This brand started with a fake ad and no product, The results? $1.6M

'Why Liquid Death’s Branding Sells—Even Though Its Water Isn’t Special + More

May 01, 2025

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Contents

Liquid Death (LD) breakdown
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A water brand that ditched the serene mountain springs for skulls, punk rock & viral chaos.
Thanks to that identity, the company didn't have to spend millions on ad agencies.
Instead, it relied on going viral from the very start (organic marketing).
What started as a joke, marketing water like booze has evolved to a company with a $1.4 billion valuation.

All from a simple idea of branding arguably the plainest drink… scratch that, the plainest product ever!

Bottled water, at a premium price?!

There's not really anything that's incredibly different about our water or our products,
But there really is nothing incredibly different of any product almost anywhere—
It's all just brand differences and packaging differences, and that's why people buy things—Mike Cessarrio, Liquid Death’s CEO.

Most bottled water companies, especially the high-priced ones, all went the same branding route,

Marketing their drinkable, healthy, pure water as the ~most purest pure water ever~😂

Productized drinkable water is the one thing you can NOT mess up

Otherwise, it isn’t water anymore, it’s something else,

Either good (flavored water) OR bad (undrinkable water)

The polarizing difference in the bottled water business makes entry so easy, yet extremely hard because of saturation.

From luxury/premium bottled water: Fiji, Evian, to regular priced ones: Eva, Aquafina, etc

All have different ways of using this easy branding of ~pure water~, and why consumers should be drinking theirs.

‘‘The success of the bottled water industry is really the success of the marketing industry.’’- Katie Deigthon, WSJ Reporter

It’s usually accompanied by fancy wellness/health words & chemistry jargon, 90% of people don’t understand

Liquid Death's founder uses none of his competitors’ tactics above (except for the ‘Death to plastic’ notion)

Aside from that, their marketing is all ‘vibes’.

To target a consumer willing to spend money on luxury water, the company focused on differentiation.

I’ve said this before— gimmicks are only ‘bad’ when they’re tribble.

A good gimmick will make your business popular or a household brand name.

What’s a ‘gimmick’ that will make 85% of people pay close attention due to quirky differentiation?

Core Marketing: Lifestyle/Identity Branding

They did it, they made it cool to drink water, honestly, LD should have their name in the Guinness World Records.

They aren’t selling water, but selling vibes. The product itself (plain, canned water) is quite ordinary.

The entire value is built on how it makes people feel and what it says about them when they choose LD—

Instead of the plain old plastic water beside it.

They frame hydration as quirky.
The branding is about belonging to a subculture (punk, edgy, anti-corporate).
Consumers buy it for the identity it represents, not the product itself.

We've seen it (bottled water) as an aspirational product. We've seen it as a kind of goop-esque health product,
But we haven't seen it as this like counterculture product—
And that's just enough for someone, when they're passing the water aisle, to do a double take.
And even those matter of seconds, when it comes to consumer marketing,
Those are seconds that marketers will spend millions of dollars trying to buy from you.

The Challenge

Launched in 2017 as a wild idea from former ad creative Mike Cessario.

The brand started as a joke concept: ‘‘What if water was marketed like beer or an energy drink?’’

Cessario pitched the idea using a fake Facebook ad and got surprising traction BEFORE THE PRODUCT EVEN EXISTED

(3M views, thousands of likes/shares).

They used the traction to raise a $1.6M seed round in 2019,

Mostly from niche investors who saw the potential in counterculture branding.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for Cessario before that viral Facebook ad.

Stores were unsure if it was appropriate for general beverage aisles, especially since it resembled beer or energy drinks!!

Going up against luxury and premium brands in an industry dominated by wellness, while looking the opposite of that (chaos) was/is daring.

“Who would buy canned water that looks like beer?”

Retailers didn’t initially understand why customers would want to buy premium-priced water in a punk-rock can without traditional health or purity claims.

Everything was bootstrapped and organic. They weren’t in most stores yet. It was just mountain spring water in a can.

At launch, LD seemed like a joke brand or a novelty product, not a serious player in the beverage industry.

It was a bad gimmick, until it wasn’t a terrible one.

The organic buzz created a demand that retailers couldn’t ignore—especially when consumers started ASKING FOR IT by name.

Moral of the story?

Don’t give up on your ‘stupid’ or ‘wild’ idea or gimmick just yet.

Hit ❤ if you’ve come this far!!!

Want to Go Viral Too?

To be fair, LD nailed the art of turning something SO ordinary into a brand that feels like a club you can join for a price.

You can’t copy someone else's FIRST TIME ‘shock value idea’, but there's good news!

You can absolutely reverse-engineer LD-style ads, just adapted to your vibe and audience.

Here's how to, with Example Ideas

💡 Prompt

Brand Rebellion Ad Prompt

“Act like the creative director behind Liquid Death’s viral campaigns. I run a brand called [YOUR BRAND NAME] in the [YOUR INDUSTRY/NICHE]. Give me 3 outrageous, rebellious, or culture-flipping ad concepts that market my product in a disruptive, anti-establishment way — like Liquid Death marketed water as punk-rock. Each idea should include a title, a short video concept, a central message, and a one-line punchy tagline.”

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