Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1025: Mike Cessario - Disrupting the Bottled Water Industry with Liquid Death

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

In this episode Sal, Adam and Justin talk with Mike Cessario, co-founder and CEO of Liquid Death, a water brand disrupting the bottled water market. Liquid Death is a new Mind Pump partner so please go out and support at liquiddeath.com! Inventing the viral video: How brands use marketing to get attention, being authentic & MORE. (3:34) Why fun can be healthy. (9:42) Disrupting the industry and saving the planet at the same time. (17:35) How long have they been in business, what kind of traction are they seeing and what was their strategy in the beginning? (21:37) What are the biggest hurdles he sees that they will have to overcome? (32:12) Not just a marketing gimmick: Getting the masses to purchase their product. (34:41) Wanting to operate with the ‘small brand’ mentality. (37:40) What interests him the most among the various platforms? (43:55) ‘Death to plastic’ and why recycling CAN be cool. (46:10) What are some paradigm shattering moments that he has experienced? (52:07) The new world of marketing. (55:09) What are the next moves for the brand? (1:01:53) Why at the end of the day it’s all about honesty and authenticity.  (1:05:38) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Liquid Death Mountain Water (@liquiddeath)  Instagram Website YouTube Taylor (@tayvalenz)  Instagram Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee)  Instagram Casey Neistat (@caseyneistat)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned May Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off!! **Code “HIIT50” at checkout** Liquid Death - Banned Super Bowl Commercial GILLETTE DEFENDS IMAGE OF PLUS-SIZE MODEL AFTER ACCUSATIONS OF PROMOTING OBESITY Joel "Hulu has live sports" Embiid • Hulu • Commercial - YouTube Save The Bros - YouTube There Will be More Plastic in the Oceans Than Fish by 2050 – Here’s How You Can Help! Science Inc. Mahomes adds endorsements with Hy-Vee, bottled water company Broken Record with Malcolm Gladwell, Rick Rubin The dark secrets of Whopper Sacrifice - CNET EXPLOITED BY BURGER KING. Dollar Shave Club | Shave and Grooming Made Simple Unilever Buys Dollar Shave Club for $1 Billion | Fortune

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. I was actually really excited. This is a brand that Taylor had been looking out for a while. It was great to have Mike come on the show and talk to us all about it. He also shared some of his other stories that he was responsible for like the organic valley saved the bros, which is one of my all-time favorite commercials that I've ever seen.

So he gets into some of that and we talk about marketing and advertising and then the future of liquid death. But this was a company that we decided to partner up because one, we didn't have anything in the water space. And two, we love companies that are disrupting their space. And you have somebody who's coming in and doing something different in the water space, like liquid death, and we just absolutely love

not only how they're marketing and what they're doing, but then also what the brand stands for and what they're trying to do on the positive side. So I didn't know this until we met Mike and I started doing my own research on plastic and how you recycle plastic versus aluminum and I didn't realize. Oh, plastic bottles are, I think, three or a problem, man. Three percent of a plastic bottle is recycled, three percent.

And if you look at the waste and the problems that plastic bottles are producing, it's insane. Now aluminum, on the other hand, aluminum cans are usually 70% recyclable. They're far better in terms of conservation and better for the environment than plastic bottles. And liquid death comes in a can. And it seems so strange, like nobody's really put that together

and like done this yet. And so I'm like, I love that they did it. And they also did it in a way where they show like how marketing is, you know, like it's bullshit. But let's, let's go ahead and like use that to shock and off people to make better decisions. And so yeah, I totally appreciate this brand. Yeah, they actually had this campaign where you could sell your soul for,

I think, yeah, I can't have water on their website. Made from the tears of my enemies. And it's very, it's a very metal brand. It's fucking metal, dude. It's hardcore. It's rad, I mean, yeah, it's really, really cool. And they're doing a good thing. And you're gonna really enjoy this episode with Mike.

It was a great, great conversation. Now, if you wanna check them out, go to liquiddeath.com. Their ads and their, or hilarious. They have one on YouTube, which the waterboarding one. Yeah, we'll definitely link to have Jacque you link. Oh, for sure. Cracked me up. And you can look at them on Instagram.

Their Instagram page is hilarious to sell to. It's at liquid death. So make sure you go check that out. And before we get into the interview, I do want to tell everybody, we know that summer is around the corner. You're going to try and get lean. You want to get shredded.

So a lot of you are saying, you know, hey, how can I burn the most amount of body fat in a short period of time, in a four or three week period of time? One of the best ways you can do that in the short term is high intensity interval training. And we have a program called Maps Hit that uses barbells and dumbbells

and puts together hit style workouts. It's a very effective routine in the short term for fat loss. We've taken that program and we made it 50% off all months long for anybody. So it's half off. Here's what you do. Go to maps, hit, that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T dot com and use the code hit 50 H-I-I-T 5-0, no space. Again, remember, there's two eyes in the middle for that discount so without any further ado

Here we are interviewing Mike's Disario of liquid If you don't know anything about the podcast no head-of-time, you know Through we keep forgetting to tell people it's not PC you can swear on here You can say whatever you want on here. Yeah, we do have to reiterate that people hold back Who did we have the other day? We were like an hour into the interview and I think I dropped the F ball. I'm like, oh, we could close. Oh my God.

I can say fuck. Yes. I think that's the funny thing is like, you can curse almost everywhere that you look at anything now. So people are just used to it. So now it's like, brand still play by like the 1950s cable rules when it's like, no, everybody every day

listens to swearing and everything they do. So you're almost like not part of people's normal thing if you're not. Right. Especially if you advertise on the internet. Right, nobody cares. I remember one of those Skittles commercials first came out. Oh my God.

You remember those? Right. Do you ever see that Skittles commercial where the dude's like, Oh my God. Tasting the rainbow. And then like he like, inappropriate. Yeah, he like, he ejaculate Skittles commercial where the dude's like I'm gonna take some the rainbow and then like he like inappropriate. Yeah, he like ejaculate Skittles onto his girls and it's Skittles that come out and it was a commercial viral All over YouTube. Yeah, really that was aggressive. Yeah, it was I wouldn't bought a pack of Skittles after that

It was was this port it was Skittles first or did acts do it for acts was like the first one that I remember that did the the first like viral YouTube commercial where they did the dirty balls. Yeah, that was pretty good. I can't remember if it was before that. If anyone had done anything like edgy like that. I don't know, who do you, I don't know, I don't know who the first one to start that. Well, I mean, there was like, so the first agency I worked for in Colorado is called Crispin Porter and Bugusky.

And they were kind of like the rebellious, I don't wanna say they invented viral, but they kind of had this approach of, why would you spend a million dollars to run a TV commercial when we could spend a million dollars and have mountain climbers climb buildings in Manhattan and film it and then gets all this press, right? So it's always about like, it's about attention and film it and then gets all this press. Yeah. Right. So it's always about like, it's about attention.

And there's much cheaper ways to get attention in terms of like your ROI than, then, you know, just paying for like the standard television commercial or the standard, whatever. How's the difference between like a really funny commercial versus something like that, or it's like you're getting a lot of attention just drawn in.

Like how does how does those compare in terms of like, you know, how they perform? It all depends like what you're measuring. I think what I've learned working and advertising is most brands are way too close to their own products. Like what they think matters, like rarely actually matters to people, you know. Oh, interesting. Good point. You know, it's like, you know, he worked for a brand like,

you know, I worked for DeGiorno, Frozen Pizza and like, they'll have entire eight hour meetings about, is it crispy or is it hot and piping? It's like, well, you know, it's hot and piping, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the other, it's just like, I think, and seeing all that, I think in 2019, people are smarter than I think a lot of big brands give them credit for. People's bullshit radar is pretty good these days, right? And I think it's a lot harder, especially with the internet, to pull stuff over on people.

