Liquid Death is what happens when a very creative marketing guy got frustrated with the lack of courage from clients and bosses.

Dave Young:

Welcome to, The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Simple, is a Marketing Consultant, Story Collector, and Storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us. But we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[Tappers Jewelry Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome back to the Empire Builders podcast. Dave Young, here along with Stephen Semple. Stephen just told me that today’s episode is Liquid Death. So I don’t have any direct experience, but there’s something in the back of my mind that tells me it’s a fairly recent product and it’s just canned water.

Stephen Semple:

Yup. You got it. Ring the bell. Ring the bell. Once again, Dave Young, is on the ball.

Dave Young:

There was a YouTube video for water. I don’t even think it was real, but it was Earth Juice. Yeah, Earth Juice. So Liquid Death, who thought this was a good idea?

Stephen Semple:

Here’s what’s different about them is its canned water rather than plastic bottles.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

It’s put into metal cans. And the guy who thought of this idea was Mike Cessario, and he launched the business on December 18th, 2018. And in 2024, the business was valued at $1.4 billion. And what was reported that time is they were doing $263 million in sales, and he grew this without any outside investment. He bootstrapped this whole thing at the beginning, which is really quite remarkable. And the bottled water business is a huge market. There’s like 16 billion gallons sold, $53 billion over like 80… And there’s like 80 brands in the United States. So it’s a big crowded business.

Dave Young:

And these aren’t even flavored waters. These are just bottled still water.

Stephen Semple:

He does do some flavored waters now and some sparkling waters. But it started as just bottled water. Yes.

Dave Young:

Nestle, it comes to mind. Nestle and Coke and Pepsi have their big brands, Dasani and whatever the other one is.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

You and I are about the same age. When I was a kid, you couldn’t find a bottle of water to buy if your life depended on it. If you’re traveling and you’re thirsty, you stop at a gas station that has a water fountain or you have a thermos or something. I don’t even remember how I got a drink of water when I was a little kid on a trip.

Stephen Semple:

It was brutal. I remember in university when I was working as a DJ and I’d be on the road traveling and the only thing that you could get, you could get an iced tea or pop, and I didn’t like pop. So it was like… and you would get to the stage of I was sick and tired of these ice teas, I just wanted to water. And bottle water was not around. It’s a big business today. And Mike actually had no experience in water. He came from the advertising industry. I thought you would like this story.

Dave Young:

Think about this product, right? It’s called-

Stephen Semple:

Liquid Death.

Dave Young:

Death, Liquid Death.

Stephen Semple:

Liquid Death.

Dave Young:

And it’s made of one ingredient plus an aluminum can.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

And some paint.

Stephen Semple:

Correct.

Dave Young:

So it’s 99% marketing.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

That’s it.

Stephen Semple:

Yes. So he did graphic design for a big agency in California called, Crispin, but in advertising and working for a big agency he got burned out. He bounced around between different agencies, and he also got really frustrated with customers not wanting to do things that are bold and innovative. So for example, he was doing a campaign for Callaway, the golf company, and they came out with this new driver. And look, most golf driver campaigns are about the clubs, X number of yards longer and here’s a pro endorsing it. And he wanted to do something different.

This golf club that Callaway was launching was called, Diablo. So he wanted to give away the first 20 clubs for free, but the golfer would need to sign a contract that they sold their soul to Callaway for the golf club.

Dave Young:

I like this guy.

Stephen Semple:

But his boss wouldn’t even present the idea to the client. He said, “This is nuts.” And so he started thinking he wanted to be unconstrained because he was dependent on clients and bosses to follow good ideas. And he wanted to create his own product because what he knew was he would create these creative, edgy, ad campaigns that would have this edgy humor and clients would usually reject it.

So he wanted to prove that this could work. He wanted to have his own product, but what would it be is the question. And he knew it needed to be something weird and outlandish to work. And at the time, he was surrounded by people in the booze business. He knew a whole pile of people in the alcohol business. And so he went walking through the brandy section and what he noticed was brandy is kind of boring, but he bought some and he tasted it and he said, “This is really quite similar tasting to bourbon so why is brandy not catching on?”

So he started to develop a brandy brand and he’d make it feel more like a whiskey brand. And they called this company, Western Grace American Brandy, and he found a distillery that made great brandy and he partnered with an agency, no one in the booze business. And the idea was to create a small batch to sell, 60 cases or so. And the agency put up most of the money to drive this forward and got the first production going.

