Liquid Death CEO Mike Cessario: How I Turned Canned Water to a $700M Company | E968

1. 0:00 – 1:07

   Intro

   1. MCMike Cessario0:00

      (instrumental music plays) People that you think are alternative culture, all these guys do is drink Monster Energy and eat bacon. It's like, no, these guys don't drink any of that. I went to a school where recess would be canceled for shootings. Like, we would find heroin needles on the ground in the playground. We want the takeaway to be, "Oh my God, that was probably the funniest thing I've seen today."

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:22

      Kids in beer commercial style. (laughs) We're sitting there in Liquid Death's office, this is funny.

   3. MCMike Cessario0:27

      If there are people who truly love something, there has to be people who truly hate it.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:33

      Mike, I am so excited for this. I've been such a fan of the, the Liquid Death journey for quite a while now, so thank you so much for joining me today.

   5. MCMike Cessario0:41

      Yeah, no, thanks for having me on.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings0:43

      Not at all, but I wanna start with a little bit of context. So, how did Rockstar's hydration problems, which is what I heard was the origin, lead to the founding of Liquid Death?

   7. MCMike Cessario0:55

      T- so that wasn't really the origin. (laughs) It's, it's funny, like, it's... Like you said, uh, you're not a journalist, and, uh, you know, so much of the early days of Liquid Death, like, the,

2. 1:07 – 8:40

   Liquid Death’s Origin Story

   1. MCMike Cessario1:07

      the story was shaped by, you know, journalists who didn't fully get it. I mean, a lot of people didn't get it in the early days. Like, you know, Science, some of our early VCs, they understood it, but a lot of VCs, investors, like, they didn't get it. Like, they were like, "Oh, y- canned water? Yeah. W- what's that gonna do?" So most people, when they Google stuff, they see the old press articles, and there's everything from saying that I used to work at Netflix, which I never did. Uh, oh, it, it was all because the... You know, they just get things mixed up. Where that came from was Monster Energy used to sponsor a alternative music tour in the late '90s early 2000s called the Warp Tour, and it was in partnership with Vans, the shoe company. And this was, like, the early energy drink days. I think Monster launched in 2002. Red Bull was, you know, it, doing pretty well in the '90s, and energy drinks were basically buying up all of the alternative lifestyle culture because, you know, nobody was giving money to punk bands and skateboarders and snowboarders and, and those kinds of people back then. Energy drinks did, but the bands who were on the tour, they didn't like drinking energy drinks. Like, they, you know, they're on tour, you're outside playing, like, you kinda wanna drink water or, or, you know, they wanna drink beer. They, they don't wanna drink, you know, energy drinks. So obviously, Monster didn't want, you know, your spot, you're, you're this growing brand, you're sponsoring this thing, it, it doesn't help you if the brand is drinking bottled water on stage. You know, the coolest guys in the place are not drinking your product. Th- they found that that was not gonna be helpful to them. So, what they did was they made cans of Monster that looked exactly like Monster but it just had water in it, and they would give that to the bands to drink. It was not for sale. You know, clearly they were not in the water business, they were in the energy business. Um, but when all the kids in the crowd were watching the bands, they, it looked like the bands were drinking Monster. So they're like, you know, as, as a marketing thing. And I was friends with some of these bands and, you know, was hanging out with, you know, backstage with them, and I remember just thinking like, "Man, that's kind of a really, uh, sneaky marketing thing." You know? Like, it's like, oh, all these kids think these guys are just pounding sugar and whatever, when in reality these guys are drinking water, uh, and, and, and not. So that was like the first thing that kind of planted the seed in my brain of, you know, how come healthy products don't market in the same fun, irreverent way as unhealthy products? And it's like, you look at what are the, what are the brands that really invest a lot of money in youth culture, humor, explosions, fun? It's alcohol, soda, candy, fast food. You know, Bud Light, Cheetos, Snickers, Skittles, like, all the junk food does all the fun marketing. Healthy stuff is very quiet. You know, they more market to, like, an older demographic. Th- th- they don't do anything fun. But the reality was, like, a lot of these guys in, you know, that played in bands or people that you think are alternative culture and, "Oh yeah, all they do, all these guys do is drink Monster Energy and eat bacon." It's like, no, these guys don't drink any of that. Most of them don't drink that stuff. They care about health. Half of them are vegan. You know, the oth- you know, a, a huge percentage of them are sober and don't drink alcohol. But it's been these brands that kind of still use them and own them from a marketing standpoint, and, and that was more what sparked kind of my thinking of Liquid Death, 'cause I was into health at the time. My friends who were playing in these bands, they were into being healthy. And I think that was more of the seed, not so much like a Rockstar hydration problem. It was, oh yeah, how come there's not more healthy brands that have just as much fun with marketing as, as these unhealthy brands? It didn't make any sense to me. And then eventually that became Liquid Death years and years later.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings5:22