I would agree, and you just reminded me of these Gillette ads that have been going out that I know what they're trying to do. They're trying to show how inclusive. And have you seen their new ads? Well, they had a recent one just went out where they had like this. She was severely obese model.

Right. And they're like, you know, it's like except who you are or whatever, but she's in a bathing suit and she's in a bikini at the beach. And there's like this back who you are or whatever, but she's into bathing suit and she's into bikini at the beach. And there's like this back and forth to be going on. And to me, it comes, and I see what they're trying to do,

but it comes across as fake virtue. Like, look how awesome and great we are because we put really unattractive or really big people on our, whatever. And it kind of comes across fake, you know, I can see what they're trying to do, but it doesn't come across real. Right.

You know, this authenticity thing's much more important now, isn't it? Right. I think, and there's another stat I could be off, but it's somewhere in the ballpark of like 84% of people no longer believe what they read and add. Even if the company's telling the truth, you could be totally telling the truth.

Hey, our product does this, this, and this, and it's all tested. People just say, ah, it's bullshit. You know, like, you just, we've been so inundated by advertising and bullshit, and not trusting people and fake news, and everything just leads. People just like, don't trust brands, don't trust anyone. It seems like they could have an agenda. So it's like, you know, with like with death, like our whole thing is, at least if you're gonna market to people, make it really clear that like, we're marketing to you, we're not trying to trick you.

Like we're being very overt. And by doing that, you kind of disarm the bullshit thing, you know. That's how you get our attention. Yeah, that's, you know, it's also, I love Hulu. Are you watching Hulu right now with sports, what they're doing? No.

Oh, it's fucking hilarious. So they, they'll get like a NBA player, like, M.B.D., who's like a top player right now, right in the M.B.A. And it's, the whole commercial is, he's like, he's getting a tattoo and they're like, talking about getting a Hulu tattoo on him and And he's like I'll put player to market and advertise it. But the whole commercial is about him negotiating the money.

He's gonna make for saying about Hulu go sports. It's just brilliant. It's over. Right. Definitely over. Yeah, that's how you, that's definitely how you got our attention. How you guys got our attention. So what, how did you come up with the concept of what you guys are doing?

So how did you come up with the concept of what you guys are doing? So I basically grew up in like punk rock and heavy metal bands, you know, and I was like in that scene and you know making I remember like going to kinkos making show flyers with like cut and paste stuff and like that's where I really got into like creative design stuff Realized like oh you can actually actually make a career out of this. Like people will pay you to do this. It was like, oh, that's cool. And then that eventually led into advertising, kind of got more into the writing side of things. But then, you know, eventually it's, you know, we're doing huge campaigns for brands like

Netflix and Nike and Volkswagen and, you know, learning a lot about brands, business problems and how to build brands and what kind of commercials work and what kind of things don't. And then meanwhile, building my own opinion on what I don't like or think is bullshit and you're constantly trying to convince boardrooms of executives. People really don't want the guy, you know, on the beach doing the cliche thing, like if you look at what people are watching right now, the most popular show for women right now is actually the walking dead, but you would never think to like market a female product with zombies, you know, but like why wouldn't you? Because clearly they like it, but it's just like, nope,

nope, it's too hard, you know, we're gonna go back to flowers and rainbows. That's what women want. They have these opinions. So then eventually, I had this idea, I've always kinda had an entrepreneurial thing. And the first thing I actually did was a liquor brand called Western Grace back in 2012. I was only a few years at a ad school, but tried to make brandy cool, actually. Because I had brandy, and I was only a few years at a ad school, but tried to make Brandy cool, actually.

Because I had Brandy, and I was like, this is literally like, there's dust on it. And it was like a whole mantis. Yeah, nobody drinks it. So then I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna buy it one day, and I bought it, and I had it, and I'm like, holy shit. It's good. This is like whiskey, but without the burn.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like sweet. Yeah, I'm like, why aren't people drinking this? So we had this whole idea like, oh, let's, let's make this kind of cool rugged like brandy company because all brandy was like this French luxurious like bullshit, you know. Yeah, yeah. So we did that kind of had this idea found a distillery in northern California up in Yucaya, who these guys have been making brandy for a long time. They were all excited, like, oh, we were waiting for someone to make brandy cool

for like 20 years. You know? So they got on board, and I found some liquor industry, kind of veteran people, they were like, oh, this sounds cool. So I moved back to my hometown, Philadelphia, and we built that brand over a couple of years. I kind of got a taste of, you know,

the beverage sort of start up kind of years, I kind of got a taste of, you know, the beverage sort of startup kind of game, I guess you call it, but in the most complicated product space, which is liquor, where, I mean, the risk. There's so many regulations. Oh my God, I mean, we spent more just on legal fees before we even had a product on that, then we've spent totally almost on liquid death right now.

Oh wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, there's just contracts and background checks and everything. There's even particular, I learned this because I went up to a distillery in Napa. It's actually one of the only distilleries there and it took a tour and the guy told me, we can't call this gin unless it's made this particular way

or from this particular area. We can't, like there's so many rules and regulations and laws, half of them are because, you know, we regulate't, like there's so many rules and regulations and laws, half of them are because, you know, we regulate alcohol, like it's because we consider it a drug, right? The other half of it is from industry itself, trying to protect themselves from competition. So it's insane that you got your first business

was to get into alcohol. Yeah, and I had no idea, I had a no idea. I think I'm like, oh yeah, the stillery bottle, that's it. Yeah. Now it was pretty crazy. So did that. And then, I was young, kind of got business married, just sort of the wrong people,

and we sort of just didn't agree on things. So I kind of took my little piece of equity and left and then that's when I went to work for a small agency with a buddy of mine in Chattanooga, where we did Save the Bros. That's right, great campaign, man. Yeah, you guys killed it. Yeah.

And that was kind of, I think, where the idea for liquid death kind of started to evolve was, you know, we did a lot of stuff for the organic industry. Like, we did stuff for only organic, which is the group of organic CMOs that did stuff for only organic, which is the group of organic CMOs that are responsible for creating that organic seal that's on every product. So, you know, we were kind of being approached by them

to like, hey, let's give organic some new life. Like it's kind of getting this like, you know, cliche perspective. Yeah, wrapped around it. It's kind of getting this like cliche perspective. Yeah, wrapped around it. And we were guys that like pushing the boundaries of things and humor, of course. So we kind of started doing stuff for the organic industry.

And I've always been into health, which I think is a crazy thing that people don't realize about the world of heavy metal and punk rock. I mean, I became a vegetarian at 16 because it was cool in punk rock to be a vegetarian. And there was like straight edge hardcore. You don't drink, like, you don't smoke. And they lift weights and they're fucking yeah, yeah, yeah, really into health. And it's like, but nobody thinks of like health and fitness and vegetarian is that at all. Like, they have a way different image. So I think I've always been into being healthy

and I haven't drank soda and decades and I like drinking water. So eventually we kind of saw this white space when we're starting to do fun things like save the bros. I'm like, yeah, why aren't there more healthy brands that are marketing in the same fun, hilarious, culturally relevant ways like Skittles that are marketing in the same fun, hilarious, culturally relevant ways like Skittles and like Snickers for like,

you know, beer companies like Bud Light. It's like the unhealthy brands, you know, for decades, they've invested billions of dollars to kind of be associated with like fun, you know. But healthy brands have it. Healthy brands, it's about responsibility and the right thing. It's pure essence.

