People love the Liquid Death brand. But do they drink it?

Canned water brand Liquid Death has created countless viral marketing moments and uses an aesthetic unique to the cookie-cutter bottled water industry to build an obsessive fandom that keeps growing. But will it be enough to create sustained, long-term brand growth?

You can’t escape Liquid DeathOpens in new tab. The irreverently branded canned water company, which only launched in 2019, has set out to disrupt the industry with its skull-heavy branding and subversive marketing that would make anyone expect their first swig to be beer – or perhaps a yellow Monster Energy-esque liquid – and not water.

You see it on TikTokOpens in new tab (6M followers). You see it on InstagramOpens in new tab (4M followers). You see it on LinkedInOpens in new tab (119k+ followers). And you see it in the hands of social media influencers and celebrities like Tony HawkOpens in new tab and Martha StewartOpens in new tab. The company is now valued at an impressive $1.4 billion dollars.

“We think about our marketing team more like Saturday Night Live,” Mike Cessario, the Founder of Liquid Death, has said. “We’re making fun of the shit corporate marketing that everyone hates.”

The tongue-in-cheek tone Liquid Death's marketing strives for is captured expertly in its 2022 SuperBowl adOpens in new tab, featuring a bunch of kids wilding out at a birthday party, chugging on cans of Liquid Death – a direct jab at the usual gathering of drunk dudes at a SuperBowl watch party. It’s simple, funny, effective and attention grabbing… very positive attributes when all you’re really selling is water.

Since then, Liquid Death has been nailing the social media game, coming up with silly and engaging content to appeal to unimpressed digital natives – take “beefing” up your hydration gameOpens in new tab, which features a can being wrapped in a cosy of raw mince meat, or a collaboration with satirical television show The BoysOpens in new tab, where one of the characters, The Deep, is relating Liquid Death’s sustainability ethos with his own love of marine life.

They also know how to go to where their customers are, partnering with music festivals like Download and LiveNation. They even love collaborating with other cool brands: just a few weeks ago, they released a limited edition casket cooler with YetiOpens in new tab (what PR Week called a “chaos partnershipOpens in new tab”).

So, they’ve done something we know isn’t easy: fostering emotional attachments to canned water. But how is this translating to the real world?

Tracksuit is tracking the Liquid Death brand across the United States, Australia and New Zealand – let’s see what the data shows.

In the US, Liquid Death’s personality-first approach is working hard to increase awareness 📈

The good news: numbers are up.

Liquid Death has grown its awareness from 26% to 34% in the last year in the US (an 8% increase). If we’re talking numbers, that means ~73.6M people now know what Liquid Death is – an additional ~17M more than the year before.

Liquid Death also knows exactly how to play to their target consumer base, with awareness amongst the 18 to 34-year-old age group a considerably higher 46%. Usage in this age group is 13%, while preference is 7%.

This big uptick in awareness has also translated into growth in other parts of their marketing funnel, too.

Consideration increased 2% in the last year – meaning ~31.4 million people consider drinking it, while usage increased 1%. It is now the preferred water brand of ~6.5 million out of the ~211.5 million Americans who drink bottled water (3%).

And, perhaps most importantly, the attention they’ve paid to building their brand has made people have pretty strong feelings about it (hence “emotional connection”), despite the product being just water – with many describing it as “cool”, “unique”, “trendy” and even “weird” (in this case, we think weird is good). People have even told Tracksuit they think Liquid Death has a “heavy metal swagger”. Not surprisingly, there’s less words associated with the product itself.

Liquid Death (in purple) has enjoyed the highest increase in awareness over the last year of any other product in the bottled water category.

When people love your brand much more than your product, there might be some downsides… 📉

If we’re really drilling down into the detail, though, you’ll find that Liquid Death’s top of funnel conversion (that is, converting people from merely being aware of it to actually considering drinking it) is 41%, below the competitor average number of 50% and much below the market leader, FIJI water, where 57% of people move down from awareness to consideration.

It’s a similar story with the bottom of funnel conversion (from consideration to preference). At 21%, this metric is below the competitor average of 25%. Liquid Death’s preference metric has also not shifted in the last year, remaining steady at 3%.