      You mentioned people thinking, "Canned water? What?" Like, "W- what is this?"

   3. MCMike Cessario5:26

      (laughs) Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings5:27

      I, I, I have to ask, when you speak to founders today, what do you advise founders when they're told, "That's a silly idea," or, "Why would you do that?" What do you advise them when they're told that like you were for so many years?

   5. MCMike Cessario5:40

      I think you have to be careful, 'cause I mean, the reality is out of every thousand ideas, 998 of them are bad and two are actually probably good. So I think you have to be careful that you're open to feedback and understanding what's happening and not just using the crutch of, "Oh, well, just 'cause no one thinks...... this is smart. The, i- it is smart. You know, it's easy to just kind of lean on, "Well, no one else gets this but me, but who cares? I'm just gonna keep going down this road." You have to know what are you measuring to know if this is good or not 'cause even though people were telling us, "Oh, this doesn't make any sense," we had mountains of data showing that it did. You know, they just, a lot of these people were not privy to that data. Just on the surface, it was, "Oh, this doesn't make any sense," but when you could see, oh, without even having a real product, in four months, we have more social followers than Awkwafina. And it's like, "Oh, look how, like, look how many people are messaging us asking where they can get this. Look how many people are sharing images of a beverage product." Like, who shares an image of a beverage and how often on social media? Not too often. So, we had all this data, which I think to folks that understood the digital world more, like science and some of the more tech side of things, I think they understood the power of that. Whereas, like, when we talked to more investor types on the traditional CPG side, they don't typically understand the digital, social world as strongly so they, they didn't know how to value some of this stuff as much as maybe the tech world kind of did in the early days.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings7:31

      We're gonna discuss the marketing as, it's one of my favorite topics to discuss. I, I do find this really revealing of one's character though, which is I believe that we're all this kind of function of our histories. Um, and so when you think about that, what are you running from first, Mike?

   7. MCMike Cessario7:46

      What do you mean?

   8. HSHarry Stebbings7:47

      Like, I'm running from bluntly always being (laughs) a- and it's probably one of my biggest problems, like, the obese fat kid who didn't have any friends. And so, I constantly try and people please, I constantly look for validation, probably why I did the show in media because I like people telling me that actually I am good enough even though for 15 years I was called Augustus from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (laughs)

   9. MCMike Cessario8:11

      Yeah.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings8:11

       Um, and, and that's what I'm running from. And, and then running towards for me, you know, my family lost everything when I was young and I'm desperately fearful of downside. And so I'm running from, bluntly, a life of fearing for what could happen and running towards, b- bluntly, kind of prosperity. (laughs)

   11. MCMike Cessario8:30

       Yeah. No, it's an interesting, it's an interesting way to think about it. I think, yeah, I mean, uh, for me, I, I, I had a, uh,

