnerships on the live music and entertainment front. Great relationship and partnership with Live Nation as the

exclusive water sold at all of their venues and festivals.

“We were the No. 1 product sold at Lollapalooza, more so of our beverage distributor that sells beer and hard seltzers,” Bertha continues. “So, I think it’s a perfect example of Liquid Death being consumed in social occasions when people are having fun, no stigma and choosing to drink us in those occasions.”

Consumers can achieve this through the brands Mountain Water, the Sparkling Water line as well as Iced Tea portfolio. As the name suggests, Mountain Water is just 100% mountain water, and was the initial launch product in 2019 and entered brick-and-mortar stores in 2020.

Liquid Death’s Sparkling Water line contains only 2 grams of sugar in each 12-ounce serving and launched in 2022. Comprised of Severed Lime, Cherry Obituary, Squeezed to Death, Mango Chainsaw and Grave Fruit, the line added Killer Cola, Doctor Death and Rootbeer Wrath at select retailers this year. The new varieties rolled out nationwide in April.

Bertha calls attention to Liquid Death’s social media activity and engagement as influence for the release of these soda-flavored sparkling waters.

“[W]e kept seeing a theme arise with, ‘oh, I’m drinking Cherry Obituary or Severed Lime or Squeezed to Death as a soda replacement,” Bertha explains. “We repeatedly kept hearing that from our customers,

even our Amazon reviews, same story. So when we thought about innovation and flavored sparkling, of course, we did sophisticated quality and quantity research, but we also listened to our consumers.

“If they’re drinking our flavored sparkling as a soda replacement, we thought let’s lean in further into the modern soda trend, but deliver it the Liquid Death way, which is in the flavored sparkling category, the same calorie and sugar count as our existing lineup, and making sure that we could deliver on taste and flavor,” she continues. “And the response has been incredible.”

The connection between Liquid Death and its community was created with trust from the company that consumers know what they want, and vice versa that consumers trust Liquid Death’s capabilities.

“I think it’s just one of those testaments that the consumers give you the license to enter and push innovation in categories, but they also trust that we’re able to deliver that healthy, better-for-you alternative because we’ve proven that in our existing lineup of flavors and flavored sparkling and our existing lineup in iced tea,” Bertha says.

Liquid Death’s Iced Tea line is the brand’s 2023 extension in the healthy beverage space and its initial entry beyond the bottled water category. Featuring 4 grams of sugar in each 12-ounce serving as well as vitamins B12 and B6, the Iced Tea is comprised of six flavors:

• Dead Billionaire, a tea lemonade variety
• Rest in Peach, a peach-flavored tea
• Blueberry Buzzsaw, a blueberry-flavored tea
• Green Guillotine, a green tea variety
• Slaughter Berry, a berry-flavored tea
• Sweet Reaper, the brand’s newest entry, a sweet tea

Bertha recalls when senior leadership gathered together following the successful launch of Sparkling Water, which initially was released in only three varieties, and discussing whether to enter a new beverage category, also with plans to launch with just three SKUs. To make this move, Liquid Death identified some key tenants that must be met before entering a new category.

“

“And we love that there’s also kind of the playful juxtaposition of there’s nothing harmful in the liquid, but we have really bold branding. And I think people get that and they like that because the brand is fun. And that resonates in the occasions in which people crack open a cold one of Liquid Death.”

– Marisa Bertha, chief strategy officer at Liquid Death

“The first is, is it a massive, massive non-alc beverage category? Iced tea is,” Bertha explains. “Can we be bringing a product to market that is better-for-you and differentiated from the current offering out there? … [T]he ice tea category, unfortunately, has tons of sugar, tons of calories, lots of artificial ingredients on that nutritional label.

“For us, it was critically important to be able to get a liquid that we felt would hit home with taste and flavor, but did not actually compromise on what was really important to us, which was low-cal, low-sugar,” she continues. “And we knocked it out of the ballpark in those early samples. And then the last thing is, do we feel like the category, can we be disruptive?”