You're making the world better. Yeah, yeah. So, and it's like, hey, there's plenty of people for that, but I think there's a whole segment of people who care about health, who don't, you know, who like watching adult swim. I feel like you get me. Metallica, yeah.

That's literally like when Taylor kind of presented the brand, he's like liquid death. Yeah. Liquid death. Was it arsenic in it? What are we talking about here? You know, it's like water. Like, okay.

And then he started to talk about like, well, okay. So if you're at a party and I'm drinking beers and maybe I'm trying to make a decision where I'm not drinking beer that night and I'm like the DD, like how lame are you standing there with the avion? You know, like, I'm like, oh my God, I just clicked and I got it right away. I just needed that though.

I was like that, the image of that. And you know, there was times of that where it's like, I'm trying to make better healthier decisions, but you know, it is, it's like it's a different stigma behind it where it's like, you're, you know, oh, I'm better than you. And there's this elitism, you know, in terms of like, you know, just hanging out. Like, I just want to hang out. Like, why can't I just have a brand?

It's like, you know, it's cool, but, you know, I'm kind of with you guys. So anyway, that's what I thought of it. And I mean, the reason you feel that way is because the big bottled water players like Evian and Fiji have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to ingrain this idea that this bottled water is like high end and for the elite. Like Fiji would only be in the highest end hotels when they first came out in the highest end restaurants, which was like the weirdest thing for bottled water, but they just wanted to build a stigma of like, you know, elite.

Right. Yeah. Right. So I think that's effective. Yeah. I did feel like that. Yeah. But it also sets the table for someone to come in

and fucking wreck it all. Like I think you guys are gonna do. I mean, it's part of that's what excited me and I love the angle that you guys are advertised. Because at the end of the day, it is water. Like you're not gonna come and create new water. That's gonna compete with the whole water But what you can do is advertise differently and attract a different person or a genre of people that like guys like ourselves who Make healthy choices in their life respect the fact that hey going aluminum probably is a better idea than plastic, right? I've read some crazy yeah, I read some crazy stat on,

I don't know what I was reading, one of my newsletters in the morning, they projected by 2000 and I believe 30 that we will have more plastic in the ocean than fish. Yeah, that's true. Fucking crazy. That's so crazy. What was crazy is bottled water is now in the US,

the number one beverage category. It passed soda two years ago. Wow, should I know that? Yeah, it's $18.5 billion industry just in the US. Like almost, like almost 200 billion worldwide. That's crazy. It's filtered water. Yeah.

So the most popular, highest volume beverage category is packaged in the worst beverage container, which is plastic. Not only that, but they're finding plastic fragments or small pieces in these bottles because of the way that they're packaged. And if you've read these articles where they're testing these bottles of water

and they're finding a little bit of plastic in them just because of the way that they're put together. So we're drinking them and we're getting plastic from these things as well. And they don't do so well in temperature changes either. I know heat and cold can cause some of the plastic to leak into the water or whatever. And light too. I think it's like temperature and light are like the biggest effectors if it's going to affect the taste in any way.

Yeah, it's interesting. When we started our podcast in the fitness space, there was a division between the health and wellness side and the performance build muscle burn body fat side. So it's like you were either jacked and ripped and that's the guys that you wanna listen to or you were like, you know, yoga and I like to meditate and I wear Birkenstocks over here.

And we thought this is silly because just like you, like why can't the guys and people who want to perform well also be interested in health. In fact, they communicate very well to each other. So it's funny that you're bringing up, what you're saying about why can't water be advertised that way. It seems like a lot has changed, or there's been a lot of misconceptions

with how we present information and advertise to people and that new media or the internet has kind of started to break a lot of that. Am I corrected in saying that? Yeah, I think so. I think what it does is it democratizes things, right? It doesn't have to be that in order for your ad to get out there, it's got to pass a board room and then it's got to go through the cable news approval process and then they're owned by certain people that have their interests and, you know, then,

so now it's just like, if you want to make something, you can make it and you can put it on the internet and then you let the market decide if it's awesome or not. You know, and I think that's the think that's how we started with death. Before we ever even had product, we released the video, which I don't know if you guys have seen with the girls water company.

Yeah, the best ever, bro. That's what sold us. That's why you're sitting here right now. I mean, you're sitting here because of that video. I mean, that's how powerful that is is we saw that. And I remember when Taylor first said, hey, I had this water company. And then I see the brand is in him like, okay.

Like some is really went for some small startup company. Like what if these guys are around in a year and we're talking about them? Like, I don't know, Taylor. He sends me over the ad and I'm like, okay. He sent this to someone and I want to talk to him because I, it was fucking brilliant. No, it's absolutely brilliant.

And I really believe that you're entering in a space that boy, you guys truly are the underdog coming into this but the way that you're marketing advertising, I'm fucking extremely interested in what this journey has been like so far for you. I mean, one, how long have you guys been officially in business and what are you seeing so far and how much of an uphill battle do you have

and what kind of traction are you getting? Can and how much of an uphill battle do you have and what kind of traction are you getting? Can you share some of that stuff with us? Yeah, so we've only been in market just over two months. So we launched on January 24th, only can buy it online on Amazon and our site. And then we're also in maybe maybe 30 to 50 kind of bars barbershops, tattoo parlors, scattered around, mostly L.A. other places around the country. We launched the brand or the idea for the brand over a year ago. So had the idea for the brand, I want to do water in a can because it's more sustainable, looks cooler, like, all these different reasons. But, before we're going

to, because beverage is notoriously insanely capital intensive to get into, before we go huge into this, let's kind of test it. And I think that's how we approach all of our things with liquid death is the same way a movie studio or a TV studio operates where you're gonna make a pilot first. Like, let's do something lightweight that you can test and see how it goes before you start going all in on something else. So we made this video of the waterboarding thing.

We literally spent 1,500 bucks and pulled some favors to produce the whole video. And then, yeah, we launched that on the internet. We had some cool 3D renders of the can made that looked, you know, real. And we put it on the internet like it was a real thing just to see what would happen. And then all of a sudden, I mean, we put $600 in paid media

behind the video and it got us over 2 million views. Whoa, man. And then we started getting all these followers. We started getting Facebook, DMs saying, where are the biggest non-alcoholic distributor in New York? Can we talk to a sales representative? You know, hey, I own 3, 7, 11s. How do I get this in my stores?

We're like, yeah. Okay, cool. This is probably going to work. So then we had to figure out how to actually make the product because surprisingly, putting non-carbonated water in a can is really difficult. There's almost no bottlers in North America who can do it. Oh, wow, shit.

Well, you think about it, it's all soda. Yeah, right? Yeah, because when you have either carbonation or a preservative in there It's a totally different process to can something then when it's water and there's no carbonation and no preservatives Oh fascinating. Yeah, you basically have to the water gets canned and then it goes through this giant thing called a tunnel Pasterizer that basically heats it to kill any of the bad microbial stuff that's in there Mm-hmm and

Most canning companies, like they don't have a need for that insanely expensive piece of equipment. So it just doesn't exist. Now, did you know this before? It was just like, no idea. No idea. I mean, who would think?

Oh, water in the can. That's got to be the easiest thing to make. And you start calling all this places. They're like, oh yeah, that's not possible. What do you mean it's not possible? Oh shit. Yeah, because you're like, oh, we got's not possible. What do you mean it's not possible? Oh shit. Yeah, because you're like, oh, we got all this attention. How stressful is that moment when you guys figure that shit out?