3. 8:40 – 14:33

   Mike’s Origin Story

   1. MCMike Cessario8:40

      I, I definitely had a very interesting upbringing, um, in terms of the... So, I, I grew up outside Newark, Delaware. So, Delaware, tiny little state. Delaware public school districts were the worst, I think at that time were ranked, like, the worst in the, in the United States. And they had this crazy system where they had, like, inner city schools and then there was the kids that lived in the suburbs, like I kinda lived in the suburbs. They would bus the suburbs kids for, let's say, elementary school into the inner city schools. And then for middle school, the inner city kids would get bused from the inner city out to the suburb schools. So, but, you know, going up, growing up, like, going to elementary school, I went to a school where, you know, recess would be canceled for shootings. Like, we would find heroin needles on the ground in the playground. Like, you know, kids would... There'd be, like, fights all over the place. Like, I found a bullet on the ground in sixth grade. You know, like, it, it was crazy. So then my parents were like, "Okay, you're going to school in Pennsylvania," which was 20 minutes away, much better public school system, completely different world. So then I grew up in late middle school and high school in this more rural kind of place. So it's like I, I got to experience all different facets, I think, of, of, of culture and, you know, to your point, like, different levels of prosperity from the low end to the high end. So it's like I think that probably has an impact on just even how I approach marketing, how I think about things, and to your point, yeah, like, I know what it's like, wh- what the bottom looks like, and I definitely did not want to be there for sure. And, and, uh, growing up in this, with this sort of punk rock, artistic background, you know, I was never the kid that totally fit in, you know? And pre-internet, you couldn't just go online and find a tribe of thousands of people instantly that you're like, "Oh, they're just like me." It's like, no, you had to go hang out at the record store and meet somebody and they tell you about this concert. And you go to this show and you meet these people and you kind of find other weirdos like you, but I, I never thought I would have, like, a big corporate job or anything. Like, I wanted to play in bands for the rest of my life and, and be a musician, but I was always good at art and design. I designed record covers and posters and stuff like that for bands, and then ultimately went to school for graphic design rather than doing the band thing. And then, doing graphic design, I ended up switching to advertising because I was always way more into, like, things that were funny. Like, when I was drawing, I was always drawing funny cartoons and ridiculous things and I liked Mad Magazine and things like that. So then advertising seemed like, oh, it's kind of creative but you can do funny things and that's better than just, like, pixel pushing graphic design stuff, which I didn't like as much. So then I ended up in, like, this big corporate ad agency world doing marketing for giant brands like Volkswagen and Nestle and DiGiorno frozen pizzas and Toyota and all of this. And, you know, I never totally fit in there either. I was always kinda like, like I was good enough at the creative side where...... you know, I sold some ideas through and I could- I was able to kind of raise through the ranks of the ad world, but I never totally sort of fit in and I couldn't play the, the game as well as... You know, it's like when you worked on an account, like let's say Toyota, you had to be obsessed with Toyota and, like, know that, like, Toyota was the best brand in the world and if, you know, you better go- if you're working on this account, you better go buy a Toyota and not be driving around in a Honda. And if the client comes, we can't have any non-Hon- you know, Toyota cars parked out front. You know, it was just this weird thing. I was like, "I don't..." I, I didn't get it. But, um, I was always sort of looking for my way out where it's like, hey, how can I do the things that I want to do, like entertainment, humor, irreverence, but do it for something that I actually care about? Like, do I actually care about frozen pizzas? Do I want to work nights and weekends on trying to come up with ways to sell frozen pizzas? No, I don't. So I was always looking for, hey, eventually I want to create my own product, that I believe in the product, and then I can do all the creative, cool marketing things for something I actually care about, and that was always, I think... I guess what I was chasing is, hey, I had a good paycheck and I was being able to live a cool life doing a creative thing, but I really didn't like the things I was doing it for. So then it was like, hey, how do I find this perfect dream job balance that's, hey, it's all the creative stuff I want to do and it's for something that actually matters and that I care about? And, and it took a long time to figure that out, but I think finally I'm, I'm pretty close, so...

   2. HSHarry Stebbings13:56

      Very strange of you not to dream about frozen pizzas, Mike.

   3. MCMike Cessario13:58

      (laughs)

   4. HSHarry Stebbings13:59

      I am concerned for you. Uh, I, I wanna ask, you mentioned music quite a lot there and I, I think music-

   5. MCMike Cessario14:05

      Yeah.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings14:05

      ... and business, uh, are aligned in the way that performance is everything. When I say high performance to you, what do those words mean?

   7. MCMike Cessario14:13

      I guess it, it means something that is operating very efficiently, I guess. You know, something that can... is able to do a lot with a little, you know? Yeah, like you think about a, a, a high performance athlete. It's like, could be the same exact body size, weight,

4. 14:33 – 15:10

   What is “high-performance”?

   1. MCMike Cessario14:33

      height, all of that, but one can run faster. Like, they're, they're more efficient. Even though they're the same size, one, one can kind of go, go further, go faster.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings14:44

      Speaking of going further, going faster, being the best, I think pr- um, I, I hope I'm not bastardizing this, but I think the thing that, you know, Liquid Death is so hailed for and appreciated for is the brand that you've built being so strong. Uh, I'm sure you've thought about this a lot and I'm sorry for the meta question, but what does a truly great brand mean to you?

