Mike Cessario

Summary

Podcast Summary: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin – Mike Cessario (Liquid Death)

Date: December 17, 2025
Host: Rick Rubin
Guest: Mike Cessario, Founder/CEO of Liquid Death

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Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between Rick Rubin and Mike Cessario, the creative mind behind Liquid Death, the irreverently branded, fast-growing water company. Cessario recounts his journey from ad agency creative to beverage disruptor, explaining Liquid Death’s origins, unconventional marketing, and brand philosophy. The discussion explores the intersection of humor, branding, manufacturing challenges, social media, and creative persistence in building a cult-followed brand.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Advertising, Marketing, and Entertainment

• Advertising’s Negative Image: Mike observes that most people “universally hate” advertising, and that the bar for compelling creative is exceptionally low, which presented an opportunity for brands that truly entertain.
  • Quote: “Advertising is easy. Anybody can make a good commercial because the bar is so low. It's all just kind of garbage.” (00:54)
• Entertainment as Differentiator: Liquid Death treats marketing like entertainment—if you can make people laugh, you’ll stick in their minds and generate positive brand association.
  • Supporting Stat: “91% of people say that they have a better feeling towards the brand [if you make them laugh].” (01:32)
• Mental Availability: Brand awareness isn’t just recognition, but being top of mind when someone considers a category—“occupy some little place inside their mind” (02:35).
• The Ad Agency Grind: Mike explains the frustrations of agency work—“you're making corporate art,” most ideas never see execution, and creativity is limited by client risk-aversion. (04:33–07:00)

2. Origin Story of Liquid Death

• Soul-Selling Marketing: A rejected “sell your soul” concept at Callaway Golf was repurposed for Liquid Death’s “Country Club”—users literally sell their soul (in a legal contract) to join.
  • Quote: “We created this imaginary club called the Liquid Death Country Club. The only way you could get in was to legally sell your soul.” (07:10–08:48)
• Lightbulb Moment: A successful, funny campaign for Organic Valley (“Save the Bros”) helped Mike realize that healthy products could (and should) be marketed with humor and irreverence, not just earnestness.
  • Quote: “That was kind of my light bulb moment. How come things that are healthy and good for you don't use the same funny, irreverent marketing as all the junk food?” (10:16–12:30)
• From Idea to Execution: Liquid Death launched as a side project while Mike worked at an agency, with water selected because it’s “the healthiest thing you could possibly drink.” (12:30–13:37)

3. Product Development and Manufacturing

• Unexpected Challenges: No North American facilities could can still spring water; production started in Austria before moving to the U.S. once there was enough scale to justify domestic investment. (13:41–15:53)
• Brand vs. Product Substance: Differences between most waters (or mustards, etc.) are “almost imperceptible”—it’s all about the story and experience. The brand focus was on packaging and the cold, tactile can experience. (15:53–16:59)
• Healthy Movement in Counterculture: Mike’s punk/hardcore background showed him that health and rebelliousness weren’t mutually exclusive; healthy choices just needed cooler branding. (17:04–18:09)

4. Branding, Packaging, and Humor

• The Power of the Can: From day one, the vision was tallboy cans (like beer/energy drinks) and an edgier design to make water feel “dangerous.”
  • Quote: “How do we make something that's so good for you and safe and innocent feel dangerous?” (22:09–22:10)
• Name Generation: Early (bad) name options included “Hell’s Well” and “Southern Thunder,” but “Liquid Death” stuck because it was entertaining, more a funny “corporate beer death” than genuinely menacing. (22:21–23:31)
• Promoting Before Production: A fake commercial and Photoshop can mockups proved demand and secured early investment—people wanted to buy a product that didn’t exist yet. (24:05–26:40)
• Direct-to-Consumer Start: Retailers were hesitant at first; initial sales were via the website and Amazon, selling mainly 12-packs at a loss to build traction and awareness. (26:46–28:42)

5. Retail Breakthrough and Growth

• Whole Foods as Game-Changer: The first major retail breakthrough (March 15, 2020), which triggered a domino effect—if Whole Foods took the risk, others followed.
  • Quote: “Once Whole Foods was the first one to take it… it just opened up the floodgates to other physical retailers.” (70:00)
• Sustainability & Differentiation: Aluminum cans (“death to plastic”) were part of the appeal to Whole Foods and environmentally conscious customers. (29:23–30:31)
• Leveraging Social Media: Liquid Death would not have existed without social media—“In the old world, this could not happen.” (31:00–31:15)

6. Humor as Brand DNA

• Irreverence with Limits: From the start, humor was used to parody “extreme marketing,” poking fun at the genre and exposing “the bullshittiness of it.” (36:00–36:53)
• Risk Management: While Liquid Death is edgier than traditional brands, they are careful not to cross lines that would jeopardize shelf space at major chains. (36:53–38:20)
  • Example: A “Don’t F the Planet” porn-star PSA drew a single complaint that required a formal apology to a grocery chain. (38:24–40:05)
• Notable Quote: “If you want people to truly love something, there has to be people that truly hate it.” (44:09)

7. Using (and Ignoring) Data

• Data’s Limits: Mike warns that “data can be completely reckless if you're not using it the right way.” Survey and focus group data aren’t always meaningful compared to live social media feedback. (40:09–41:24, 49:56–51:38)
• Social Listening: Comments on pack size (e.g., requests for smaller cans) and viral ideas (like the punk/metal “Greatest Hates” albums using hate comments as lyrics) arose from active social monitoring. (44:09–48:08)

8. Content Strategy and Influencer Partnerships

• Quality > Quantity: The focus is on fewer, higher-quality posts (inspired by the likes of “Mr. Beast”), not relentless output. (56:43–57:34)
• Death Machine: The in-house creative/production team allows for nimble, budget-friendly content experimentation, similar to the Blumhouse film model. (54:35–56:33)
• Native Collaborations: Influencers are encouraged to create content authentic to their niche, not to “make an ad.” (52:13–54:31)

9. Distribution Realities

• Beverage Supply Chain: Explains the three-tier U.S. beverage system (manufacturer → distributor → retailer). Most distribution is via independent beer distributors due to beverage industry legacy laws. (57:34–59:16)
• Locked Out by Contracts: Coke/Pepsi dominance means many venues are off-limits. (72:10)
• Grind of National Expansion: Convincing hundreds of beer distributors individually is slow and effort-intensive. (58:45–59:16)

10. Product Decisions and Category Expansion

• Flavor Naming & Legal Hurdles: Liquid Death pushed the envelope with flavor names (e.g., “Armless Palmer” for half-lemonade, half-tea)—a cease and desist from Arnold Palmer’s estate was turned into viral content, boosting sales. (64:14–66:36)
• Merchandise as a Lifestyle Play: Branded apparel (done “like a band”) brings in significant revenue and boosts cultural cachet—$6M projected in merch sales this year. (68:27–69:49)
• Future Categories: The brand’s expansion will stay focused on “better for you” options—no plans for alcohol, but potential in caffeine-based or under-branded healthy beverages. (73:10)