I know. But it's like, you just keep digging and finding a way. And it's like, okay, and there's never, it's never as bad as it seems, right? Because if there literally wasn't anywhere to do it, it's not as hard to go raise some money saying, hey, we want to make something that doesn't exist yet. And people will be like, oh, wow, like,

that doesn't exist, why is that? People can see the financial benefit of doing something like that. Luckily, we didn't have to go that route. We ended up finding a bottler in Austria, which was like, oh, Austria's interesting. Like, I've never heard of many things from Austria, but these guys, which was like, oh, Austria's interesting. Like I've never heard of many things from Austria, but these guys, they own like for their own private

kind of mineral springs and we went and visited their facility and it was immaculate. Like I've been to Apple's headquarters. This bottling company's office was nicer than Apple. Oh shit. I mean, it was ridiculous. So. Austria also sounds kind of metal anyway.

It does, yeah. You got Arnold Schwarzenegger, so then Austria and death machine. Yeah, yeah. So then we were like, oh yeah, this is cool. It was kind of just like a happy accident where we were like, wow, these guys can totally do it. And Austria can totally be fun for the brand,

but not exactly as essential to it either. Like, we may actually, we may end up moving production to British Columbia sometimes just because it's tough when you're shipping stuff that far and dealing with it. But yeah, once we figured out how to produce it, then we were able to go and raise a little bit of money for production. You know, kind of, we had the video. All of a sudden, we kept getting more and more followers. Eventually, we had more followers than Aquafina. We didn't even have product yet.

Wow. No way. That's fucking rad. Yeah, you're awesome. And we didn't have any influencers, really, or anything. You know, we didn't have any celebrities that were posting about it or anything. It was just, you know, we would do low cost, Facebook paid advertising when you put a can of liquid death

and someone's Facebook feed, they're like gonna like it or they're gonna share it. And that was kind of the strategy from the beginning. I mean, I learned with liquor that, you know, our liquor brand was called Western Grace. And it was like, it looked like a proper whiskey brand. But it's like, if you have no real marketing dollars as in millions and millions to compete with other people,

your only shot is to have the product itself be insanely shareable, because you're not gonna get out spent always. So I went purposely way over the top with liquid death and I'm coming up with the name like, okay, it's water and a can like, what can this be called? Where anyone who sees this on a shelf or has it is gonna be like, oh my god, I got to take a photo of this. And that's kind of how... What are some of the other names you guys threw around? Oh man, there were some bad ones.

Originally it was like, we were going even more the craft beer route where we were like, let's just make it seem like a craft beer. So it was like, one of what was called like, I think one was Southern Dunder. Like, yeah, like, something that just sounds like a cool beer or something. But I'm like, you know what? Like, no one's gonna take a photo of that. I can't really be like, monosumas revenge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not good. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's kind of how we started out. We started making it. Now, what was it like you kind of just went right over going and getting some funding? What was that like presenting that your business plan and what you guys had accomplished so far

to receive it? Was it that easy? Or someone was like, oh my God, it's so brilliant. Here's my money. Or people kind of like, oh, this is interesting. I'm not sure about what was that whole process like for you? So it was a little bit strategic in terms of,

I had a 10 year career working for ad agencies. So I hit up former bosses. I used to work if you guys know Gary Vaynerchuk. Of course. Yeah, I was a creative director at Vayner Media. Oh, no shit I was always really type, you know cool with Gary He was you know, we got along really well. So hitting up people like him who get these kinds of things like He gets the internet. He knows like oh, this is fucking rad like yes

You know other Former bosses of mine for like digital ad agencies that, you know, he happens to be a metalhead runs an agency's like, oh yeah, this is fucking awesome. Like I want to end and, you know, couple a little bit of family stuff too, but all pretty small. But really just like anyone I've worked with or that I felt understood marketing and understood what we were trying to do. Um, kind of just went to them and it wasn't easy. I mean, it was a lot of small checks to add up to what we needed to kind of just get production started. And then now, once we actually had product

and we kept building the social following, we had real physical product to finally sell because literally, it's one thing trying to raise on an idea where, you know, we're raising money just with photos and things like that. It made it a lot easier once we had a can that someone could hold and be like, whoa, this is cool, it's real. And then at that point, we've now been backed by a VC startup incubator called Science Inc. And they were the ones behind Dollar Shave Club. Oh, yeah. Me undies.

Oh, huge brand. It's very successful. Yeah, their thing is kind of, they like brands that are trying to disrupt a category, usually with e-commerce. So e-commerce is kind of the start for us, but I think we all realized that, you know, ultimately with a product like water,

it's gonna have to be in traditional channels. Like people are gonna wanna be able to get water at a 7-11, and they go somewhere, not only be able to order it on the internet. So then, you know, significantly more funding kinda came in from them, and we're part of their sort of incubator where we've got office space in Santa Monica with them.

They help us with a lot of the kind of scaling and business things that, you know, I'm more of the marketing brand kind of vision guy. I have a partner, he's more of the COO, CFO, spreadsheet murderer. And yeah, and then we kind of work with them for a few months, starting in November to kind of just get the website

and get, you know, everything as smart as we could get it before actually launching it. And then we launched on the 24th, and now, yeah, it's been going way better than we even thought it would go. And now we're officially sold out. We have zero inventory, right? Wow, you guys crushed just like that.

Yeah. So we have our next batch coming in. It just hit the port in Philly, which is where we have our main warehouse. And by the time it gets into Philly, then it has to get shipped to Amazon, because we fulfill all our orders from Amazon, from both our site and on Amazon, just because I mean, they have the best. I was wondering why the fuck you didn't roll in here with a bunch of cases for us. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, guy, let's go this one.

I wanted some of that. Did you have any cans on you at all? It's funny. My younger brother, he lives in the Bay Area. He works up the road at a startup called Clary. And he just started ordering it for his office. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, hey, did you have any LDs?

And he's like, dude, we're all out. We drank it all, and now you're sold out. So I was going to go try? And he's like, dude, we're all how we track it on. Now you're sold out. So I was gonna go try to pick some up, but yeah, they're all out. Dude, that's what it's really exciting to talk to you at this point. I'm so glad that we connected it early on. You got to share with me what you see right now. What do you see as some of the biggest hurdles

this year that you're gonna have to overcome? That's a tough one. I think scaling is gonna to be hard, especially since we're about to go out into the more traditional distribution channels, which that world is crazy. I mean, it's like not much short of like backdoor deals and kickbacks and like, you know, and it's like a lot of these guys that run distributors, I mean, they're kind of like older blue collar guys who are, who just don't get it, you know, it's like,

liquid death, no one's gonna buy that, that's a negative name, what are you stupid? You know, it's like, you know, that's why I love the internet is like, we don't have to like get approval from anybody. We can just put it out there and people clearly are buying it. get approval from anybody. We can just put it out there and people clearly are buying it. In a space where most people like at least myself included have never bought a case of premium water. I bought hundreds of just single bottles of maybe Fiji or smart water, but I've never bought a case

of Fiji. I've never bought a case of smart water. And definitely not online. Definitely not online. No. So the fact that it's even, you know, we feel pretty good that we sold as much as we did in a space where people aren't really doing it. And then in the middle of winter, no less, where most of the country it's freezing. And it's not really like bottled water season, really, either. So yeah, I mean, we got a lot more product coming.

We have a new viral video that we're almost done producing that's going to come out first week of May. It's fully animated commercial. Cool. Because my other partner co-founder, his name's Will, and he's the creator of an adult swim TV show called Mr. Pickles. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. And Will did the skull on the can. We kind of write a lot of the marketing copy together. Because I mean, these guys, they're on their fourth season of a TV show. And that's all they do is like write scripts and jokes all day, like by the hundreds and thousands, just to get the one, good one.