   3. MCMike Cessario15:04

      Yeah, I get asked this question a lot. Um, I, I think the, the easiest way I can, for me to understand

5. 15:10 – 17:00

   What makes a strong brand?

   1. MCMike Cessario15:10

      it is brand, strong brands mean more to people than the product itself. So, like, if you're a strong brand, the love for your brand transcends the functional benefit of whatever your product is, right? So, like, I, I use, like, fashion as a really easy way for most people to understand brand, um, because it's been, it's been around forever and it's purely brand. You know, what's the difference between a $700 Gucci T-shirt and a $20 Target T-shirt? Same functional benefit. Same exact material, like cotton. Cotton covers your torso so you can go outside. Like, functionally it's the same, but the brand of Gucci is way more valuable and people love it way more than just the functional benefit of what the shirt is made out of or what the function of the shirt is. It goes beyond that.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings16:13

      Why do you think they love it? Do you think it's not status? It's social status. It's, "I, I have enough money to wear Gucci. I am worthy of being a Gucci customer, why I buy this shirt."

   3. MCMike Cessario16:24

      For high-end fashion, I think yes, but every brand has different reasons that people are gravitating towards it, but they're almost always emotional and not rational. There's not a rational reason, right, why, why you would buy a Gucci T-shirt over something else if you... in a rational sense. But yeah, for, for Gucci, it is more of a s- uh, I would think it's more of a status thing to some people, right?

   4. HSHarry Stebbings16:49

      I wish you could tell my mother that about Chanel, but, um-

   5. MCMike Cessario16:51

      Yeah. (laughs)

   6. HSHarry Stebbings16:51

      ... hopefully she'll listen. Um, wha- when you sit down in a meeting with the team, what are the reasons why Liquid Death resonates from a brand with the people that

6. 17:00 – 21:12

   Liquid Death’s Brand

   1. HSHarry Stebbings17:00

      buy Liquid Death?

   2. MCMike Cessario17:01

      I, I think there's a bunch of different, there's a bunch of different reasons for different people on why they, why they gravitate towards the brand. You know, I think there's folks who, whether they have some amount of alternative background like, oh, they grew up listening to punk rock music or, you know, and now they're moms or have families or now... I mean, or they're still in bands and it feels like, oh, finally a mass thing that is made by someone or people from our culture of, of stuff. Like, they just instantly identify with it, like, "Oh, this is awesome. This is cool. I've been very familiar with this since I was young. Like, this is great." And then I think you have the people who it gives them a little piece of rebellion. It's like if you... For most things that are cool cans to walk around with, like a Pabst Blue Ribbon or, you know, a Monster Energy, if you want to participate in that brand, you have to like drinking cheap beer or you have to like drinking sugary energy with 300 milligrams of caffeine, and not everybody likes that. But when your water-... everybody can drink water. So now all of a sudden anyone who likes drinking water has permission to kind of be a part of this fun thing. Like, I use the example of, uh, the motorcycle brand Harley-Davidson.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings18:24

      Yeah.

   4. MCMike Cessario18:25

      Has a very rebellious biker brand to it. But when Harley is doing their marketing, they're not targeting biker gangs, they're marketing to dentists, like people that can afford a $25,000 motorcycle and yes, they make it feel like it's this biker rebellious thing because the dentist guy who's not a biker wants that little piece of rebellion in his life where he gets to kind of feel like he, he's not a dentist or whatever, that there's something interesting in it. And I think it's the same thing with Liquid Death, or, or tons of different brands. Like even Monster, um, I don't have access to their marketing data but from folks I know who have worked at Monster or whatever, the core Monster customer who buys the most Monster are not skateboarders and action sports athletes and all these people that you see in their marketing. It's, you know, uh, overweight guy outside of Riverside who drives a truck or something like that. And it's marketed to this, in this way where that is maybe entertaining to a certain type of person that's not a part of that and that's enough to make them be into the brand. And like people think, "Oh, well Liquid Death, it seems like such a niche thing, like it's only for a small group of heavy metal guys." But when you back away from beverage and you look at entertainment as a whole, entertainment is way broader. Like if you think about a horror movie, like Jordan Peele, he released a horror movie last summer called Nope that outperformed a Disney Pixar movie. Horror, which is blood, violence, aggression, craziness, all of that, that's not a massive summer movie because it's a bunch of heavy metal guys going to the movies. There's all kinds of people that are entertained by that; soccer moms, dudes, you know, different races, different ages, and I think that's what marketers forget is look at what people are entertained by. Like, the biggest genre of entertainment for women is true crime. Shows about serial killers and death and blood is the number one genre for women. But nobody thinks about that from a marketing standpoint of, "Oh, why would women like Liquid Death?" You know? So.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings20:49

      I, I, I mean, I, I find that you're totally right. You look at podcast charts, it's all true crime.

