Latest / Building Brands with Fexingo: Identity, Reputation, and Long-Term Business Equity / How Liquid Death Built a Brand on Murdered Water
Transcript
- Lucas: You ever look at a can of water and think, 'That looks like it could kill me'? Luna: I mean, not before Liquid Death. Now I almost expect my water to come with a parental advisory sticker. Lucas: Exactly. That's the whole point. Liquid Death is a brand of canned mountain water that looks like a tallboy of cheap beer or a Monster Energy drink. Skulls, gothic fonts, slogans like 'Murder Your Thirst.' And it's worth around seven hundred million dollars. Luna: We should note — and we might come back to this — that this show is possible because of listeners who find these conversations useful. If you've gotten something out of it, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. A couple of bucks a month genuinely helps keep these episodes ad-free. Lucas: Yeah, seriously, that support makes a tangible difference. So back to the brand — Liquid Death is a fascinating case because it's not a new product. It's just water in a can. What's innovative is the identity. Luna: Right, the product is a commodity. But the brand is anything but. And it started with a guy named Mike Cessario, a former creative director at Netflix. Lucas: Cessario has said he was looking at the water aisle and realized every brand was trying to sell purity, clarity, health. Dasani, Aquafina, Evian — they all look clean and serene. And he thought, what if we did the opposite? Luna: So he took the visual language of heavy metal and energy drinks — things that scream adrenaline and rebellion — and put it on a product that's the opposite: still, neutral, hydrating water. Lucas: And it worked. The company launched in 2019 with a viral video that cost basically nothing to make — just a fake commercial with a metal band playing in a mosh pit while someone chugs water. It got millions of views. Luna: Cessario had no background in beverages, but he understood distribution of attention. He got the cans into small retailers and built buzz online. By 2020, they were in seven-Eleven. Lucas: By 2022, Liquid Death did about one hundred thirty million dollars in sales. That's serious growth for a four-year-old beverage company, especially one selling something you can get for free from a tap. Luna: And the valuation followed. They raised money at a roughly seven-hundred-million-dollar valuation in early 2023. Investors like Sequoia Capital and others saw the repeatability. Lucas: But let's dig into what makes this brand sticky beyond the shock value. A lot of novelty brands fade. Remember Poop Scoop coffee or whatever? Liquid Death has managed to build a real community. Luna: They have a fan base that posts memes, buys limited-edition cans, and even gets tattoos of the logo. That's something most CPG brands dream of. Lucas: Part of it is consistency. The brand voice is irreverent and self-aware. They post on social media as if they're a punk band, not a water company. They mock themselves, they troll other brands, they lean into the absurdity. Luna: And they've expanded. They now have iced tea and flavored sparkling water — same aesthetic, different categories. That shows the brand can stretch. Lucas: But here's the tension: long term, can a brand built on 'murder' and rebellion survive a buyout? If Coca-Cola or PepsiCo acquires them — and those companies have shown interest in the premium water space — will the edge get dulled? Luna: It's happened before. Remember when Honest Tea got acquired by Coke? It lost some of its underdog authenticity. Liquid Death's whole value is being the anti-establishment water. Lucas: Cessario has said they'd rather stay independent and go public. But even then, the pressure to grow revenue could push them into more mainstream marketing, which would erode the very thing that made them special. Luna: There's also the question of environmental impact. Their cans are aluminum, which is infinitely recyclable, but they're still selling single-serve water that travels across the country. Some critics say it's still wasteful. Lucas: And they've addressed that by positioning themselves as a replacement for plastic bottles. Aluminum has a much higher recycling rate. But it's not a perfect solution. Luna: Still, from a branding perspective, the lesson is powerful: if your product is a commodity, your identity has to be anything but. Water is water. But Liquid Death makes you feel like you're joining a tribe when you drink it. Lucas: That's the core insight. Every brand needs a reason to exist beyond function. Liquid Death's reason is entertainment. They're not just hydrating you; they're giving you a bit of theater every time you crack a can. Luna: And they prove that humor can be a durable brand asset. Most CPG marketing is so safe. Liquid Death shows you can be weird, dark, funny — and still sell to Walmart. Lucas: They're in over sixty thousand retail locations now. So the model scales. The question is whether the soul of the brand can survive the scale. Luna: That's the challenge for any brand built on a strong personality. As you grow, you have to decide what to keep and what to let go. Liquid Death is still early in that story. Lucas: And it's one worth watching. Because if they can hold onto their edge while serving millions of customers, they'll have cracked something really rare in business: a brand that people actually love, not just tolerate. Luna: And maybe that's the ultimate lesson — love is built on identity, not just utility. Liquid Death gave water a personality, and people responded. Lucas: Alright, that's all for this episode of Building Brands. Thanks for being here.