Framework
Brand the healthy thing with junk-food marketing energy
Liquid Death's core insight: the funniest, most memorable ad campaigns of the last decade (Bud Light, Dos Equis, Doritos, Red Bull) all come from junk food and alcohol, while healthy products are marketed quietly to moms. The play is to take the healthiest thing you can drink and brand it with the fun usually reserved for unhealthy products.
“most of the most hilarious, memorable ad campaigns that you ask most people about of the last 10 years, they'll tell you Bud Light, Dos Equis, Snickers, Doritos, Skittles, like all junk food and alcohol. That's the funniest, most memorable kind of youth culture owning and energy drinks like Red Bull.”
Steal thisFind a healthy product marketed quietly to moms and re-brand it with the irreverent, fun energy that junk-food and alcohol brands own.
Tactic
The 'free fridge with 10 cases' direct-mail playbook copied from Red Bull
LifeAID grew by mailing CrossFit gym owners 4 free cans with a sales letter, then offering a free refrigerator if they bought 10 cases — replicating Red Bull's tactic of putting branded fridges in bars, but aimed at gyms that often had no fridge at all.
“Inside of it, it had a copy that, that we wrote that just said, hey, drink this ice cold after your next workout. Here's why it's so great. Here's why it's so good for you. And by the way, if you buy 10 cases from us, we'll give you a free refrigerator. Right? Okay. And this is back in the day when CrossFit gyms maybe had water and they didn't even have a refrigerator. So it was a very appealing offer. It was basically doing what Red Bull did in bars, but we doing the CrossFit gyms, right?”
Steal thisFind the channel a category leader owns (Red Bull in bars) and re-run their playbook in an adjacent, neglected channel where you have community credibility.