So he's so trained in comedy and all that, that he's an awesome partner. And I think moving forward like this adult swim kind of vibe, I think is where we're sort of like positioning the brand because like nobody's really doing it. At all. Yeah. Not in water at least. Not in water. Yeah. No one's touching that. Are you are you guys getting any attention yet from the industry because I feel like you tapped into something, you know, like something that's,

I would imagine you're still kind of flying under the radar with the aquafinas and the companies like that, are you getting attention from them yet? You know? I don't know, totally. I mean, anyone who's really doing their job well would probably have to know about it. I mean, there was a lot of press written about it. You know, these companies use these Amazon, you know, data tracking companies that

analyze all the competitors and everything. And it's like right now on Amazon, we're the number one new release in all bottled water, we're the number one most wish for product in all bottled water. And I think at one point, we got as high as like, we were the number seven new release in all of grocery on Amazon, which is like over 1.5 million products. Wow. So people are probably seeing it, but I think what we hear the most, especially from industry people,

is they kind of write it off as like, wow, it's just a marketing gimmick. Like, you know, it's gonna wear off. Like, people will buy it once for the novelty. And that's it. Technically, it all is. Right. All water is a fucking thing.

Yeah. The biggest hustle ever, really. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, probably the fastest growing water brand right now that I'm sure you guys know is Ascensia. Ascensia water, do you guys know that? Oh, is that what was it having at the... It's like a higher alkaline water, it's got like a blast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it having at the? It's like the, it's like a higher alkaline water.

It's got like a blast. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, they're like probably one of the top selling on Amazon. They just signed, they just announced today. They signed Patrick Mahomes to it like an endorsement deal. But it's like their whole campaign is overachieving H2O. Yeah.

It's like, is there anything more in gimmick? Yeah. That's what I'm saying. The whole space is like that. Like if you go down the water Yeah, it's like, is there anything more in gimmick? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The whole space is like that. If you go down the water aisle, I'm looking, and I make jokes about this all the time, like if it's clean, drink enough of it, you're good, but they have like our waters more alkaline. This one's got special electrolytes. This one has, you know, it's like they're trying to sell you on the nonsense health properties

of their special water. It's all that whole spaces like that, it's the same. And there's actually data that they did, I think last year, where it's something, some really low number, like only 23% of bottled water drinkers actually understand what any of the features claim on it. Like, no one knows what alkaline means

or reverse osmosis or what artesian versus pure, I'm sorry. You know, no one knows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, spring or, you know, what was the other one? I get messages all the time about hyper oxygenated water. My favorite, my favorite, my friend said, I should drink this water.

It's fucking, you know what ends up, and then you know what happens? I get messages like, oh, I started drinking this water. I feel better. How much water are you drinking before? Yeah, not much. Okay, so I think I know why you feel better, dude. You drink more fucking water.

Yeah. So the whole space is like that. So that's why I think you guys are gonna destroy it. What are some of the things that you learned from trying to do the startup with the liquor, with the brandy that you're now over that you won't make that same mistake going forward with liquid death. Being way more cognizant of the team that you build and just making sure

everyone is aligned on what this thing is and is not going to be. I think that was even important with bringing on like a you know know, a backer like science, you know, meeting with them like, they made very clear that they understand like, look, we know this is disruptive. Like you have a video with a girl waterboarding someone with your product. And I'm just like, that's not gonna change.

And like the bigger we get, like, you know, I think even if we do get lucky and this becomes a massive brand, I don't ever want it to feel like a massive brand. I always want to operate like a small brand. What do you mean by that? Exactly. It's punk rock. Yeah, it's punk rock. I mean, I think everybody in all industries is totally aware of the fact that people are moving away from big food and big drink and they want small craft, local, sure. You know, they're willing to pay more for it. And now for the past few years, the moving away from big food and big drink, and they want small craft local, you know, they're willing to pay more for it.

And now for the past few years, the big companies are trying to kind of, blur the lines where like big companies are making products that have farmers market-looking marketing. So you don't really know if, it's hard to tell now, did this thing come from a giant factory or did it come from some local place? It's hard to tell.

So I think now in order to communicate instantly that you're small, it's not just about looking handmade or whatever, you have to do and say things that big brands would never do. So you basically have to give no fucks. Right, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's, because I look at every decision I've made

about liquid death, I've almost made with the strict filter of like, would slayer think this is cool? Yeah, yes. I just worked out to slayer this morning by the time. Dude, I was just listening to Rain and Blood actually on the way here. Because I saw, I listened to an interview

with Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin. And Rick Rubin's probably like my all-time creative. I don't like he genius. Yeah. So I just started listening to like, you know, the old Slayer albums that Rick produced and I'm just like, man, this was so good. And just imagine hearing it at that time, like 1986 hearing that album would be like, what the fuck is this? There's three's three bands that consistently I will either hit a PR hurt myself and they're one of them The ones in layer in pantera. Pantera. Lama God or of course the classic is Rage against the machine which I listen to all time which is a little different, but all right Nobody it's so funny. I don't think anybody

did the rap rock thing. Even good. I mean, Raging at the Machine was amazing. And everything else was just like not even close. Like limp biscuit or Lincoln part. Like it wasn't even close. No, not at all. No, I, you know what else it makes me wonder is that

because you have this kind of attitude where you're like, we're gonna constantly look like we're small in the sense that we're gonna not care about offending people or whatever, it also kind of makes you a little bit invincible in a world where people are getting hammered for missing the wrong thing or doing the wrong, oh no, we're gonna, but if you come out openly and are like, this is exactly what we're trying to do.

We took a page out of this. That's exactly what we're doing. I mean, our first t-shirt we released when, I mean, we didn't have anybody really following us was zero fucks. But it said a whole shirt. That was zero fucks. That was the attitude.

We were just gonna come out and sling it all, saying it all and just, it's awesome. Which is great because it now, it has, and we can't, we put ourselves in the comedy section. So we knew that a couple of guys like ourselves, we knew we weren't going to go heads up

with the science-based people. The people that have got 15 years of education in the field and the brilliant, brilliant minds, we weren't gonna go heads up against them. We knew we weren't purely entertaining, so we really had to find, we had to create this own path and that that's where zero fucks came from. But also to protect, I mean also our show is very conversational and we, I mean, we're three guys in our late 30s and I just turned 40. I'm gonna say some controversial

shit I guarantee it. So better off starting off without foot forward. Shocking off. Yeah, people know who we are. So nobody's gonna be like, oh my God. Did Sal say something? It was like, of course you did. That's what they do. So you guys kind of set yourselves up that way, where if you make a tweet or you guys do something,

and everybody's like, oh my God, that's offensive. Like, well, of course, it's liquid death. Well, we're actually leveraging it now. So, you know, we actually open up our business presentation with a quote from the founder of Patagonia, who says, if you aren't pissing off, You know, we actually open up our business presentation with a quote from the founder of Patagonia who says, if you aren't pissing off at least 51% of people, you're not trying hard enough. I like that.

And yeah, I mean, it really is polarizing in terms of people fucking love it, or they just think it's the dumbest thing. But I mean, it's the dumbest thing. But I mean, it's not possible to have both. Like if you have people who love something that much, where they're actually going to tattoo your logo on their body, you're going to have people who hate it. Like that's just, and we've tried to explain that to big brands over time, like, man,

wouldn't you rather have a thousand people that just, you're the only water that'll ever drink versus 10,000 people who just like don't really care you the way, like if it's there, maybe they'll have it. And I think part of it's because times are changing in the sense that in the past, the bandwidth was so narrow that you were afraid that a little bit of controversy and now there's like three networks only. And now they're like, we're not gonna show you commercials.