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Notable Quotes

• On Ad Industry Soul-Sucking:
  “You're making corporate art. That was my reason for wanting to leave advertising… I had too much of a creative spark.” (04:33)
• On Healthy Brands Being Boring:
  “How come things that are healthy and good for you don't use the same funny, irreverent marketing as all the junk food?” (12:11)
• On Social Media-Driven Brands:
  “If social media didn’t exist, could you have done this? — No, no chance.” (31:00–31:15)
• On Brand Love/Hate:
  “If you want people to truly love something, there has to be people that truly hate it.” (44:09)
• On Data Skepticism:
  “Has anybody in this room agreed to a telephone survey ever? …So who are the people that agree to surveys?” (49:56–51:38)
• On Handling Controversy:
  “We ended the spot with 'Don’t F the Planet.' …One pastor complain[ed] to the corporate office about the video and it became a whole thing. I had to write a letter saying that we won’t use adult film stars in our marketing anymore.” (38:24–40:05)
• On Breaking Through at Whole Foods:
  “Once Whole Foods was the first one to take it … opened up the floodgates to other physical retailers.” (70:00)
• On Growth Trajectory:
  “Year one, $3 million. Year two, $10 million. Year three, $45. So it just kept kind of exponentially going up.” (70:58)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:32 – Why entertaining ads can build lasting brand loyalty
• 07:10–08:48 – “Selling your soul to join the Liquid Death Country Club”
• 10:16–12:30 – The breakthrough “Save the Bros” campaign and using humor in health products
• 13:41–15:53 – Manufacturing woes and the shift from Austria to US production
• 22:09–22:10 – Designing water to “feel dangerous” like beer
• 24:05–26:40 – Launching Liquid Death as a viral concept pre-production
• 29:23–30:31 – Whole Foods' decision and the sustainability angle
• 36:00–36:53 – Comedy as brand foundation and the limits of edginess in retail
• 44:09–48:08 – Turning hate comments into best-selling musical albums (“Greatest Hates”)
• 49:56–51:38 – Data skepticism and why most “easy” data is unreliable
• 54:35–56:33 – The “Death Machine” creative team and the Blumhouse/Hollywood model
• 57:34–59:16 – Beverage distribution explained: why it’s so slow and complicated
• 70:00–70:54 – Whole Foods as the brand’s inflection point

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Tone and Conclusion

Mike Cessario’s voice is candid, wry, and energized, blending practical business insights with a relentless, subversive creativity. The episode is fast-paced, witty, and occasionally irreverent—mirroring the Liquid Death brand. Cessario champions the power of humor and entertainment as underutilized forces in healthy branding and repeatedly highlights how bold creative bets (even the “bad” ideas) and viral savvy can upend legacy industries.

For listeners curious about modern branding, challenger products, or simply how to break through in a crowded marketplace, this is a masterclass full of hard-won lessons, laughs, and quotable gems.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Tetragrammaton Narrator]

Tetragrammaton.

[Mike Cessario]

Advertising is something that most people universally hate. And I think it's the one connective tissue with Liquid Death specifically that I think resonates with people is it's not about, do you think skulls are cool? It's, we're sarcastically using death in skulls to bring a humorous approach to something that's really innocent and healthy. The reason Liquid Death is working at Target with, like, Target moms who are not metalheads is I think that's funny that they're using a skull to brand something healthy and I can participate in something funny. And, hey, the way that they market, I mean, we really think about advertising like entertainment. And if you can entertain people, which is hard, anybody trying to make it entertainment, like writing a hit TV show, a hit album, a hit anything is really difficult. Advertising is easy. Anybody can make a good commercial because the bar is so low. It's all just kind of garbage. But if you can actually entertain people, they will follow your brand. Like, they will seek it out. And there's a lot of data showing it. Like, if you can make someone laugh in marketing, it's like 91% of people say that they have a better feeling towards the brand because I think you've given them something of value. Like, marketing has no value. You're paying to force someone to watch something, so it has no barrier on whether they like it or not. They're so used to getting something that has no value, when finally something that is advertising gives them something of true entertainment value, they remember it. They kind of appreciate the brand. Like, oh, you didn't just waste 30 seconds of my life just now. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

Like everyone else.

[Mike Cessario]

Like everyone else. Right, right.

[Interviewer]

How do you see advertising and marketing as same or different?

[Mike Cessario]

They're kind of the same. It's basically communication that is bringing awareness to a product. I think traditional advertising people probably think more of, like, TV commercials and big stuff like that, whereas marketing is maybe a little bit more general. Like, you can look at branding as a part of marketing. You can look at all these different, different aspects of it. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's, how do you get more people to know about your product? Because when people are buying things, especially in a store, everyone's busy. They don't have time to sit there and look at a whole section and think, what brands are available to me today? Should I buy this one? No. It's like, they're going. They're making quick decisions. So when someone's looking at a shelf and you've got Two to three seconds. To get somebody, you kind of have to occupy some little place inside their mind where they've seen something in the past repeatedly, or you made them laugh or something memorable. That when someone gets to the flavored sparkling set, it's like, oh, liquid death. I've heard of that. Maybe I'll try that. And there's a lot that goes into getting that level of what we like to call mental availability.

[Interviewer]

And mental availability means just by seeing the product, the person has a connection.

[Mike Cessario]

I think of mental availability as in you are somewhere near the real consideration set when they want to buy this particular thing. Not everybody is in the mood to buy flavored sparkling water every time they go to the grocery store, for example. But for that one time when shopper A is like, hey, I want some flavored sparkling water today, that liquid death is at least maybe in one of the five brands that they know of. Because you're going to be that much closer to actually getting them to a customer where it's a lot harder. Where if they've never ever heard of you before at all, getting them to then buy you over something else is really hard.

[Interviewer]

So it's like understanding of the brand or an awareness of it.

[Mike Cessario]

Awareness of it, yeah, totally.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about working at an advertising agency. What's that like?

[Mike Cessario]

It was a fun job. It's funny, like, when you start out playing in bands and you have tattoos and stuff, they're kind of like your natural career path is either musician or like creative, you know, marketing, design, whatever that might be. So for me, it was, hey, this is a place where, you know, you can wear a T shirt and jeans to work and they don't really care what you look like. And you can make do decent money actually doing it. You're not just like an artist where you're really trying to struggle and find what it is. But it's also, you're making corporate art. And it gets a lot of creative people that go into this, but it ends up just kind of killing your soul because you're just making corporate art. That was my reason for wanting to leave advertising was just like, I had too much of a creative spark to want to make really interesting things. That just wasn't happening with clients who just don't want to buy interesting things. They're just like, no, no, just we're a frozen pizza company. Just get the shot of the cheese pull. That's all we need. You know, we don't need anything creative. And I think I found myself, I've been working for agencies for maybe four or five years. And I'm just like, yeah, I'm making good money, but I kind of hate everything that I'm making every day. And the way I looked at it was in advertising, the creativity is determined by the client. If they don't want something really cool, you're not going to make something really cool. So I'm like, rather than waiting around for the perfect client and the perfect person, why don't I just make my own thing and I can control all the marketing for it and no one can tell me what to do. And you can actually make a living doing that if you find, like, the right thing. Agencies were fun for a bit. They were ultimately a grind, just given the nature of it. The other thing that's interesting about agencies, on the creative side, 95% of what you work on is never made. Like, you're thinking of all these cool ideas and you're putting them in presentations and you're showing them to clients. And like, 98% of what you show never gets bought or produced or anything. They're all just like, theory. And then once a year, like, a client's like, okay, we want to make that one thing, and you get to make that one thing. So that was another thing. It was like, you spend so much time working on stuff that never actually sees the light of day, which was always fun.

[Interviewer]

Do you remember any campaigns you came up with that you were excited about that never saw the light of day?

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, and there was one that. It was one of the first campaigns I did for Liquid Death years later.

[Interviewer]

Oh, great.

[Mike Cessario]

Which was. There was a golf brand called Callaway, and they had this golf club called the Diablo, and it had, like, devil horns on it, and it was all black and sinister looking. And their competitor Taylor Made released the first white golf club, and it was outselling it. You know, they were like, trying to figure out, hey, what can we do to, like, really make a splash? And whatever. And I had this idea. I'm like, let's run a magazine ad of this scary devil driver and say, if you sell your soul to Callaway, we'll give you a free golf club. And it's only like the first, you know, hundred people that do it or whatever. And it was going to be like a real contract in the magazine. You would rip this thing out, sign it, mail it in, and you get your. You know, these things were like $500 golf clubs. And my boss was like, I'm not even presenting this to the client. Yeah, this is too out there. Like, they'll never go for it. I'm like, I think that's a great idea. So then in the early days of Liquid Death, we created this imaginary club called the Liquid Death Country Club. And the only way you could get in was to legally sell your soul to Liquid Death on our website via this legally binding contract. And I actually had a real lawyer. I'm like, how would you draft it? Let's just pretend here like you could legally sell your soul. How would you draft that contract really legitimately? And. Yeah. And we ended up cut to six months later. We've had, like 100,000 people that sold us their soul, you know, to join this club.