   6. MCMike Cessario20:53

      (laughs)

   7. HSHarry Stebbings20:53

      Did you ever (...) , by the way, I mean, (laughs) no comment. Um, (laughs) I'm gonna get in trouble. Um, did you ever worry though about brand alienation? I know I get completely what you're saying, but Liquid Death is a great brand 'cause you, you feel, or regardless if you like it or you don't like it,

7. 21:12 – 23:07

   Did you ever worry about brand alienation?

   1. HSHarry Stebbings21:12

      but you definitely feel, but did you ever worry about brand alienation which is like people who otherwise might have liked it might have been put off by a skull or the quite hard color schemes that you have? Did you worry about that brand alienation?

   2. MCMike Cessario21:27

      No. And look again, to bring back the entertainment thing, I, it's like the, the same reason that whatever movie studio releases a blockbuster horror movie, like do they worry, how much do they worry about brand alienation? You know, hey, is, is this, is this kill scene in here gonna like turn off some people who would, you know, really like the movie? It's like on the extreme ends you have to be careful of that. Like, we always, like what we do is not easy which is why a lot of other people don't do it. It's like if you go a few degrees this way, it could be very distasteful and you have a problem. If you go a few degrees this way, it's just not funny, it's lame and no one cares. So it is kind of hard to, to find that right target where it's provocative enough that you have a ton of people who love it, think it's the greatest thing ever, but you always have a healthy amount of people who are like, "How could this be? This is the worst thing ever." Like, I, I always say, it's like if you, if there are people who truly love something, there has to be people who truly hate it. It is not possible to make something that everybody loves. All it's possible is to make something that everybody doesn't really give a shit about one way or the other. That's possible, where you're just like no one really cares about you. They don't love you, they don't hate you, you're just there, you know? Um, that, that's really the only option.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings22:52

      And that's the worst.

   4. MCMike Cessario22:54

      Yeah.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings22:54

      But I, I wanna ask, when you look back at the brand decisions that you've made with Liquid Death, if there was one which you could reverse or was a mistake, what would it be?

   6. MCMike Cessario23:04

      Hmm. That's a good question.

8. 23:07 – 24:11

   Biggest Mistake at Liquid Death

   1. MCMike Cessario23:07

      You know, just think, I mean, when you can see the future you kind of know but it would be, you know, which hires we made and when. You know, like if we would have hired more of a kind of retail expert early on, we probably could have made some, even if we weren't, even if retail wasn't gonna be for a year, to have a retail expert on early to help you understand the space so that you didn't, like, you know, we got into bad distributor contracts in the early days where it was like you sign these contracts with these distributors, they're terrible distributors, and literally there's no way to get out of them unless you have to pay them to get out. And it's like when you don't know the nuance of what's a bad distributor, what's a mediocre distributor, what's a good one, who do you need to be with to get to the retailers you want to be with in the future, you end up, you know, having to spend a lot of money and go through a lot of headache to learn that yourself. Um, but had we, you know, been able to see the future and known, hey, we would have brought a retail person on way earlier to help us navigate this space, um, that, that

9. 24:11 – 28:00

   Most Common Mistake Founders Make with Brand

   1. MCMike Cessario24:11

      definitely would have been something we, we did.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings24:13

      What do you think are the biggest mistakes that founders make with brands today? You see many founders. I'm sure you get many founders ask you for advice. What are the big brand mistakes you see founders make?

