Liquid Death and the art of building a "Killer brand"
No different from how great brands like Salesforce & American Express were built
Death, Skulls, Murder, Kill, and Demons.
Not words that you expect as marketing copy on a website that sells mmm… water.
After all, the ‘source of origin’ phrases that define premium packaged water brands sound different. And dignified.
“From the crisp, frigid aquifers of the Nordic homeland”
or
“ From the ancient spring in the Auvergne region of France”
but not…
That said, Liquid Death does parrot something similar - “Mountain water from the Austrian Alps” - perhaps just to cling to the safety net defined by incumbents.
Now, I know it’s almost jarring to see a water brand like this, but what you are experiencing is “Category shock”. How could a brand that sells water have anything to do with a can with the image of a skull?
But a brand that wants to last beyond a few internet viral cycles can’t rely only on hacking your attention.
So what is Liquid Death doing so well?
This brand has carefully crafted its value proposition that straddles, what I call, The Zone of Expansion.
Most brands start by focusing on developing propositions that lie at the innermost circle — Brand as personal identity — before discovering or creating propositions at the outer circles.
But this is a journey.
Great brands such as American Express & Salesforce have designed their brand proposition along these lines. But today these brands are in a different orbit today — The Zone of Convergence (see below).
Let’s first unpack the Zone of Expansion.
Mantra 1 -
Your choice of a brand is a way you communicate with the world.
It is a vehicle you use to tell the world about who you are and what you care about.
To express your identity.
I take the example of a B2B brand here, only to stress-test my argument and identify whether there is a method to how all great brands are built. B2C or B2B.
Salesforce & Brand as personal identity
Salesforce & Brand as personal identity
When someone chooses Salesforce, they are in part motivated by “how they are able to afford” to buy the World’s #1 CRM, even though they might not use or need most of what it offers.
Buying Salesforce is the equivalent of a bar mitzvah in the B2B software world.
Many small businesses end up choosing Salesforce only to later realize that it’s a bazooka when what all you needed was a short-barreled firearm. But they do wait for the day when they grow big enough to be able to use it again.
This is how brand choice as a vehicle of self-expression operates.
Mantra 2 -
You make many of your brand choices within a larger social context.
You are a part of various tribes and every choice that you make bolsters and supports your tribe. Importantly, you stay away from making choices that might betray the group.
Salesforce & Brand as social identity
Salesforce’s Trailblazers is about celebrating a shared identity. So when your organization buys Salesforce, they are not only buying the product but also access to this new identity.
Mantra 3 -
Doing good to the world around you activates your Oxytocin.
But cause-marketing is a tight rope walk for marketers. As a brand, you don’t want to sound gratuitous or opportunistic. So cause-marketing is most successful when it is closely tied to a company's value system or is embedded deeply into the product.
Salesforce & Brand as a do-gooder
Salesforce is known to lead the Tech industry in Corporate Social responsibility and is widely known as a do-gooder. As a buyer, you don’t feel bad if some of what your annual contract fee is being used for the larger good. This emotion is definitely not central to what you buy, but it might make you feel better about your choice deep down.
In the journey of a brand, the ultimate nirvana is when you have moved beyond The Zone of Expansion to The Zone of Convergence.
Now, let’s examine Liquid Death with the help of this framework.
Liquid Death and Brand as personal identity
Sipping water from a can is a social marker - When you sip water from a can of Liquid Death, you probably say to yourself “I can afford to drink water from the Austrian Alps”. Vs “quenching thirst from the municipal water which is available to all”.
Its target audience is niche and it wants to appeal to the “punk” in you. But a different kind of punk.
Liquid Death has crafted every element of its brand identity to cater to this audience.
Brand personality - Silly, violent, wacky, theatrical, extreme
Brand font - Heavy Blackletter to convey skull & goth imagery
Pricing - Steep because you need to pay to be “you”; priced at $22 for a case of 12 on Amazon
Liquid Death and Brand as social identity
Us Vs Them — “Are you someone who drinks water from a bottle or a can?”
Packaging as a key lever— “I want people to see that I choose all things punk”
It’s all about making the act of drinking water “look cool”.
Liquid Death and Brand as Do-gooder
You help the environment when you buy an aluminum can over plastic
And for every can that you buy, Liquid Death donates 5 cents to ocean recovery
Liquid Death is a wonderful study of a brand that has crafted its proposition based on the Zone of Expansion and could well be on its way toward the Zone of Convergence, the altar for truly great brands.