Liquid Death is an innovative enterprise founded by Mike Cessario, which has struck gold by selling canned water. One can say that the astounding success story of Liquid Death in a short span of time is an amalgamation of extraordinary business acumen with responsible environmental consciousness. The idea of the brand sprouted from a desire to provide a sustainable alternative to plastic water bottles.
Liquid Death supplies environmentally friendly water, which counters the adverse environmental impact of single-use plastics. Liquid Death’s packaged mountain water in recyclable aluminum cans is the actualisation of a simple but innovative idea; generally we associate canned drinks with beer or cold drinks but not with water.
Mike Cessario, a former Creative Director at Netflix, got the inspiration to introduce Los Angeles-based Liquid Death following watching of a Vans Warped Tour in 2009, where concert goers would drink water from Monster Energy cans to stay hydrated. Cessario said that he wondered why no one had marketed water in a manner similar to Monster.
Unique, Quirky and Eco-friendly
The brand’s attention-grabbing name and logo are similar to that of a heavy metal band and its branding is very different from the serene branding style, which we generally associate with bottled water. There is no denying the fact that its branding style is targeted more at young people with a rebellious streak in them.
The tagline of Liquid Death ‘Murder your thirst’ is also no less innovative. The great products of Liquid Death and its pathbreaking tagline were supplemented with a series of interesting marketing campaigns, which facilitated in making the brand emerge as a runaway winner in the crowded and highly competitive market.
Spruced by Investments
Introduced in 2019, Liquid Death quickly attracted immense popularity, especially on social media platforms. Its unique branding, creative packaging and eco-friendly message could be attributed to its meteoric success story. Of course, the success of the idea resulted in a stream of fundings. As per Forge data, Liquid Death has raised a total of $200.6 million in funding over 7 rounds. By October 2022, Liquid Death was valued at 700 million USD following its latest round of financing.
Till today, Liquid Death is funded by 29 investors, which includes Whitney Cummings, Live Nation Entertainment, Velvet Sea Ventures, Dwight Funding and Science among others. According to Crunchbase, Liquid Death’s latest funding was raised on 3rd October 2022 from a Series D round.
Water of Fortune
One of its products is named Liquid Death Mountain Water. Liquid Death Mountain Water comes from a deep underground mountain source protected by a few hundred feet of stone and contains naturally occurring minerals (aka electrolytes).
Liquid Death Sparkling Water is another of their mountain water products. Liquid Death Sparkling Water doesn’t just look like a beer, it is actually carbonated like a beer. Slightly less carbonation means less carbonic acid is formed, which means it is less bitter and more thirst quencher than many other sparkling waters.
Its Mango Chainsaw and Severed Lime come across as premium flavoured sparkling water, lightly sweetened with agave. Liquid Death’s other sparkling water products are Convicted Melon and Berry it Alive. The ultra creative names themselves induce the people to try them.
Beyond Canned Water
Besides canned water, Liquid Death produces other liquids too but packages them in recyclable aluminum cans only, like that of its mountain water and sparkling water products. For example, one of its products named Slaughter Berry is raspberry iced tea and uses natural agave and B-vitamins.
The extremely quirky product description of Slaughter Berry in their website reads: These psychotic cans of raspberry iced tea are dead set on using natural agave and B-vitamins to savagely murder your thirst and turn its insides into balloon animals to book gigs at children’s birthday parties. The product comprises 30 calories, 6gm of sugar from real agave, and microdose of 30mg of natural caffeine and the liquid is enhanced with B vitamins.
Another of its beverage products is very creatively named as Dead Billionaire. Its product description reads: These psychotic cans of half iced tea, half lemonade are dead set on using natural agave and B vitamins to savagely murder your thirst and turn its insides into balloon animals to book gigs at children’s birthday parties. Dead Billionaire’s constituents include 30 calories, 6gm of sugar from real agave, microdose of 30mg of natural caffeine with the drink being enhanced with B vitamins. Grim Leafer and Rest in Peach are other iced tea products from Liquid Death.
The stupendous success of Liquid Death in such a short span of time reflects on the fact that the world is increasingly looking for healthy and environmentally-friendly dinking options and the people are also very much welcoming towards experimentation and innovation in their long-established consumer choices. It also proves that how you market a brand goes a long way in contributing to its success story.