We could interpret this as a reflection of its lack of emphasis on the product itself. The audience might know the brand, but that doesn’t always mean they drink the KoolAid (canned water).

By viewing the brand as an “entertainment machine”, Liquid Death is losing sight of the importance of product – and risks becoming a passing fad. People generally talk about the ads, not about the clean water from the Alps, or the environmental benefits of being in aluminium cans vs plastic (case in point: this article).

Our Statements tab also shows that while people aware of the brand think Liquid Death is innovative, there are a couple of worrying eyebrow raises.

For example, it rates lower than all other water brands on the statement “is a brand I trust” (16% compared to FIJI’s 38%), and is middle of the pack with “is sustainable” (a concern considering one of Liquid Death’s main differentiations on its product is the sustainability of being canned). It also rates low on “is for people like me” (20%) – meaning the brand could be alienating a good chunk of its potential customer base.

Mark Ritson recently talked about Liquid Death in Marketing WeekOpens in new tab, describing the brand as: “The perfect pin-up for a generation of marketers who define marketing as advertising and who spend their careers ignoring the remaining 90% of our discipline’s hinterland.”

In the column, he argues the need to direct more attention to making the product as good as possible, instead of purely on the flashiness of promotion. In it, he makes the prediction that Liquid Death will “not grow into a behemoth”.

This goes back to the classic theory of the original 4Ps – product, price, place, and promotion – which are elements of a marketing mix that gives us the framework for effective strategy. In an ideal world, you’d give equal attention to each P, which doesn’t seem to be the case at Liquid Death, who are investing the most time and effort into promotion. Red flag. 🚩

On the flip side, Will Poskett has hit back in The DrumOpens in new tab, providing analysis on how Liquid Death is leveraging the full four Ps.

One thing to note is: Liquid Death is new to the market, especially compared to competitors like FIJI and La Croix. Higher conversion may come with time as it focuses on building an audience – on awareness.

A bonus for the people Down Under: will Liquid Death connect with the Australia/New Zealand market?

Here’s something we in the Australia/New Zealand Tracksuit offices are interested in: will the Pump-loyal people of New Zealand and Mount Franklin-loyal people in Australia pick up on the Liquid Death hype with the same gusto as Americans?

It’s early days, with the brand having only made its product debut in early 2024. In Australia, around 6% of the bottle water-consuming adults know what Liquid Death is: that’s ~792K people. (This could change soon, as Liquid Death has recently launched in over 900 of supermarket chain Woolworths' stores.)

They’ve done a better job at getting people to try their product than comparable American brands like La Croix, whose conversion rate from awareness to consideration is only 29% – while Liquid Death’s is 50%.

In New Zealand, awareness is higher: 11%. However, the conversion between awareness and consideration is much lower: only 27%. So that means 73% of that 11% is going: OK, I know about it, cool, but not for me.

As a New Zealander, I’d be concerned about a perception the Liquid Death brand is too “try hard” – loosely speaking, we’re not the biggest fan of brashness and inauthentic edginess.

Pump absolutely kills it in New Zealand, with a whopping 62% naming Pump as their bottled water of choice.

Thanks to their social media virality, Liquid Death’s marketing strategies enjoy global reach, and its brand has ensured demand starts to bubble away in markets it’s yet to launch in. Marisa Bertha, Liquid Death Senior Vice President – Strategy, said that, “Liquid Death is one of the top three most followed beverage brands on social media worldwide, and because of that we get daily messages from fans asking when they can buy Liquid Death in their home countries.”

In Australia/New Zealand, Liquid Death has relied mostly on this incredible social media reach as its worldwide promotional activity, not yet localising for these different markets (bar a Mad Mex collaborationOpens in new tab in Australia, who were giving away free burial plots for those entering food comas after eating a 1kg burrito).

We’ll continue to track Liquid Death’s growth in the United States, Australia and New Zealand closely, particularly with how well it converts through the funnel as its clever advertising inevitably continues to make awareness grow.