Liquid Death: A marketing case study

Having a product that is identical to your competitors' generally isn’t a good thing. But what if this can’t be helped?

The bottled water market is a 300 billion dollar industry, but every single one of these contains an almost, if not fully, identical product. In markets like this, marketing and branding become the be-all and end-all.

If you want the best example of this then look no further than the brand that managed to disrupt the bottled water industry, otherwise known as Liquid Death.

There’s always an angle

If you were to think of an exciting product from a marketing perspective, bottled water would probably be the last thing on your mind. The product itself could even be described as bland and boring.

I mean, nobody's favorite drink is water! From a branding and marketing point of view, efforts to sell water are generally unimaginative. Brands rely on tactics such as sponsorship opportunities and celebrity ambassadors.

For example, Evian has been the official water of Wimbledon since 2008.

In fairness to marketing teams within water brands, you could be forgiven for looking at the product and thinking, what can be done with that? While this may seem like a fair assumption, it’s one that should never, ever be made in marketing.

Even with a product as dull as mineral water, there’s always an angle. Liquid Death may just be the best example of this we’ve ever seen.

How big is Liquid Death?

If you are in any doubt about the size and success of Liquid Death, the brand is valued at over one billion dollars. Last year, they brought in $263m in revenue thanks to being Amazon’s top-selling still water brand. You get the picture, they’re a big, big deal. But how did they get to this point?

In short, they got there by being different. It’s almost as if the brand looked at its competitors, noted down everything they were doing and then set out on a mission to do the exact opposite.

From product packaging, to target audience, the rebellious drink company have well and truly ripped up the rulebook when it comes to branding and marketing the most consumed beverage in the world.

What makes Liquid Death unique?

Let’s start with the name. I’d guess that if you asked every brand naming agency in the world to come up with a name for a startup company selling still water, none of them would arrive at Liquid Death.

To be fair, it hardly screams water and is a million miles away from what would be considered a conventional name for a brand of water. Icelandic Glacial, Acqua Panna, and Aquafina are all examples of their competitors.

Secondly, the packaging. Until the arrival of Liquid Death, still water came in a clear, plastic bottle. Liquid Death’s offering comes in a metal can akin to an alcoholic beverage.

Again, a decision that would leave top agencies around the world pulling their hair out and asking why on earth you would want a still water product to resemble a a can of lager.

Moving on to the target audience, gamers probably wouldn’t be at the top of any health brand’s lists when it comes to marketing. After all, they all prefer sitting in darkness for 18 hours a day living off a diet of microwaved pizzas and energy drinks, right? Obviously not.

There are 3.2 billion gamers in the world yet water brands were completely ignoring them. Liquid Death didn’t though, they went the opposite way and partnered with the leading game, Call Of Duty.

Once you're aware of their target audience, the rest of the brand starts to make a lot more sense. It’s essentially water for young, rebellious adults.

The dark grungy nature of the packaging and the aggressive tone from straplines like “Murder your thirst” are far more likely to appeal to young gamers than some over-romanticized water that was sourced from the glaciers of Everest.

What can we learn from Liquid Death?

Be different, not better

Whether Liquid Death is better than competitors, in terms of product or marketing, is open to interpretation. But what’s not up for debate is the link between their originality and success.

In today’s digital world, consumers are bombarded with marketing. A short scroll down any of your social media feeds will highlight just how many brands are vying for your attention.

As a result, simply standing out has never been more important, which surely begs the question, in 2024, is it better to be different than it is to be better?

The end of brand guidelines?

Liquid Death hates corporate marketing. That’s not my opinion, it’s the opinion of their VP of marketing who is on record stating, “We kind of have this deep distrust of corporate marketing”.

It’s an opinion that shines through in their marketing efforts. They’re out there and frankly don’t care for corporate guidelines, nor do they care what’s expected of a company selling water.

As mentioned already, it’s as if the company ripped up the branding rulebook before creating the brand. Should we all be doing the same? It probably differs from industry to industry in truth, but there’s certainly a debate to be had on whether our desire to be “on brand” has gone too far.

Never assume

Possibly the best lesson to learn from Liquid Death’s success is that we should constantly question our own beliefs. We’re all guilty of making presumptions and generalizations but when it comes to marketing, this can be a grave mistake.

Being a gamer and having an interest in health and fitness aren’t mutually exclusive. Yet our presumptions would lead us to believe they are.

It’s a mistake that probably rears its head in several other industries too. Are all 79 million vegans animal lovers? Are all 1.6 billion TikTok users under the age of 25?

@revenue.marketing

Final thoughts

While there’s still a place for what could be classed as conventional marketing, Liquid Death is a perfect example of how being radically different to your competitors can be extremely effective.

Even when selling a product as plain as bottled mineral water, the brand has found a way to disrupt a 300-billion-dollar industry. Yet the tactics and strategy employed by the brand would never be found in a marketing textbook, and they probably wouldn’t be taught at any leading business school.

Maybe the most important lesson from Liquid Death’s meteoric rise is to start any campaign or research by looking at your competitors – only then will you be able to find a way to differentiate your own brand.

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