So you're fucked, but with the internet, you're like, whatever, I've got a million different ways I can put this out. So if I offend people over here and you're scared, that's fine, because it'll be over here anyway. And people share it more anyway. So it's a totally different time. I think you're just ahead of the curve to be quite honest.

I think more people are gonna start going that direction. I could definitely see a lot of, you know, health kind of companies, like I think you're just ahead of the curve to be quite honest. I think more people are gonna start going that direction. I could definitely see a lot of health kind of companies like see what you're doing and get ideas and wheels spinning. But yeah, this is definitely gonna like create its own category, I think. Now what platforms are you most focused on? Are you excited? Do you think speaks for the, I mean, you got YouTube,

you got Twitter, you got Facebook, we're on podcasts right now. What interests you the most right now? What are you most curious about? I think everything, and I think it's all about custom tailoring things to the channel that you're on. There's a certain thing that's going to work best on YouTube, but that same thing isn't going to just work necessarily on Facebook. What's going to work on a podcast or even a radio spot is gonna be way different

than what's gonna work on television or whatever. So I think we just always look at how do we kind of respect the people who are in the channel. Like, people are not going to Facebook because they're like, oh man, I can't wait to see what ads are gonna come up today. You know, it's like, I wanna see, shit, my friends are doing or I'm following famous comedians.

So, I think that's the thing that brands don't realize is in the social space, you're not just competing against other water brands. Like, you're competing against movie trailers, you're competing against friends and family, you're competing against legit comedians and influencers and, you know, you're just in the midst of all that. So how possibly are you going to get something to stand out amongst all that?

So I think we just always take it, you know, we take very seriously. What do people find valuable, whether it has entertainment value, whether it's educational value, like you're teaching me something that I've never learned before, like whatever it is, you've got to provide some kind of value to somebody beyond just like, hey, here's our product by it. Yeah, and the other angle that you guys have

that I think is blew my mind, I'd even think about this. The water industry is so focused on, we're healthy and we're great. And like you said, rainbows and wonderful. And they are totally trying to hide the fact that that's one of the biggest problems with waste are plastic bottles. They don't degrade recycling them as terrible.

It's just a very wasteful container for water compared to what you guys are doing. Maybe you could talk about that first. I think everyone knows that plastic is quickly becoming public enemy number one. Plastic straws are already out almost everywhere. I think Mariat just announced they're taking plastic straws out of all their 6500 hotels. Plastic bottles, I think, are going to be the next thing. Because what people don't realize when you recycle plastic, recycled plastic is such low quality.

It can't be used to make new bottles with. So they have to sell it basically to China. And then they make the plastic, they use the recycled plastic to to make cheap carpets and textiles with. Then most people don't recycle their carpets or their clothes, so they just end up in landfills. So, like, two generations gone. Yeah, it's like plastic bottle, recycled, carpet, landfill. It's not really...

And then now, the bigger issue is China is saying, we don't want to buy your American plastic garbage anymore. And so basically it's becoming unprofitable. It's not profitable to recycle plastic. So really what's happening that people would be pissed if they really knew is like, a lot of these recycling facilities, they get the plastic and they just send it to the landfill because they're not going to lose money trying to recycle it. So then you'll get companies who sometimes will help subsidize that.

But really, aluminum is very profitable to recycle because of the high value of the metal. So a lot of places, the recycling of aluminum is actually helping to pay for the recycling of cheap stuff, like glass and plastic. It's because it's so profitable, it's subsidizing all the stuff. It's subsidizing it, right, exactly.

And yeah, and aluminum, it's infinitely recyclable. It's something like of all the aluminum produced since 1888, 75% of it is still in current use. Oh, so it's fascinating. It's an incredible, renewable container, a renewable material for a container. Right, now, the downside of aluminum is you have to mine what's called box site to make aluminum.

So there's mining involved, which obviously is not a good thing for the planet, like you have to mine. But once you get the aluminum, that same aluminum can be used infinitely over and over again. And it's like when you recycle aluminum, it takes 95% less resources than it does to make new aluminum. So it's, you know, it's- So companies using aluminum are more likely

to go get recycled aluminum than go mine. Right, yeah, yeah, because the recycled aluminum is obviously a lot cheaper to buy than going to the brand new, freshly mined aluminum. So there's incentive to keep using recycled aluminum, which is why, like in the average aluminum can, about 70% of that can is made from recycled aluminum. Only about maybe 20 to 30% is from new aluminum.

Whereas in a plastic bottle, the average plastic bottle, only 3% is made from recycled plastic. The rest is all new plastic. Wow. And they skirt over that. Nobody likes to talk about that. And the industry, because again, their market is so based on, we love everyone and we want

to do what's right. And it's completely counter to that message. So you guys are hitting both sides very effectively. You're doing the marketing. we don't give a shit. This is kind of crazy cool, whatever. Link with death, metal. And then you've got the, by the way, this is the best container for the planet

if you're gonna buy your water in it. That's kind of a, I feel like you guys are a brainer. Yeah, like wow. And we're kind of having fun with, I think health is one thing, and I think sustainability is another category that has just sort of been branded as like hippie and tree hugger and like whatever, where it's like,

no, I can't recycling be fucking cool. So, you know, we're launching an initiative coming up soon called Death the Plastic. And that's, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And we're gonna donate, you know, like five cents from every can soul to help clean up plastic waste

from the ocean and help get rid of plastic. So it's like, yeah, it's like, you know, I think a good example was the company that, what are they called? Fuck Cancer. It's like, God, that's brilliant. Like now you don't, like it's fun to be like, yeah, fuck cancer versus like the tired old, you know,

it's just all about gilting people and making them feel bad and not like not something you really want to champion. It's like something that you do on the side, but like what's going to get you to wear the t-shirt, you know, like people might wear a t-shirt that says, death, the plastic on it, but they're not going to wear one that says like, you know, be kind, recycle. It's a great thing. Be mindful. So I mean, I think it's a great thing. Be mindful.

So I mean, I think that's the fun thing about marketing. It's like all marketing is kind of bullshit. And people don't buy into marketing because they really believe that they're being tricked or that something is a certain way. Like, I think the example I like to use is, when they use, let's say, an Aston Martin in a James Bond movie, right? You buy an Aston Martin, in your head, you kind of feel like James Bond. You're not buying it because you actually think, I'm going

to be like James Bond. It's just like, I'm going to buy this expensive thing anyway, but now I kind of get this fun little fantasy along with it, you know? And I think that's kind of all we're doing. It's like, how do you just make it more fun and tap into the more emotional things that people care about, like, you know, but do it in a way that's more exciting and more fun and just always so rational, you know?

Like if you just sold cars rationally, you know, bad those ads would be. You know what? It would be terrible. Yeah. And then you come out with a cake. Yeah, you know, it's funny. We've talked about that.

We're like, oh, close that beat. In a bar to have like a big skull tap. Yes, yes. Just like, oh, seriously. Yes, that will do some cake stands of water. Yeah, yeah. They don't, you don't feel like a pussy when you're at the bar. And like, I'll have a glass of liquid death.

Liquid death, right? That's so good. So one of the things that we share, and we get a lot of great feedback on our shows, we've got a lot of experience in the health and fitness space. We've been trainers for, South 20 years, just in the night, 16, 17 years. And we like to share like these paradigm shattering moments for us in our careers that really shifted the way

we think about things. What are some paradigm shattering moments in your career our careers that really shifted the way we think about things. What are some paradigm shattering moments in your career and advertising that really shifted the way you looked at the landscape? That's a good question. Because you've been doing it for a long time. Yeah. What really changed?