[Interviewer]

So can you think of any others?

[Mike Cessario]

There was one campaign that. It was like, my first real job working in advertising, and I got to work on Volkswagen. They released this new car called the CC, and they had Dr. Phil as like, a celebrity that they were maybe gonna work with to make, like, a TV commercial with that was kind of funny. So they were like, hey, what are funny ideas to do with Dr. Phil? And I came up with this idea of, well, this car is so cool looking and it's gonna get so much attention when you drive it around, you might not emotionally be able to cope with it. So let's have Dr. Phil help you deal with all the attention you're going to be getting from driving this new Volkswagen. And the client loved it. And then we started like, I'm like, oh, my God, like, we're going to make this. And this is this campaign I came up with. And we're like, in, like, the early stages of, like, production planning and all of that. And then all of a sudden, this news thing came out that something about, like, Dr. Phil was caught cheating on his wife. So they, like, killed the whole campaign, and it, like, all went away. And it was like an early lesson for me of, like, how many moving parts there are in this whole thing to get something actually made. And so much is out of your control. Like, you could be a really brilliant creative person, but there's so much other stuff that just can get in the way of something kind of becoming reality.

[Interviewer]

Did you have the idea for Liquid Death before leaving advertising or No?

[Mike Cessario]

I started working on it as, like, a side project in advertising. I was working for a small agency in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and we started doing some of the first funny marketing for the organic industry. Because organic had always been, like, picturesque family farms and, like, family farmers and that kind of thing. And there was this company, Organic Valley, a big organic company, and they Made the first organic protein shake. And they were like, we know we're talking to kind of muscle bound gym guys and we know that's a different audience than our normal like organic butter and milk and that kind of thing. So we came up with this funny campaign called Save the Bros. So like all these jack muscle guys, if they keep drinking all this chemical protein stuff, they might not be around very long. And then who's going to bring the beer pong table? And when we're a nine person agency, I think we were able to shoot this video for like 60 or 70 grand. We shot half of it in my apartment in Chattanooga right when we had the final edit and we showed it to the client. You know, they made the mistake of showing it to their family farmers to see what they thought. And they came back and they're like, oh, guys, I don't know if we can run this. And we're like, like the farmers, they don't get it. They're, they're nervous about it. We're like, look, you guys spent almost nothing on this. It's going to go on YouTube. It's not going on TV. If it doesn't do anything, you can just take it down. And we finally convinced him to run it and we ran it and it was like millions of views, national press pickup on every media outlet was talking about it. And for me, that was kind of my light bulb moment of how come things that are healthy and good for you don't use the same funny, irreverent marketing as all the junk food. Because you think about what are the funniest, coolest ad campaigns. It's like Snickers, Cheetos, Bud Light. Like it's candy, it's, it's fast food, it's alcohol. Everything healthy is always just very quiet where it's like, how can you make health fun? I felt like a lot of healthy brands were preaching to the choir. They're marketing to people who already are healthy. How can we use brand to get people who don't typically buy healthy things to maybe start a little bit because the brand identifies with them in some way or like, oh, that's cool, maybe I'll try that. So that's kind of how the seed of Liquid Death started, was I started thinking about, okay, if I'm going to create my own product, let's do something healthy. And what's the healthiest thing you could possibly drink? Which started off with is just water. We launched with water, then eventually we did flavored sparkling, then we did iced tea. And everything we did just kind of became more successful than the next. And I think that's where we are now. Of like, we're a healthy beverage company that just markets like a junk food company. And that's kind of what it is.

[Interviewer]

How long was it between water and the next product?

[Mike Cessario]

It was about three years. We started selling the first still water and cans January 2019. And then we launched the first flavored sparkling in January of 2022.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about figuring out manufacturing. You've never done this before, right?

[Mike Cessario]

Never done it. And surprisingly for still water, manufacturing was way harder than I imagined. It turned out there is not a single manufacturer in North America at that time who could put non carbonated mountain spring water in cans. Didn't exist.

[Interviewer]

Why is that?

[Mike Cessario]

Because with bottled water you have to basically bottle or can it at the source. Because if you try to tanker truck water from a source a far distance to a bottler, the cost becomes so high, like it doesn't make any sense. So most of the water sources in North America that had manufacturing attached to them was all plastic bottles. And that was kind of our big thing with cans was like single use. Plastic was this terrible thing that was getting more and more sort of steam in the media. And you know, aluminum cans are infinitely recyclable. It's one of the few things that actually gets recycled. So we were pretty hard fast on cans and not plastic. But yeah, there just wasn't anyone who could do it. So I started literally googling outside the US and sure enough, I found a manufacturer in Austria that had their own mineral water springs and massive canning capabilities. And we started producing it in Austria and shipping it here.

[Interviewer]

And is that still how you make it?

[Mike Cessario]

No, we moved everything to the US we started about two years ago and like fully completed earlier last year where it fully kind of domestically produced.

[Interviewer]

And now when you do it domestically, did you build the factory yourself?

[Mike Cessario]

We found a partner in the mountains of Virginia in the western portion of the state that was great spring and then it had a facility and they were willing to invest in the canning infrastructure because we had enough scale at that point. It was worth it to them. And then now that we've moved into soda flavored sparkling water and iced tea, you don't need a spring mountain source for the water you use for flavored products. And those have become a much bigger part of our overall business than just the plain water. So we have tons of co packer options that we can use to produce those things. Whereas like the actual mountain spring water that's the trickier one to do.

[Interviewer]

In terms of mountain spring water, do you test it like taste test?

[Mike Cessario]

I think that's the thing that most people don't realize with products like almost every product category, whether it's water, mustard, whatever, the differences between products are almost imperceptible. It's all brand. And you can ask someone, I'm a die hard Jack Daniels fan. That guy is not picking out Jack Daniels in a blind taste test if his life depended on it.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Mike Cessario]

It is all brand. So for us it wasn't about like, how do we find the perfect tasting water? Because taste is so subjective. You have one person says, this is amazing. Another person says, I hate it as long as it's good. Like, hey, yeah, this tastes good. Tastes like water. And that the experience of the product is good. So for us, when someone had a freezing cold can of water, they were like, I like this. Like, it feels colder. Is it actually colder? Physics wise, probably not, but the can feels colder in your hand and it's just like a. It was a nice experience for folks that was different than a plastic bottle. So I think that helped us as well.

[Interviewer]

Did you grow up drinking bottled water?

[Mike Cessario]

I didn't, no.

[Interviewer]

I drank water.

[Mike Cessario]

Tap water, Yeah. I mean, I started drinking bottled water later though in life and I never was. Even though I, you know, grown up in the punk and hardcore scene where it was kind of owned by energy drinks like Monster, like the Warp tour, all of that. But even then it was like my friends that were in bands, like, they didn't drink that stuff. Like half of them were vegan. Like they cared about health. Some of them didn't even drink alcohol. So there was always this like healthy movement, I think, within the counterculture that was always there. And I, I didn't drink soda for years and I hardly ever drank energy drinks or any of that. So I always cared about health. I drank a lot of water instead of other things. So why is it that it's only the unhealthy stuff? Is trying to invest in this culture again? What helped spark the idea?

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[Interviewer]

Where did the name come from and did you have alternative names?

[Mike Cessario]

You know, learning from my marketing days. You know that when you start a company, you have no money for marketing. I think so many brands are created where the brand name and the product is just, you know, it's okay, nothing crazy. You get that going for a little bit, then you have enough money, then you pay an advertising agency to build this campaign around it to make your not very interesting thing all of a sudden very interesting or relevant. Hey, let's attach this celebrity to it. Let's do this crazy campaign where I knew that that cost a lot of money and we weren't going to have time to do that. So we needed to bake the marketing into the product itself. Like, I need this can. When someone picks it off the shelf, it's so interesting that they're going to take their phone out, take a photo, share it for free to their 200 followers on Instagram or whatever and say, oh my God, have you seen this? And when you start using that as the bar for what the name needs to be or what the packaging needs to look like, you realize how hard it is to get someone to actually do something. Like nobody is taking photos of beverages they drink and sharing them with their friends. It's hard. It's going to be really interesting. So when we were going with that, what am I betting on? If this was on the shelf, someone has to pick it up.