Noting that the iced tea category could benefit from the interjection of novelty, the size of the category, and the company’s ability to deliver on health mandates, Bertha says hitting on all three of those pillars made Liquid Death’s entry a natural step.

Much like Liquid Death’s Sparkling Water portfolio, the company has utilized its innovative efforts to expand the Iced Tea line. Launching at the same time as the soda-flavored sparkling waters, Liquid Death released Sweet Reaper earlier this year and is rolling out the variety to retailers now.

“[S]weet tea is just such a top seller,” Bertha says. “It wasn’t in our initial lineup, but we look at like what is super successful in just syndicated data, and sweet tea was missing from our lineup in Iced Tea. We have high hopes that that Sweet Reaper will become a top seller just because we know it is in the broader iced tea category and again, we’re delivering something that is just so delicious. The liquid is so, so good that it’s hard to believe, you know, it’s low-cal and sugar.”

Yet, Liquid Death’s disruptive approach has expanded traditional beverage and extended into the beverage adjacent drink mix category with the 2024 release of Death Dust.

“That was one of those things where we viewed it as like a low risk category to test, you know, there’s, it’s a big category, it’s beverage adjacent, it’s high margin, but also not as expensive from a R&D

perspective of versus beverage, so for us, Death Dust has been super fun,” Bertha says.

To support the roll out, Liquid Death developed a campaign with Grammy-winning singer, songwriter and media personality Ozzy Osbourne, which showed abilities to connect with a range of demographics.

“We did the collab with Ozzy Osbourne, which was of course hilarious, but also reached an older consumer and younger consumers,” Bertha says. “We loved the comments that they were like, ‘who is that guy?’ So it was really one of those things where it tapped so many different demos and a beverage adjacent.”

Death Dust is available in Severed Lime, Mango Chainsaw and Convicted Melon in six- and 12-packs, as well as a variety 12-pack of the three flavors.

All these products are helping Liquid Death to further its mission to achieve success as a multi-category, healthy beverage company and reach a growing consumer base.

“We feel like you don't have to compromise on taste and flavor when you’re drinking a Liquid Death, but you’re consuming something that’s lower calorie and lower sugar often than the alternatives,” Bertha says.

To help deliver this message to consumers, Bertha is energized by the ways Liquid Death has been engaging with consumers and expanding that engagement.

“The ambition is to reach millions of new customers, certainly the success of our Super Bowl ad and all the great results coming out of that,” she notes.

Bertha also calls attention to Liquid Death’s recent partnership with Kylie Kelce for its Kegs For Pregs promotion for the sale of mini Mountain Water kegs as another example of the company using its unique marketing campaigns to reach a broader audience.

The campaign is one Bertha personally found enjoyable because she joined the brand during her pregnancy with her second child, but it also shows that Liquid Death delivers on the unexpected.

“Being able to reach whether it’s pregnant moms, working moms, stay at home moms, or just people that just like thought it was the funniest thing ever, with so much shareability with Liquid Death content, I think is a great outcome of like our content, our entertainment is fun, it’s shareable,” Bertha says.

“For us, we’re educating people on what is Liquid Death, it’s water, it’s soda-flavored sparkling water, and it’s healthy iced tea,” she continues. “And if we’re able to deliver on that while also making you laugh and reaching millions of new consumers, for us, that’s the best results that we can ask for.”

Bertha adds that the company also turned to a monthly sponsorship of Kelce’s podcast to connect with a potentially new consumer base and further the company’s journey.

“We were the March sponsor for her Not Gonna Lie podcast, and I just love that we’re able to reach new consumers or reach consumers that maybe had heard of Liquid Death, but didn't know what we sold, you know, premium-sourced mountain water, soda-flavored sparkling water and iced

tea,” Bertha says. “So, you know, it’s all working. But as a reminder, this is year five in brick and mortar, so we are in the early, early days of our brand story.”

Whatever is to come next from Liquid Death, it is safe to presume it will be disruptive.

Paragraph: Johnson explains that the alcohol category is seeing four major trends influence the market: health and wellness, premiumization, ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages, and changing consumer demographics and media consumption.

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