I mean, for me, I guess for me, what really changed things for me was when I came across the work of the agency, Crispin Porter and Magusky, who was operating out of Miami and in the early 2000s, you're probably most familiar. They were the ones who launched Mini Cooper in the US. And it's just the way that they were doing advertising. Like, I never even really cared about advertising until I started seeing some of the ways that they were doing things that like, well, weren't they behind the Italian job? Wasn't that part of the deal too, or was that different?

I think that was different. They did things like, for instance, at that time, it was the SUV craze, if you remember. Like it was fucking escalades and like everyone wanted the bigger car. And now you're launching this tiny little British car in this world where people just want big cars. So they did this whole campaign where they were like,

they embraced the fact that it was small. So they did a thing where they had a big SUV and they put a mini Cooper on top of the SUV, like it was like a snowmobile or something, with a thing that says, what are you doing this weekend? Yeah. You know, and it was, or they went out and did,

you know, like the little newspaper things that you see on the street, they made a giant version of one of those and had a little ad next to it that said, makes everything else seem a little too big. You know, so I started seeing things like that where it made me realize like, there's this whole way of connecting with people

and so many different touch points out in the world and things that like, you don't think matter. Like for instance, I champion the fact that like the last two years have been the biggest years ever for horror movies. Like with Get Out, us, like these are these massive, like it's not a niche thing anymore. Like it's a mainstream thing. And I'm like, you know, clearly people have a taste for like scary fun now. So why couldn't

a CPG brand leverage some of that? Kind of like basically what we're doing, you know, when people, when people talk to us about, well, what do you think it's like niche thing for metal? And it's like, would you say that to Jordan Peel when he's launching his new horror movie, that, hey, Jordan, this is a little too metal. No, it's like you get, when you think of things outside of the packaged good space that you kind of get in this bubble about,

you realize there's all these other things and ways that you can kind of connect with people. How has the landscape changed since you started in marketing versus now? Because things have changed so drastically because of the use of social media and stuff. Like how has that changed the way people look at marketing? Yeah, I think, I mean, the internet was massive because I think it gave you superpowers in a sense whereas like, if your ad is good, people can share it with their friends.

Like you couldn't share a TV commercial. That's true. You know, there wasn't like, and plus everything is measured too. It used to be like, you can only measure so much of how a TV commercial is working, right? But now you can see exactly how many people clicked on it, how many people shared it,

whether or not even that they went to your website after it, and did they purchase, like you can kind of track things a lot better now. But I think for me, some of the big moments that really changed me, even in the more modern landscape, were things like, do you remember the Squatty Potty? Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah, or even Dollar Shave Club, when that first came out. Yeah. Yeah. You're like, oh fuck, like, this is amazing. And what's funny is in the ad world, they weren't even really respecting those things. Cause it's like, you know, oh, you know, anybody can just, you know, put a YouTube video up like,

we have such a hard time, we have to sell through $100 million, you know, ad budgets and crazy commercials. So it's almost like they're getting rar rar about whose turn is the shiniest, you know? It's like meanwhile, these guys like Squatty Pottie Dollar Shave Club are making videos for a fraction of the cost and literally creating cultural phenomenons around a fucking product. Like I think, you know, it's a Squatty Pottie.

Like who would make anybody care or or like the poo parerie. Yes. So I think when I, those things really like change my opinion on what I knew I wanted to do. I was like, I wanna, I wanna make that kind of stuff. More than I wanna make like the 30 second, you know, whatever commercial for whatever company that I don't want. What was your least favorite category

to kind of take on like a business and you're like, oh my God, this is gonna be really tough or you just weren't interested in it. Oh man, that's tough. I mean, a lot of them. Yeah. I mean, Dejorno, Frozen Pizza, I didn't really, I mean, I have, I mean.

I think where I go with this. Yeah, or you know, when I worked at Chris Ben, one of the big companies they did everything for was Burger King. Like they did, remember when they brought the King back years ago, it was a creepy thing. Yes. And it was like they did lots of really cool stuff for them. Like they did one of the first kind of incredible

Facebook campaigns called Wapper Sacrifice, if you ever saw that. So this was like early days of Facebook where everyone was all about like, how many friends do you get? It's all about like acquiring more friends and it's like, I have 500, I have a thousand. And they played off of that where they did the promo

where if you unfriend five people, you get a free Wapper. Oh shit. That's clever. Yeah. But what happened was they were notifying the people saying you've been unfriended for a wapper. And that was like against Facebook's like policies and that should have pulled it down. Yeah, that is smart.

But yeah, that was it. Was it Wap? Was it Burger King or Crolls? Who did that recently where they got after Casey Neistat? They did a, they had this after Casey Neistat, they made big news just like three months ago, where they had gone through, they had paid people on their team to go through like big influencers like the Casey Neistat to the world and comment on a bunch of like 2000 and like 17 or 2015 tweets to get their attention.

Did you see on that? Oh yeah, no, they did something brilliant along and they got the attention of all these influencers who then were talking about Burger King doing this. So they paid all their people to go back and make a bunch of comments on these really, really old tweets which got the attention of like these big people. Then it turned, got them talking about it.

It was fucking brilliant. Well, you're also seeing now these companies are talking shit back to their fans on like their Twitter. And those things are going viral. There was that one, I don't know, a seafood company and PETA did something. So they went after them and it was all Twitter. And yeah, I think that stuff is absolutely, is this a case?

You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the story that we've all heard where Netflix walked into Blockbuster and said, Hey, we got this great streaming video idea and Blockbuster laughed them out of the room. And of course, we know where Blockbuster is now. Is this a case of a big, massive marketing ship that just is too big to turn? And they just don't want to pay attention to the fact that things are different now? I think that's a part of it. Yeah, because the other thing is, if you accept the new world of marketing, you realize it's 10 times harder than it is before. Because when you're trying to make legitimate entertainment,

let's say, right? And that's kind of what we're trying to do as a brand. We're trying to blur, that's not new news. Every marketing, whoever says brands or publishers now, it's like it's all about what you put out on social. It's not just about the product anymore, it's about what you stand for, what you do, the kinds of content you put out.

That's what people are investing in. If you start believing all that, you're like holy crap, how are we gonna ever do that? Especially when you're a big company where it's way harder to turn the ship in any kind of dramatic fashion. So I think that's part of it is when you realize something, if you accept it, could quite literally mean your demise, like why would you? You're kind of just gonna find a way to kind of keep what you have going as long as you possibly can.

And I think people are using data now to justify bad decisions. It's like, well, we used B-borp and incorporated to tell us that 95% of consumers are going to believe that this frozen pizza is gonna achieve these emotion levels and then you put it out in market and it fails. But you're like, hey, we tested it, we tested it. So I think data is great as it is. We should be leveraging data to learn things. I think there's a lot of people who are misusing it

to kind of just justify bad decisions or not doing things either. Well, you can argue it takes away from creative, right? I mean, that's what's happening is you're getting so hung up. There's just following the formula, right? Right. I mean, even us, we have hired a marketing team that handles that and that's their job as a dual of that.

And, you know, the battles that we have sometimes is, you know, their job is to be very analytical about stuff, but then we also want to protect the brand and our vision and stuff like that. So that's definitely a constant conversation in battle that we even have to have internally. So what's in the next quarter to two for you guys right now with liquid death? I mean, obviously getting inventory is probably the highest priority I would assume right now.