[Interviewer]

Did you already know it was going to be water at that point?

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Did you know it was going to be in a can as opposed to plastic?

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, yeah. That was the two things from the beginning. It was going to be in a can and a tall boy can specifically. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Which is the same as like energy drinks.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah. Or beer.

[Athletic Nicotine Advertiser]

Or beer.

[Mike Cessario]

And that was kind of why we designed Liquid death to look more like a beer.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mike Cessario]

Because it's like we learned in marketing, if you want 16 year olds to think something's cool, you actually market it to people in their 20s because people kind of like look up to like aspire. Right. So we were like energy drinks kind of market to almost like 16 year olds, but 17 year olds don't really think monsters cool, but 12 year olds do. So we were like, how do we make something that seems like it's even older age demographic than energy? Oh, let's make it look like beer. Let's make water look like something that you're not even legally allowed to have. That's the thing I didn't expect with the brand was like that so many moms and parents would love the fact that they're like, thank you. Liquid Death. Finally, my nine year old's excited to drink water for the first time because he feels like he has something he's not supposed to have.

[Interviewer]

Feels dangerous.

[Mike Cessario]

Feels dangerous, yeah. Yeah. And that was all kind of by design, you know, how do we make something that's so good for you and safe and innocent feel dangerous?

[Interviewer]

So, you know, it's water, you know, it's going to be in a tall boy and then you start coming up with names. Do you remember any of you alt names?

[Mike Cessario]

There were some bad ones, sure. Yeah. I think one was Hell's. Well, there was another one we called Southern Thunder because the original sort of inspiration was craft beer. Specifically because I thought craft beer had some of the most interesting creative branding. Like, I mean, there was like Skull Splitter IPA and like, you know, all these cool things happening in craft beer. So that was kind of the original inspiration. So I was kind of making it feel like a craft beer. But then ultimately when it came more about, hey, this is about being funny. We're not trying to really be badass. Like, you start thinking what makes it funnier and you just keep. Well, it's actually funnier if we make it seem like this giant corporate beer brand, but it says Liquid Death on it. Like you've seen punk rock, drippy death. You've never seen like giant corporate beer death. Like, it creates this, like we often joke about. It's like we almost pretend like Liquid Death is a character.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mike Cessario]

And it's like in this dystopian future where death metal is the biggest music genre on earth is some of the biggest companies called Liquid Death. You know, it's like it's entertainment and we're kind of building this funny narrative and it all sort of fits together in, in this interesting way where again, you're trying to show somebody something that they've never seen before. That's what we're always trying to do, whether it's a video, whether it's the packaging, and that is, I think, what inherently makes something interesting. And that's what we shoot for.

[Interviewer]

Did you start promoting it before it existed?

[Mike Cessario]

We did.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about that.

[Mike Cessario]

So when I first had the idea for Liquid Death, everybody told me it would never work.

[Interviewer]

They always say that.

[Mike Cessario]

They always say that about everything. Yeah, it's never going to work. That's crazy. Retailers will never put it on the shelf. You're going to confuse people. They'll think it's beer. I was like, okay, I need to find a way to prove this out. That doesn't cost much money. Because even at that time, it's like, I had maybe a couple grand in my bank account. I was still paying student loans until deep in my 30s. And to create a limited run of a canned product, it's not like you're making your own protein bar. You can make that in your garage. Go sell it at the local farmer's market. Get some slow build. If you're making a canned beverage, the minimum run is basically a quarter million cans.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Mike Cessario]

So you're talking about 150, 200k just to even start. So I was like, okay, let me try to prove this out. So we designed a can in Photoshop that looked real. We came up with an idea for, like, an Internet commercial. And it was my wife's friend, who was an actress, she was willing to, like, be in it. And we literally. We used a white Miller light can that we filled with water. And the whole video, she's pouring the can of water out while she's talking. So she's talking, she's going on about how water has been misbranded for so long. And the whole time she's pouring water out, and you're kind of like, oh, that's a lot of water. And what we thought was funny was jokingly trying to position water as dangerous, where it's like, water is responsible for thousands of deaths every year. Energy drinks only kill, like, what, one or two kids? And then the big reveal at the end, it cuts wide, and you realize she's been waterboarding a guy the whole time.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Mike Cessario]

With the product.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah. And then we put that video on Facebook. We made a couple little social posts of the can. We made it seem like this was a real product. And then cut to, like, five months later, the page had 80,000 followers, which was more than awkwafina on Facebook at the time. You know, the video had a few million views. We had hundreds of comments from people. Is this real? How do I get this? We even had, like, distributors. Hey, I'm the biggest distributor in New York. Can I talk to a salesperson? So then I used all of that real traction to go raise that first 150k round of funding just to actually produce real product.

[Interviewer]

And then once you had that real product, how did you distribute the first round?

[Mike Cessario]

So again, retailers were still like, no chance. We're putting this on the shelf. So I said, okay, we're gonna sell it direct from our website and Amazon because you can sell whatever you want there.

[Interviewer]

Would you sell a six pack on Amazon or how would you sell it?

[Mike Cessario]

We sold it as a 12 pack.

[Interviewer]

12 pack.

[Mike Cessario]

And it was actually. It took a lot of figuring out to know. It costs a lot of money to shift something that heavy. Yeah. So I think at that time Amazon was charging us just for shipping. Every 12 pack we shipped, Amazon charged us like $13. Wow. Yeah, it was a lot. And if you tried to go to a post office right now and ship a 12 pack of water, they'd probably charge you 20 plus bucks to ship. Wow. So it was like we weren't making any money, but we knew, like, this was how you had to at least get the brand and build customers.

[Interviewer]

Was the goal to basically break even and sell a bunch of stuff.

[Mike Cessario]

Well, like most startups, like, especially in the tech world, the game is always, you burn cash, you're not making any money until you get into a certain level of scale. And then there's something that switches on Spotify, for example, it's like losing money, losing money, losing money until they have this massive base and they're like, oh, we're going to up subscriptions $2 a month, boom. Wildly profitable. Amazon notoriously lost money forever. Now they're one of the most profitable companies in the world. So we knew that we had a Runway of, hey, we can lose money for a while as we build customers because as we get more scale, the product gets cheaper to make because you got higher minimums, all of that. You start getting into brick and mortar retail and you're not shipping it anymore. You make more money there. So we've kind of from those early days of just being direct to consumer online, now we're, you know, online is really small part of the business. We actually don't ship anymore. Like, we just ship product to Amazon. They buy it from us, they ship it, they own the inventory. We're a wholesale business now, so we just ship to distributors, they sell it to retailers.

[Interviewer]

What was the first time you ever saw it in a store?

[Mike Cessario]

First real store to carry it? There were like a couple seven elevens in the very first year, because seven eleven, they're all franchisee owned and the average franchisee only owns like two stores and they control what goes in their store. So you could literally just go to a 711 and if you can convince the guy to carry your product, like, there's kind of a way that you can get it in.

[Interviewer]

It's almost like a mom and pop kind of.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah. There's stuff that happens at the corporate level where they got to get your product in the system. But there was a couple seven Elevens that had it. But our first big retailer to carry it on a real scale was Whole Foods.

[Interviewer]

That's interesting.

[Mike Cessario]

And literally our load in date was March 15, 2020. Right when the pandemic started.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And how did Whole Foods decide to carry it?