But he and the agency butted heads, they had a very, very different vision of where to go. So it got shut down. Plus he noticed there’s lots of logistics and as we know legal issues with the booze business. He decided that the next thing that he would try would have to have few regulations or complicated manufacturing. Around this time, he was doing an advertising campaign for Organic Valley, and it was this protein drink without additives, and this whole thing about bros becoming extinct because of additives, it was really quite hilarious. But the same thing. He had a hard time convincing the customer to do this campaign.

So it’s around 2015, and the idea of canned water comes back to him because he had been exposed to this idea of canned water back in 2009 because he is doing this campaign for a client, and it had to do with the dangers of soda ingredients. And he remembers back in 2009, back in 2009 he was invited to see the band’s Warped Tour, and he had a backstage badge. And what he noticed was all the guys in the band were all drinking what looked like energy drinks. They were drinking little cans of Monster energy and just pounding them back. And he thought to himself, “How is it possible you guys can drink this much of the energy drink?”

And it turns out one of the sponsors was Monster and Monster wanted people to see the band drinking Monster energy drinks, but it was water that was inside these cans.

Dave Young:

They’re just… Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Right.

Dave Young:

Were they refilling them or did they literally make a batch that was just water for them?

Stephen Semple:

They made a batch that was just water for them. They were drinking water out of Monster energy cans. And so here was this can of water. It looked like an energy drink. And he suddenly went, “That’s what I’m going to do.” And that idea came back to him, like he saw it in 2009 and in 2015 the idea came back to him. He said, “This is what I’m going to do.”

Idea of a can, make it look like a beer, or an energy drink. Wouldn’t that be really interesting? “But who can water?” Was His question. Can is cool, deeper reason, it feels more elegant, it’s better. So he thought this would be a great idea, except it was impossible in the United States to find somebody who could can water because water has to be bottled or canned at the source. And the can water, as a category didn’t exist.

Dave Young:

Can’t it just be tap water?

Stephen Semple:

He felt that it still needed to be some sort of spring water for it to be a premium.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

And he decided that it needed to look like a beer, felt right because he really liked a lot of the craft beer designs. So he still didn’t really have somewhere a source to do it, but he thought, “You know what, I’m going to test this idea.” So he launched a bit of a marketing campaign before he had a product. And he felt that it had to be something that would need to feel natural to share on social media.

So it needed to be crazy, needed to be something that you would never want to drink. That’s what he thought, the social media. So that’s how he came up with the name, Liquid Death.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

[Empire Builders Ad]

Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story where we left off and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Semple:

Here’s how nutty some people really are. When he was testing a name Liquid Death. Here’s one of the feedbacks he got. It’s false advertising because it doesn’t actually kill you.

Dave Young:

Oh, it can. Sure, it can kill you.

Stephen Semple:

So he created his own campaign, started an ad, then he ran a Kickstarter because he did find a place that could can the water in Europe, but he needed like 200, $250,000 to do the first order. So he set out to raise the money on Indiegogo, and he did a video that water kills, and it ends with a guy in a suit being water boarded.

Now, he made this video for 1500 bucks. His wife edited it. The video was successful, got all these views and everything. The campaign was not, he actually ended up only raising $1,500. So the campaign on Indiegogo did not work. So he then decided to create some Facebook pages and he put the video on it and he did paid media and social posts. And after four months, he had 3 million views and 60,000 followers. He then created a pre-order page.

Now at this point, he still had no supplier product or infrastructure, and the only way to get the capital was really to prove the concept. So based on the interest, he went for a round of small money financing to friends and family raised 150K, found a potential supplier and basically started to can the stuff. And actually it was canned in Austria.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

He brought on a buddy as a co-founder, knew how to handle money, and he knew the source did not matter even though he was canning in Austria, the only reason he was canning in Austria is that was the only place you could do it.

Dave Young:

A canning company already there.

Stephen Semple:

You want to have a good source, but that just makes you equal, it’s not a differentiator. You looked out there and everybody goes, “Oh, this is our source of…” It makes you equal, it doesn’t make you superior. So really it was, they spent a lot of time on creating some really, really cool, really cool packaging. And they sold it through Amazon with Amazon Fulfilling. Now, Amazon’s very expensive in the beginning, and water’s expensive to ship. It would weigh like 12 pounds.

He found an investor, quit his job to do this full time, and they did 100,000 in sales in the first month. And in 2020 they really started to grow. And they actually started to get orders from big retailers like Whole Foods and 7-Eleven. And their whole thing was they had two ideas, death to plastic because there was this movement against plastic that they typed into and murdering thirst. That’s why it’s Liquid Death, murdering thirst.