Yeah, yeah, and we're good on that. I mean, the tough part for us is obviously when you have to Ship from Austria the time from when you put in an order to when it gets here is not that fast So we have to just kind of plan more in advance So we ordered a lot more this time. So we're not gonna run out again, but Yeah, we'll have that in really like our next move is we're gonna start You know kind of scaling up some of our marketing efforts online.

So we'll actually start working with a few more, kind of, I guess you could call them influencer types, but a lot of the times that means bands or tattoo artists. I don't know if you guys saw, we're on our website, you can sell your soul. Did you see that? No.

So we launched with this thing where we called up our lawyer and I said, Hey, if we if we wanted people to legally sign over their soul to us, how and we were dead serious, how would you draft the legal contract? Oh yeah. So he wrote up the legal contract. We kind of played with some of the wording, and it's like, the idea was, if you sell your soul, we'll send you a free can of water. The tough part is, the cost of fulfilling a single can of water

by the time you ship it and everything you're talking about, probably 10 bucks a pop, just in shipping and everything. So we limited it, we said, okay, we're going to make it so we're only going to take the first six hundred and sixty six souls that come in. And they were they were the most metal thing I've ever heard. Yeah, they were sold within like five hours of us launching. Oh my god. So then we had to switch it over to where it's like, okay, now if you want to sell your soul, you have to apply to see if you're even worthy to sell your soul. So we made this kind of ridiculous little application with these funny questions. And I think now

since launch, we've had over 30,000 people apply to sell their soul. That's hilarious. Oh my God, it's hilarious. Don't get to pull the questions up. I want to see the questions that are on here. Brilliant. Yeah. God, it's clever as fuck. What's even crazier, those,

that there's 30,000 people that are willing to sell their soul and they have no idea for what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's clever. It's because it's absolutely brilliant. Oh yeah, look, what do those questions say? Oh yeah, like, so the first one is, which is your soul truly mean to you? And the answers are nothing, nothing, nothing, look at those questions say oh yeah like so the first one is what did your soul truly mean to you and the

Answers are nothing nothing nothing or all the above What is the best layer album of all time? Oh, I love that and it seasons in the abyss spice world crazy sexy cool and Rain in blood So cool. It's an exciting time today where I talk about this on our show all the time where a YouTube video can reach millions of people theoretically within hours and it could have cost you almost nothing to create it. You can communicate with people instantaneously. It's interesting because the holders of power are losing that power.

They're losing their ability to, our podcast would not have ever been possible 20 years ago. There's just no way. Nobody would have ever hosted us, that's for sure. And we would have had to say certain things because of our corporate sponsors and all that stuff. So it's a really exciting time and it's, to me, it's interesting to see now how marketing

is now having to meet the new challenges and demands and it's pretty cool, man. It's really, really cool time. What do you think are some of the greatest offenders right now as far as companies, when you look across the landscape, like what do you see as far as mistakes or offenders that you see these companies doing

when it comes to marketing and advertising today? I think just not being honest. I think at the end of the day, it's all about honesty and authenticity. I think that's what probably works for you guys, right? Yeah, absolutely. You're just yourselves and you don't bullshit people and you talk how you normally talk to your friends

and people feel like they're hanging out with their friends when they're listening. And I think that's kind of what I think brands should be doing is feeling more like being more clear that there is a real human being that you'd maybe want to hang out with behind that brand or behind that ad and not just a boardroom of suits that are just making completely money-based corporate decisions.

I remember when I was learning to be a copywriter, they said, your job as a copywriter is to make the person on the other end believe there's a human behind there. So I think that's the biggest mistake brands are making is they're just too cold. They're not human enough and they're not being honest about what authenticity or honesty really means to most people. I agree. I couldn't agree with you more. That's why I brought up the Gillette example earlier.

It's like you can tell they're trying really hard to show how virtuous they are. Hey, everybody look at us. We really love anybody. We don't care. It's everybody's like you can tell they're trying really hard to show how virtuous they are. Hey everybody look at us Right. We really love anybody. We don't care. It's everybody's like, okay, yeah, right. We you're trying to sell us something Versus coming out and saying yeah, we're trying to sell you something. Here we are and people. Oh, thanks for your honesty I think I'll buy something right and that's why Dollar Shave Club was so successful like in a notoriously cold corporate Very unhuman category of razors, they were in, like the CEO became the spokesperson,

basically that's how transparent they were. And like you just believed, wow, I'd rather give, I mean, hey, the razors are a good price, but I'd rather give my money to that guy than whatever vague shadowy figure is behind that, Gillette ad that I just saw, you know? And that's why Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Cup last year for a billion dollars.

Yeah, that's what I think is gonna happen. I think these big companies are gonna have to buy these smaller ones and kind of keep them. I know it happened a lot with the organic food market. You see like these, you know, Adwala was a good example. They came out were kind of this health drink and then I don't know who bought them PepsiCo

or someone, you know, massive. And I think that's probably what they're gonna have to do, right? Right. Now, are you building with the intent to potentially sell or is your vision to keep it? I mean, it's tough. I mean, I think the beverage play a lot of the time with brands is, you know, because

a beverage is one of these industries where the brands are almost losing money most of the time, but growing really quickly, and then it's sort of like the payout comes when you get acquired. Right. Because then you decide to stop over investing in growth and use their networks of the bigger company to do that. But I mean, I think it all depends on where it goes. And, you know, obviously a brand like ours that's so based on brand, if we were to ever get acquired, it would have to be someone that would make sense that would be able to

keep the brand going. Because if, you know, it would be a classic case, if you got acquired by somebody big, like, let's say, Coca-Cola, and then they tried to Coca-Cola if I, a brand, it's all about brand, like, it's just gonna fail. Yeah, it's done, right? So, they have to leave it alone.

That's what I think. They have to buy it and pretend like they don't, like, nobody knows we own them. Right, right. And some brands are doing that, like, brands like Nestle, they own brands that you would never know. Yeah. And they want it to be that way. Yeah. So not just smart. Interesting. Well, I think I think we all think you guys are going to are going to fucking

crush. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You guys are you guys are going to crush. We really we love what you guys are doing. We think it's hilarious, but also good. Great marketing, great concept. And then I like the re the renewable aspect of the aluminum can. I think that that's a touch that is, I mean, you can't get fucked with because you got both ends there. Right. So I'm really curious to see where this relationship goes because we pride ourselves too on the partnerships that we forge. I don't know how much. I know you and Taylor have been talking for a while. I mean, he's, he's, he does a lot of homework and research on somebody before we, we bring him on here and talk to them and stuff. So I'm excited where this potentially could lead to.

Absolutely. And this is ultimately, I mean, it's great that we're selling water in a more sustainable container. But for me, like the higher purpose of the brand is, I want to eventually, if we get big enough, that we have the resources to support and elevate the things that most big companies would never touch. Like a crazy podcast that would never get funded. Like we want to be the company to give that money or like some artist that has this fucked up twisted idea for a cartoon but can't keep pitching their cartoon idea to, you know, ABC or whoever, like maybe we can fund that, like, or, you know, bands that would never get, you know, be able to get a free

recording time because they're too crazy or weird or whatever, like, like, we want to be like the new era of how do you know, if you used to be big, giant, white-haired corporations like decide what they sort of invest in. How do we kind of bring this new, if it's even possible? This new era of like what could be a behemoth, but it's run by people like us who want cooler things to happen and want more diversity in terms of the content you consume or the shows you watch or whatever.

I love it. Hell yeah. I just like to watch. Yeah, excellent. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks, guys. We've had a great, thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a a ballac, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having sound and an adjustment as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus

other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.