[Mike Cessario]

They were always big on the sustainability thing and they liked our sustainability. Like, we've always had this like death to plastic message that's on every can and we donate a portion of the profits to help kill plastic pollution. You have loud, crazy stuff, you have do good stuff, but rarely do those two things kind of come together. And I think that's always been our interesting DNA. And I think Whole Foods saw that too. They're like, hey, we really care about sustainability. And look at our bottled water aisle. It's still all plastic in Whole Foods. So they're like, we were one of the first canned aluminum waters. Now there's a ton of them, but they like the sustainability angle. And I think they were willing to, to, you know, try a edgy brand in their store. And the other thing was because we were already selling on Amazon and our website for a year, I mean, our first year in business, just on Amazon and our website, we did like 3 million in sales.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Mike Cessario]

So going into Whole Foods, we could sell them on the story. Hey, guys, people are paying 20 bucks a case on Amazon right now in your stores. You can sell it for 15. And when we tell everybody, hey, now you can get it at whole foods for 15 bucks, we have a way to actually drive volume for them that they were excited about. So I think we just had a really good pitch and existing customer base where we weren't just trying to say, hey, Whole Foods, we're a new brand. No one's heard of us. Put us in your stores.

[Interviewer]

Do you think liquid death is really a story about what's possible considering social media? Like, if social media didn't exist, could you have done this?

[Mike Cessario]

No, no chance.

[Interviewer]

So in the old world, this could not happen.

[Mike Cessario]

Could not happen.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mike Cessario]

Because the Internet is Both a blessing and a curse. But I think the blessing side of it is it has really democratized business. I mean, even like music. I mean, there are people who a label probably never would have given a chance, but they can put a video on YouTube and become, you know, it lets the market decide the winners and losers. Whereas before you had executives that decided.

[Interviewer]

Gatekeepers.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, yeah, gatekeepers who kind of decide what the market gets.

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[Mike Cessario]

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[Interviewer]

What did you watch on TV growing up?

[Mike Cessario]

I watched a lot of Married with Children. I still think that show is so funny and could never exist today. My dad was a really funny guy. So everything in our house was about humor. Brothers and sisters, one younger brother. We watched a lot of funny stuff, like not a lot of serious stuff growing up.

[Interviewer]

Who were your favorite comedians?

[Mike Cessario]

George Carlin's probably my favorite of all time. More modern day, like Tom Segura, Bert Kreischer, Bill Burr and all those guys have kind of become investors in Liquid Death, which is really cool too.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that's great.

[Mike Cessario]

It's cool because not only can they be ambassadors for the brand, but it's like, we're cool enough with. It's like, hey, we're trying to think of a funny flavor name for Cherry. Do you have any ideas? You know, it's like you can actually kind of have them contribute the humor of the brand in light ways that's not taking too much of their time and that's cool too.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the power of humor.

[Mike Cessario]

Humor one is really hard and I think it gives us this Competitive advantage, where giant companies like Coke or Pepsi, like, with the way the bureaucracy is there, it's almost not possible to generate real humor. Everything's going through layers of approvals, like it just. It can't live that way.

[Interviewer]

And humor, by its nature is edgy.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah. And I feel like with everything that was happening culturally over the last couple years, I think there was a lot of good intention for some of, like, the. The woke kind of thing. But then I think it just got out of hand where it was like. There was a period where almost like comedy was dead. It's like you're not allowed to make fun of things anymore. And I thought that was really weird. And I think the world needs to be able to make fun of stuff always. It's a reason why I think comedy is so. It's so much of a infinite genre because all comedy really is, is making fun of whatever's happening at the moment. And even in the future, if there's cyborg robots that own us, we'll make fun of those robots that own us. Right. And there will be a way to make people laugh by making fun of sort of what's happening. And so I think for us, it's like we could continue to make people laugh forever because there's always going to be stuff to make fun of. So I think there's a power in just the genre as something that has legs versus, I don't know. Will action sports always be a thing that's popular? I don't know.

[Interviewer]

And how early in the process did you realize comedy was a big part of it?

[Mike Cessario]

From the onset, the name was not about to try to be actually badass. It was, we want to be sarcastic. It's almost like I was making fun of the extreme marketing that was all kind of B.S. like, there's no reason that just because something has caffeine in it that it's extreme. It's like my grandmother drank English breakfast tea that had the same ingredients as monster energy, you know? But it's all just marketing. Once you realize that marketing is all kind of theater, it's easy to make fun of it and to kind of, like, expose the bullshittiness of it, you know, it's like what happens when you try to position water as extreme? It becomes funny, and it kind of makes light of. Anybody trying to position anything as extreme is kind of crazy.

[Interviewer]

Can you go too far?

[Mike Cessario]

Yes. I think any comedy is about taste. Even talking with Tom Segura, for him, comedy is such a game of fine tuning. He's like, you can change one word and something goes from not being funny to funny, or you change one little thing is sometimes all you need. So with us, it's a little different because we are a product. It has to be sold in Walmart, it has to be sold in Target, and they have their gatekeepers who are very risk averse. So people are like, oh, liquid death is so edgy. I'm like, yes, if you compare it to like traditional marketing that people hate. But if you compare it to legitimate entertainment, look at the number one comedy special on Netflix that bajillions of people watch. We are tame compared to the jokes in that or the number one horror movie. We don't show anything remotely as graphic as that. But these are still things generating hundreds of millions of dollars and massive mainstream appeal. But because we are a product, if we go too far and a Walmart executive says that's too far, we're taking you off the shelf. There's no more brand. So you kind of have to like. For us, it is a tricky thing of we're always trying to tow that line between we want it to be legitimately entertaining, but we also need to be somewhat mindful of our business partners that we're not pissing them off.

[Interviewer]

Have you ever had any pushback from any of the business partners?

[Mike Cessario]

Little things. Like, we did this campaign where we got one of the biggest adult film stars to deliver a completely innocent message about sustainability. And we made sure, like, she's wearing full dress, there's no skin, nothing. She's just like, hi, I'm Cherie Deville and even though I'm into getting my bleep one thing, I'm not into single use plastic. And she goes to this whole funny thing. And we ended the spot with Don't F the Planet. And there's data behind this. If you look at the data, there are more people that visit porn sites than any other thing on the Internet, including probably the executives that work at these places, Right? So if you're actually trying to reach a large audience, statistically, that is the way to do it. So you're thinking about it like, okay, you want to deliver an important sustainability message. Well, here's someone with a probably larger audience than most celebrities and for a fraction of the cost because you were just so excited to do something that wasn't adult film. Like, oh, I get to do like a normal commercial where there's like, yes, I'll do this for free. So we did this thing. It did extremely well. Like millions of views. Like, people loved It. But one of our grocery retailer chains had one pastor complain to the corporate office about the video and it became a whole thing. And I had to write a letter saying that we won't use adult film stars in our marketing anymore. And that, yeah, like these retail executives, like they're so risk averse that one complaint from somebody can create a board meeting for executives. And it's, you know, it's a tricky thing to navigate.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about data. First of all, is data always helpful or.

[Mike Cessario]

No, it's a thing we always talk about. Data can be completely reckless if you're not using it the right way. Like anybody can find a way to use data to make something seem like the right thing. It's more about how do you extract truth from data. And it's not easy to do. You've got to find like, okay, well how are you parsing the data? Like where's it coming from? Like, what are you really looking at? So we use data as a way to help guide things or like to gut check. Like, hey, this is what we believe to be true. Are we finding any data that's really going against that? That should make us. Wait a second, this is saying this, maybe we're not right. Or hey, we think this and we look at some data like, hey, that actually kind of corroborates this. Like maybe we're on the right path. You're never going to know. Totally. I think intuition is so important. And again like even as like a music reference, it's like, yes, you could probably make a great album based on data and likes. But there's just something about the intuition of just knowing this is going to resonate on some level with people and you're not going to have the data that's going to perfectly back that up.

[Interviewer]

Give me an example of how you actually use data and where you would get it.

[Mike Cessario]

Okay, so good example. Survey data. So as we evolve as a brand, as you scale, you have to do something that they call price pack architecture. It's like, yes, people love liquid death, but what's the right size case and can that is best when people are.

