Liquid Death's Brand Building Secrets

Chubbies was acquired for 9 figures and went through a 10 figure IPO. Upon reflection, the biggest assumption I had to challenge was the idea that there was a conflict between the strength, salience, and differentiation of our brand identity and the ability to find success going 'broad' with our marketing.

I either thought we had to focus on a certain tightly defined demographic if we were to maintain the strongest version of our brand identity, or, if we were to go broad, we had to water it down.

I was wrong.

One of the brands clearly navigating this conflict (broad reach with a super strong, specific brand) is Liquid Death.

To that end, here are the 3 examples that prove my assumption wrong and 2 things I learned you can implement today, as told by Mike, Liquid Death's founder and CEO, and one of the GOATs in the brand building game today.

3 Examples:

1) Harley doesn't target bikers, they target dentists.

"Like, I use the example of the motorcycle brand, Davidson. Yeah. Has a very rebellious biker brand to it. But when Harley is doing their marketing, they're not targeting biker gangs, they're marketing to dentists, like people that can afford a $25,000 motorcycle. And yes, they make it feel like it's this biker rebellious thing because the dentist guy who's not a biker wants that little piece of rebellion in his life"

2) "Niche" horror movie Nope outperforms "mass" Pixar movie.

"Like if you think about a horror movie like Jordan Peele, he released a horror movie last summer called. Nope. That outperformed a Disney Pixar movie. Horror, which is blood, violence, aggression, craziness, all of that. That's not a massive summer movie because it's a bunch of heavy metal guys going to the movies. There's all kinds of people that are entertained by that. Soccer moms, dudes, different races, different ages."

3) True Crime is the biggest genre of entertainment for women

"Like, the biggest genre of entertainment for women is true crime shows about serial killers and death. And blood is the number one genre for women. But nobody thinks about that from a marketing standpoint of, oh, why would women like liquid death?


2 Things I learned

1) It is a delicate balance

"It's like if you go a few degrees this way, it could be very distasteful and you have a problem. You go a few degrees this way, it's just not funny, it's lame, and no one cares. So it is kind of hard to find that right target where it's provocative enough that you have a ton of people who love it, but you have a healthy amount of people who are like, this is the worst thing ever."

2) Apathy is what you don't want

"I always say. It's like, if there are people who truly love something, there has to be people who truly hate it. It is not possible to make something that everybody loves. But it's possible is to make something that everybody doesn't really give a sh*t about one way or the other."
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