And what they knew was that it was all about entertaining. He wanted to blur the lines between entertaining and marketing and their entertainment as comedy.

Dave Young:

Absolutely. Right. And you’re going to sell water to people. Like I said, it’s a little bit of water, a little bit of aluminum, and marketing, and story, and fun, and entertainment. I’m guessing that a lot of the early buyers didn’t even drink any of it. It’s probably still sitting on their shelves.

Stephen Semple:

Probably is. There was even a whole period where even when he did the pre-order, it wasn’t working at first because people didn’t think it was a real product. He actually had to do some messaging of, “No, this is actually a real product.” So it’s now packed in the United States. And in 2024, they raised money that put the business valuation at $1.4 billion. But the big thing here is he did two things. He did something weird and entertaining, but he did something else. He tied it into a movement that was already there.

Dave Young:

Sure. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

I think it was David Ogalvey who said, “Tie into the conversation that’s already happening around the water cooler.” Now, we don’t have water coolers and offices and things like that much any longer, but still that whole idea, what is the conversation that is already happening? So that while a can was cool and the can was a differentiator, there was this anti-plastic movement and he was able to tap into that. Right. So yes, it was weird. Yes, it was entertaining. Yes, it was death to thirst. I think this tying into a movement that was already there is was what also allowed it to ignite on social media.

Dave Young:

Oh, I agree. And I don’t think there’s anybody that buys an expensive bottle of water, especially at an airport. I think about bottled water at airports, they won’t let you carry any water through security. So now you’re on the other side and you’ve got to buy some water.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Yes.

Dave Young:

Or you have to bring bottle with you and then find one of those little fill stations somewhere. But nobody likes… Who likes buying water, especially at airport prices. And I think if I’m going to spend money buying water, I’d like to have a little bit of this irony that they’re selling.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Let’s make it ironic and have some fun with it. Oh, just another dollar in Coca Cola’s pocket or four bucks or whatever it is because I bought their water at the airport.

Stephen Semple:

And you and I have experienced this. Our clients who are the most successful and do the best are the ones that allow real creativity to come into their campaigns. And real silliness come into the campaigns, and real entertainment to come into the campaigns, and embrace that and let us do that. And all of a sudden what happens is those positive feelings that the consumer has about the campaigns transfers to them and ends up becoming sticky with all that positive energy. And I found it interesting that the origin of this business was he got tired of customers not doing the campaign.

Dave Young:

So he’s going to make his own. “I’m going to come up with my own product and I’m going to prove that this can be done.” I love it. As we were talking, just did a quick little Google search because I wanted to look at… Their website’s hilarious, by the way, and you don’t see this other than on their Wikipedia page. The name of the company is, Supplying Demand. Inc. Doing Business as Liquid Death.

Stephen Semple:

I didn’t even notice that.

Dave Young:

They’re supplying demand.

Stephen Semple:

I love that.

Dave Young:

Right? It’s like, “Oh, if there’s demand, we can sell this.” So if we stir up demand by creating some fun stories, the irony of the name is just so perfect. This is such a great… you couldn’t have a better resume piece as a marketer.

Stephen Semple:

No kidding.

Dave Young:

Than to come up with this idea for Liquid death.

Stephen Semple:

I didn’t even notice the supplying demand. I missed that. That’s a fabulous name.

Dave Young:

Bravo. What a great story. That’s fun. Is it available here in Austin because I think I need to find some?

Stephen Semple:

Last I checked, it was being sold in Whole Foods and Whole Foods is definitely an Austin thing.

Dave Young:

Yeah, I’d have to look. We quit using disposable plastic bottles at Wizard Academy. We have our own water bottles that we provide for our students.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, I saw that.

Dave Young:

And we fill them with water. I don’t know if that’s legal or not, but we do. We could just hand you the empty and let you fill it yourself, but we just like to fill them so that you don’t have to do that. But I’m thinking maybe these guys could run a batch of Wizard water for us. That would be kind of fun.

Stephen Semple:

Would be kind of fun. As I was going through this, to me, it was just a really interesting thing. And again, it’s like pay attention to the other conversations that are happening around you. When you can find a campaign that knits into those things, it always ends up having some extra power to it.

Dave Young:

Great story. Well done, Mike Cessario. Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:

Thanks, David.

Dave Young:

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat, juicy, five star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions@the empirebuilderspodcast.com.