[Interviewer]

Grocery shopping and you're hiring someone to do this survey.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, there's companies that will run survey data. You can go through consulting companies like bcg. I think we actually use bcg. Well, they'll do like full on crazy things with like mock shelves to see what do people pick. But we wanted to figure out, okay, we know people love liquid death, what's the right pack size and can size and price Point for liquid death in grocery stores so that we can sell as much of it as possible. And that's where you start seeing like.

[Interviewer]

Oh, how many different size cans do you do?

[Mike Cessario]

We have two different size cans. We have big 19 ounce tall boy cans that we just sell is like single serve. So when you're in a 711 and you get something cold, you get this big tall boy.

[Interviewer]

What other drinks would be next to them that would be that same size?

[Mike Cessario]

Well, you see a lot of big beer cans in convenience stores. We're not merchandise next to the beer, but the other big cans you would see in the store, energy drinks, beer, alcohol, you typically see. You don't see a lot of other Arizona iced tea famously was in like the big giant cans. That's probably the gamut of it.

[Interviewer]

Okay. And then there's a smaller can as well.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, we do the kind of standard 12 ounce can like that classic beer soda can size. And that was the big change we made this year because what we realized when we were only selling the tall boys, so we sold them as singles and then we sold them as an eight pack. But when you buy an eight pack at the store, people are taking it home and consuming it at home. And what we learned was like most people don't want a giant can at home. Like that's more for like on the go. You're going to have it around for a while. So yeah, there was good data to show. Hey, when people faced with the decision, more of them wanted to purchase more small cans for home than less big cans. And then we see some more like customer data from social media. We look at data all the time there people commenting, hey, these big cans, my kid only drinks half of them and I end up pouring them out. When are you guys going to make a smaller can? Like, it's too big, it's too much. We use all that stuff to kind of inform, hey, we're going to make a big decision. Where do we go?

[Interviewer]

Tell me more about comments. What other stuff comes from comments that ends up being useful?

[Mike Cessario]

So one of my favorite marketing things we've ever done, and it's musical, was with a brand like ours since the beginning. You had such a great quote I saw recently that was like great work. Divides the audience and like liquid death. We had a very divided audience in the early days. You had people hate commenting. This is the worst thing ever. Are these guys devil worshipers? You get all that and you get the love. This is the greatest thing ever. And I've always said there is no such thing as. As getting 100% of people to love something. It's not possible. If you want people to truly love something, there has to be people that truly hate it. And the way the Internet works, most normal people are passive observers of the social media circus. You're scrolling, you're looking at stuff, maybe you like something. But very few people are going in, commenting angry things.

[Interviewer]

People don't engage.

[Mike Cessario]

People don't engage the extremes. Engagement. So the loudest people on either end, the true lovers, this is the greatest thing ever. And then the true haters, this is the worst thing ever. That's who you find in the comments. So we had all these hate comments and we did this funny post because literally it cost us nothing. We had an image of our can. We took this hate comment that said something like, I will never buy this product. I will never support something that is clearly Satan worshipers. We literally screen grabbed that comment, put it next to the can and said, people love us on the Internet. And that post was the best performing post we had done ever. And it cost us nothing. So we were like, oh, this idea of like leaning into the hate could be really interesting. So then we said, what if we gather a bunch of the best hate comments, hire legit musicians and make an album where the lyrics are verbatim hate comments from the Internet? And we called it Liquid Death's Greatest Hates.

[Interviewer]

It's funny.

[Mike Cessario]

So the first one we made was like a heavy metal record where we got this legit guy who's a heavy metal guy. He like played all the instruments, wrote the album. It was like a legit metal record and the lyrics are all just like fire your marketing guy. And it was cool because we've done it across genres now where it started as a metal record because it was like, oh, they're angry. So doing an angry record made sense. Then we did a punk album which still was kind of like funny angry, but the punk album did better because they were singing where the metal records are just growling. You can't hear the lyrics as much. Then it was like the punk record, you could hear the lyrics. That was funnier. Then the female power pop album, that was funny because you really hear it. Then can we hear.

[Interviewer]

Do you have it on your phone?

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Let's hear a song.

[Mike Cessario]

Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What track would you like to hear? Worst name for water company.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. Some 46 year old AD dude with swallow tattoos probably spent 15 years of his professional career to come up with this Idea.

[Interviewer]

Really funny.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And the idea of just taking the bad comments and making something beautiful out of it.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

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[Interviewer]

Can you think of any times where you've gotten data back and you've decided to go against what the data tells you?

[Mike Cessario]

Yes, but more when I don't believe that the data is a good source of data. So for instance, you only have access to so much data, and most data that big companies pay for and that are readily accessible, which almost has become like the standard is survey data. So someone will say, well, hey, we have this data that we pulled that, I don't know, people don't want this one thing, whatever it might be. I'm like, okay, how big was the pool of people? 200. Okay, that's not a lot of people. How do they get the info from them? Oh, it's a survey. What do you mean survey? Like, you know, like when people call you and say, hey, would you like to take a survey? I'm like, has anybody in this room agreed to a telephone survey ever? Do you know anybody that's agreed to a telephone survey? Okay, no. So who are the people that agree to surveys when people call them on the phone? Like, this might not be like your average customer or who we're talking about. So you can't put too much stock in something like that. Right? So but if we're looking at, but hey, on social, when we posted a similar thing, it got 10,000 likes. So maybe that's a better view of like real market reaction than not. And same thing with like focus groups. Like, focus groups have always been a thing that people use for data. But when you put random people in a clinical room and say, what do you think of these things? People say and do things they wouldn't normally do. So you can use it for certain things, but you just have to be careful of what are you actually getting out of it and how big of a decision are you making based on.

[Interviewer]

Which social media sites do you use for liquid Death?

[Mike Cessario]

Liquid Death, we're most focused on Instagram. That's kind of like.

[Interviewer]

Has it always been that from the beginning?

[Mike Cessario]

It started as Facebook, but I think it's evolved where there's a wider range of demos on Instagram. Facebook's become a bit older in their demo, and we still do some stuff there. But Instagram kind of seems to be where so much of the heat is. And then TikTok, we've done pretty well there too.

[Interviewer]

Do you make different content for each place, or is it just the same thing in different distribution?

[Mike Cessario]

Some of it's the same, some of it's unique. Instagram's kind of like our main platform we make stuff for. The other thing that we've done well with is finding influencer types on TikTok that have their own audiences and then finding ways for them to do something with our product for their audience.

[Interviewer]

And would you pitch them on that?

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, like, we find someone who's interesting or we think is funny or does cool things. We'd say, hey, we'd love to pay you to do, like, a fun liquid death thing. And the minute you tell someone who's not a marketing person to do a marketing thing, they start making bad marketing things. Like, no, no, no, no, we don't want you to make an ad. Just do what you would normally do and just, like, find some. Like, I don't care if you, like, pour our product out or we're not sensitive. Like, do what is natural to why your audience follows you. Don't try to make an ad for Liquid Death that goes outside of that. And that stuff has been successful. And I think with the platforms, you know, it's a better way to leverage audiences than you trying to constantly hit a bullseye on different things.

[Interviewer]

Do you do that everywhere or just on TikTok?

[Mike Cessario]

We do it everywhere. Like, there was this Instagram account called Influencers in the Wild. Have you ever seen that?

[Interviewer]

No.

[Mike Cessario]

Where it's this guy, he posts these videos where it's like, you know, some girl in the middle of traffic trying to get, like, you know, the perfect selfie video and had, like, tons of followers. So we Were like, hey, we would love to do something with you guys. So we have this big ridiculous mascot that we call Murder man. And he's like this muscle bound Conan the Barbarian looking guy, but instead of a head, he has no head and he has a can for a head and his eyes are nipples because he has no more eyes in his head. So we're like, we went with him and he had our mascot seeming like an influencer on a beach, like trying to take these like, you know, super vain photos of himself. And then that did really well, like to that audience. So, yeah, you just find ways to insert liquid death into the culture in a way that feels natural and not forced and that again, it's always funny and people appreciate it. It doesn't feel like, oh, clearly this guy's just getting paid to say, this is the drink that I drink and you should drink it too. You know?

[Interviewer]

Do you have a whole team of people who focus on that?

[Mike Cessario]

So we've built our own internal creative team and production team that we call Death Machine.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah. They can like go and film stuff for cheap and.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Have you used Death Machine for any products beyond your own?

[Mike Cessario]

No, it's just for us. And it's not a big team, it's just a couple producers. But, you know, if you don't have your own team, you're going through a production company and they're just marking up the cost of everything because they have to make money. But when we kind of own it all, we can do it cheaper because that's the other big thing is like entertainment. It's really hard to know what's going to hit. So you kind of have to make a bunch of small bets and knowing that if to hit, it's kind of worth everything else. Whereas, like, I think the old marketing model is like an agency comes in to a client and says, here's three big campaigns. Pick one. And then some boardroom of executives say that's the best campaign and they pick that campaign and then they spend $50 million on that campaign. And you hope that it works for us. It's like, try a lot of things. Try a lot of things. Yeah. And I think you're seeing that in some of the Hollywood model like Blumhouse, Jason Blum's company, like they kind of redefined horror because they were making movies for no more than 4 to 5 million dollars. And everybody was doing the movie at whatever minimum wage was, knowing that they would get some upside on it if it was successful. But it enabled really provocative, interesting outside of the box ideas to get made. Because if those ideas were going to cost 30 million, no studio would take the risk to try to make something like that. But if it's only 4 million, you can make a bunch of weird stuff and then some of them become get out and they become these huge successes. So we take a really similar thing of most things that we make videos like we don't spend more than 100k on, but the ones that get 40 million views and you know, 12 billion impressions, it's like, oh, the earned media value of that is 20 million.

[Interviewer]

Would you say not related to the influencer side, but the content generation side. Is there at least a post today or no?

[Mike Cessario]

No, I think we've moved away from frequent posting. I think that was the original, like when brands got into social, it was like you have to be always on, always on, constantly posting. And then we took a step back a couple years ago. Let's kind of focus on quality over quantity. I think the Internet, that's the problem. It became so much a quantity thing. It's not possible to make great stuff that frequently. Then you started to see the rise of some mega influencers like Mr. Beast, where he would post one video a month, but that video was like unreal and would get 100 million views. I'd much rather play that game of like, let's do one really great thing or maybe two great things a month and focus there versus just kind of trying to do all this little stuff that often takes the same amount of time to do. It's just not as good.

[Interviewer]

Walk me through. The beverage business in general.

[Mike Cessario]

It'S a really hard business because so much is out of your control. So the way the beverage business works, you work with manufacturers who produce your product, then you sell your product to distributors. Distributors then sell the product to the retail stores.

[Interviewer]

How many distributors are there in the country?

[Mike Cessario]

Thousands. We are mostly in the Anheuser Busch Beer network. Because the way the beer laws work post prohibition in the United States, beer manufacturers are not allowed to own more than 20% of their distribution for whatever reason. If you make beer, you can't also be the one that is selling the beer to the retailers. They call it the three tier system.

[Interviewer]

Coca Cola, they could own their distribution.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, because they're not alcohol. Right, I see, yeah. So Coke owns all of their distributions essentially, as does Pepsi, as does these other ones.

[Interviewer]

So they're less interested in sharing it in that distribution.

[Mike Cessario]

Exactly, yeah. So you can only be distributed for the most part by Coke or Pepsi if they Own you.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Mike Cessario]

And that tends to be what their value proposition is. When they buy a brand, they're like, hey, we'll buy you, put you into our network. And you're instantly kind of everywhere with beer. Because corporate Anheuser Busch only owns 20% of its network. There's 300 independent family owned beer distributors that can make their own decisions for what they distribute. So we literally had to go one by one and convincing them to carry Liquid Death and distribute us.

[Interviewer]

Are there any other options?

[Mike Cessario]

That's pretty much the only distributors. It starts getting really in the weeds. But it's like they're called DSD distributors, which mean direct store delivery. Means they're a distributor that has a sales guy that takes your product into the store and merchandises it on the shelf. There's another group of distributors that they call Broadline or Direct. They're more like a logistics company. They have these big trucks, they have your product, a bunch of other stuff. They drop a pallet of it off in the back of the store, they leave and go to the next store. So you're depending on a store employee to then open that up and then go and put that on the shelf. But what's happening in this retail environment? Retailers are having a really hard time hiring that low cost grocery store labor. So they all have labor issues where people who are going direct, the shelf is sitting empty because that stuff is sitting in the back and nobody actually has the time to put it on the shelf yet.

[Interviewer]

So do you pay a premium for the dsd?

[Mike Cessario]

Yes, you do. They need real margins where you make more money going through the direct way. But then you have to hire your own people to go into the store and make sure that the shelves are stocked. So the direct guys really only go for the most part to the big stores, like all those mom and pop little bodegas. Like, they're not really going there. So you kind of need the DSD guys to.

[Interviewer]

Are there any places that you want to get your drinks into but can't?

[Mike Cessario]

There's one grocery store chain in Texas called H E B that we're not yet in. We may be closer now, but the buyer took us in, said, yeah, we love this. And then we were in the store. They built some big displays, like our team built some big displays in the store. One VP of H E B, who I think maybe was like super religious, saw the Liquid Death display and said, oh no, this is not the right brand fit for our stores. And they discontinued the brand from the store within like weeks of it actually launching and going through the whole lower end of the system. Wow. And it's like the only grocery chain in the US Pretty much major one that we're not in yet. But it seems like maybe this person is close to retiring and we might be able to eventually get in there. But that's one. And I think Trader Joe's is one. Like, I love Trader Joe's, and I think Trader Joe's is one of the most underrated brands of all time. People are actually fanatical about Trader Joe's. Like, I remember during COVID there's like lines of people waiting to go on the Trader Joe's. Like, I talked to my wife about, oh my God, I love the Trader Joe's whatever snacks or the Trader Joe's whatever. And they've built a brand that it doesn't matter what they make, people like it. There's not many brands, especially in the food and beverage space, who have been able to have a level of fanaticism across multiple product categories. And I think it's just super interesting, just everything they do as a store and as a brand. And they do carry stuff that's non Trader Joe's branded. Like, they carry beer brands and stuff like that. It would be cool to have liquid death in Trader Joe's. But again, they have such a weird, unique way of how they pick products and how they don't. And it's really tricky.

[Interviewer]

Who do you think of as your competition? Do you think of Evian as your competition? Or do you think of Monster as your competition or Red Bull as your competition?

[Mike Cessario]

It's kind of everything. You take a little bit of share from some of the other premium water brands. You end up taking a little bit of share from brands that people are trying to cut down on. But so is probably Evian too, right? Like, people who are trying to cut down on soda, maybe they start drinking more bottled water. So, yeah, it kind of depends what the occasion is. But we are seeing that so many people are choosing liquid death because it's a legit replacement for something that they want to cut down on. Like our flavored sparkling water, like Lacroix, for example. They're flavored sparkling, but they have, like, no sweetener at all. Like, it's very bland. And there's certain people who are trying to cut down on soda, and they're like, well, I've tried the Kroy, but it's not really a replacement. Like, I missed that sweetness flavor. So, like, we put just a little bit of sugar in ours and like, A little bit of natural sweetener. Now we're maybe half as sweet as a soda, not fully, but it becomes a much better replacement. And we've seen tons of people now talking about liquid death. You actually helped me stop drinking soda for a whole month for the first time ever. And that's the kind of stuff that gets me excited, is like getting people who aren't typically healthy to start doing healthier things.

[Interviewer]

Is there any relationship to the color of the can and the liquid or the flavor that's inside?

[Mike Cessario]

Sometimes and sometimes not. And I think we've gotten better about, like, where we would start just making totally crazy sounding things that have maybe not as much connection to the actual flavor. We come up with really funny flavor names for everything. Like our cherry is called Cherry Obituary. We have Ice T and we have a half and half, which most people know as an Arnold Palmer. And a funny story, our original name was Armless Palmer. And a month after launching, we got a cease and desist from the Arnold Palmer estate saying, you have to stop selling this. This is too close to what it is. And then our lawyers actually looked at it and they're like, there's this thing that happens. I don't know what it's called, but a certain term can become truly ubiquitous. And if you can kind of spend a couple hundred grand and do a study that anybody can go into a restaurant in America and order an Arnold Palmer and they'll get a half tea, lemonade, and they have no confusion that that is licensed by the golfer's estate. Once something's become. Become a part of their natural.

[Interviewer]

That's what it's called.

[Mike Cessario]

And if you can prove that, they would lose the rights to stop people from using it. And there's been a couple brand names like that throughout history. Like, I think Teflon was one. Like, that was a brand. But it's also a substance that anybody can make. And I think, like, anybody can call it Teflon. So I think we probably scared them off a little bit when we gave that response of like, hey, we think it's become ubiquitous in any place in America. Even if we wanted to use the real name, our names nowhere close to Arnold Palmer. We don't use any golf imagery or whatever. But even still, we were like, you know, they have a lot more money than we do. If they really wanted to be a pain in the ass and like, drag out a court process, like, you know, do we want to go through that? So we're like, let's just change the name so we Changed the name to Dead Billionaire and we posted the cease and desist on social media and told everybody the story. National media attention, everybody loves it. And now it's like our top selling flavor. So again, when you can find a way to turn problems into positive things, it can work really well.

[Interviewer]

Is it only a domestic brand or are you global?

[Mike Cessario]

Especially if you look at our social media following, we have a fairly international following on social. We did a little bit of selling in like the UK and Australia. It's just kind of like a dip our toe in the water. And people were responding to the brand really well because one of the reasons we were testing Europe is because we had Austria as a producer. So we're like, hey, we're already producing there. We can just ship some over there and test it out. But once we fully move the supply chain to the US and we stopped working with our Austrian CO packer, it's like, okay, well if we want to continue this, we're going to have to start shipping over the ocean back there.

[Interviewer]

Or can you just go back to Austria and do the European stuff there?

[Mike Cessario]

The problem is you lose all your scale.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Mike Cessario]

So now the cost, because you're only making one tenth of the volume they.

[Interviewer]

Raise still be like starting over in the U.S. you know, you could start over in Europe and eventually it gets to a point where it's worth doing.

[Mike Cessario]

Totally, but it just costs a lot of money. Yeah, you have to raise capital. You have to be willing to burn cash to do that. So we kind of decided, hey, we have so much to focus on in the us we're still small. Let's not burn precious capital to get Europe going. Like, let's focus it here. And then once we have more scale, you might even have a better deal where it's like some distributors like, hey, we're willing to invest this just to get Liquid Death here because you're already so massive. Like Red Bull, for example. Before Red Bull came to the US they were doing over a billion in sales in Europe. So when they came here, they had a lot more capital, manpower, scale to make it much more quickly successful than when they just started from scratch.

[Interviewer]

Do you picture growing beyond beverages or is it a beverage company?

[Mike Cessario]

I think it's a beverage company. I mean, I think one unique thing that we do is again from my band days, we sell merch and apparel just like a band. And we actually sell a lot of it because we take it seriously. Like we design Liquid Death shirts with artists. It's not just about sticking our logo On a shirt. It's like people will do these crazy liquid death looking pieces. And this year we're probably going to do 6 million bucks just worth of apparel as like a beverage company. We've made gold liquid death Nixon watches that have little executioner ax handles on it and we sell out of those. So, you know, like a true quote unquote lifestyle brand. If you're a brand that people feel like represents something like a band, they will wear it around. Now it's like, it's crazy. We have all these companies reaching out to us that want to license our brand. So like in Target right now, there's a company that makes pool floaties and they do them for like one that looks like a big cheez it and a big pop tart. Now they have like a big liquid death can and it's like they just license our brand and then they sell them, they get it on the shelf, they deal with all the hassle. And for us, we're not trying to be a merch company, we're a beverage company that's just free marketing and awareness inside the store, in a different part of the store. Just because we're there.

[Interviewer]

What would you say the first breakthrough where like things were moving along, it was building. But then something happened that was like, everything is different now.

[Mike Cessario]

It was probably when we launched Whole Foods because in that first year we were still seen as such a like edgy heavy metal brand. And when Whole Foods took it nationwide, they weren't even like, no, let's just try it in a region. They're like, no, full national. All these other retailers who are afraid of the brand, once we were like, well, Whole Foods has it. They're kind of like, oh, well, if they have it, what are we worried about? You know? So I think it really became this domino effect of once Whole Foods was the first one to take it and they realized, okay, there's no one protesting in the parking lot. Oh, and look at their sales. They're growing like crazy. It just I think really opened up the floodgates to other physical retailers like open to taking the brand in and giving it a chance. And that's where really that's when our growth just started going like pretty nuclear.

[Interviewer]

And has growth been pretty consistent since then?

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah, I mean, in the first couple years, I mean it was like, I mean it's all publicly available data, but we went year one, three million, year two, 10 million, year three, 45. So it just kept kind of exponentially going up. Now we're getting to those Levels of scale, where even like 50% growth is pretty insane for a company. Our scale. So, yeah, I mean, we're just kind of consistently looking at. We don't need to double in size every year. It's more now about, okay, how do we focus on becoming a profitable company? It's like we have scale now because that's kind of how it is in beverage. What makes it hard, Especially in non alkali, Coke and Pepsi set the pricing for all the categories. So if you want to be a water brand, let's say Coke is pricing Dasani at $1.49. You can't come in and charge $8 just because that's what your supply chain dictates you to make. To make profit, you have to price somewhat competitive to that and wait until your scale is at a certain point where you have the scale to actually be making money at that price point.

[Interviewer]

And it's not really a fair game because they have the scale.

[Mike Cessario]

Yes, exactly.

[Interviewer]

And they're setting the price.

[Mike Cessario]

Yeah. Which is why beverage in general is such a hard industry to be successful in because there's so much stacked against you from scale of the big guys who literally own everything. Like every music venue, every stadium, every ski resort, every casino is locked up in a Coke or Pepsi exclusive contract where that place is only allowed to sell Coke and Pepsi products. So even as a brand getting in from like a marketing standpoint, it's really hard. And now we're finally getting to that level of scale where it's like, oh, we don't need to hire a ton more people. Like, we have the right team size now. We can finally like let the revenue pass our costs. And then now, finally you start becoming a profitable big boy company, as we call it. But it takes a long time to get there and a lot of capital. And that's why a lot of brands, they just kind of end up running out of gas before they get to that level.

[Interviewer]

Do you have any ideas for other product categories of beverage?

[Mike Cessario]

Definitely. We're looking at a new category next year, which is exciting. I can't really talk about it, but my focus is anything we go into has to be a better for you play. Whether that's a category that's typically not seen as better for you. And we come in with like a better for you version of what that is. Like liquid death. I don't think we'll ever make hard spiked liquid death. That has alcohol. Right. Like, I don't think we would ever do that because it's not healthy and it would be hard to spin. Anything with alcohol is, like, truly healthy. But I think there are things in the world of, like, caffeine. Like, you could do something healthy. It doesn't have to be some of these energy drinks now. Like, it's like 300, 400 milligrams of caffeine. Like, it's gotten kind of crazy where Red Bull is the conservative one now, you know? So we're looking at all kinds of different things and trying to find, like, hey, is there a category that needs a better option for something? Or is there a category that is really healthy and there's just no interesting brands in it? And we can go and be the one interesting brand in this healthy category and bring it to more people or put our marketing sort of firepower behind it.

[Interviewer]

Tetragrammaton is a podcast.

[Mike Cessario]

Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

[Tetragrammaton Narrator]

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