   3. MCMike Cessario24:23

      Not being honest with themselves about...... what their true d- you know, differentiation really is. And it's not just founders. I think it's, it's people at, uh, at most companies is you're so close to your own product. You've spent night and day formulating whatever it is, you know, designing the bottle or, and, and all that stuff, and you've thought through everything, and you think this thing is so unique and special, and all you need to do is just tell people about the stuff you put in it, and it's gonna sell. And, and it, it almost never does. Like, it, it's when you back away from your own product, "Okay, here's my product. Let me put it next to all the other products I'm gonna see," and then take somebody who doesn't work in marketing or branding and doesn't know anything about your product, put them in front of all those products, and what, what is their perception of your brand and all those other brands? I guarantee you, it's nothing close to what you think it is. It's like, to truly stand out or to truly own something i- is hard, you know, and it's not what you think it is. Like, brands will say, "Oh, well, our brand is differentiated because we have this, we have this ingredient in it that's, that's new and nobody has it." It's like, okay, yeah. You can ... That can be a differentiating thing for a few moments, but the minute you have any success, any other brand can put the same ingredient in there, and if they're a bigger company, they can charge less for it. Oh, and they've got a more expensive marketing team, so their bottle can maybe look a little bit better than yours, and then you're gonna lose 'cause you can't own an ingredient. You can't own, uh, a lot of different things that people think is their differentiating thing. That's why with Liquid Death we always focused on brand. Even though we're water in a can, people were like, "Well, why don't you guys just talk about why aluminum is infinitely recyclable and death to plastic? Like, that's what you should be talking about, not the funny heavy metal stuff." But it's like, but we can't own aluminum cans. So (coughs) if I spend all my marketing dollars telling people, "Aluminum is infinitely recyclable," and there's four other canned water brands, I'm just telling people why my competitors are good. So it's like, the thing that you can't replicate or other people can't replicate is easy and that you can own is your unique brand, and that's what Liquid Death is. Our tone of voice, our style of marketing, um, all those things we do that make up the brand, that is almost impossible for the big guys to replicate in their kind of huge corporate systems of approvals and focus groups and that kinda thing. Like, Liquid Death would've never made it through a focus group at Coca-Cola. People would've been like, "Oh, I would never buy this. This doesn't make any sense. This, this is stupid. Like, I would never give this to my kids." Like, it would never work. But that's how those companies are built. They, they can't get out of their own way. But they can get cheaper cans. They can get distribution. They can price it lower. They can do all these other things. They can get the same ingredients. But the brand is what you can truly own, and that really is your moat more so than most brands think it is. They think their moat is an ingredient, or they think it's something else. It's not really. It's like, anybody can replicate your formula. It's, it's your brand is really your moat and, and how are you making

10. 28:00 – 30:57

    Brand vs. Storytelling

    1. MCMike Cessario28:00

       it your moat?

    2. HSHarry Stebbings28:01

       What's the difference between brand and storytelling?

    3. MCMike Cessario28:04

       It's funny. Yeah, I hear s- that word storytelling all the time, and I think it's ... I don't know. I think it's a little bit, maybe it's a little too highbrow for what we really do. It, you know, storytelling is something that's done by movies and TV shows. Those are stories. Like, people who are writers that write these shows and even those, like, how many of those stories are actually good stories that people wanna watch? Very few. It's like, there's very few hit TV shows, hit movies out of the millions, so it's like even the people that do this for a living night and day, it's hard for them to land on a great piece of storytelling that resonates with, with, with mass culture. That's really storytelling. Marketing is not storytelling really. I think i- i- it's, it's a lower form of it. So I think it's more about communication i guess which i think is a little different than storytelling. How do you communicate something about your product to somebody very quickly and you want them to take away something from that? Right? You're not telling a, a whole story. You just want them to have a feeling about something, and what is that feeling? It's like when someone sees a Liquid Death commercial, we don't go into that thinking we want their, their takeaway to be, "I, I need, I need to be more properly hydrated." Like, that's not what we want the takeaway to be. We want the takeaway to be, "Oh my God, that was probably the funniest thing I've seen today, and it came from a, a water company?" That's what we want the takeaway to be 'cause if we get that, we are way further down the brand affinity path than these other brands that are just marketing with functional benefits. "Oh, less calories, less grams of sugar, better tasting," you know, all of those things. Like, they don't actually resonate brand affinity, you know? It, it's the- these more emotional things. "Oh, you just gave me something of value. You just made me laugh, and it was the funniest thing I've seen today. Thank you, brand." Um, that, that's, that's more how we look at it.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings30:13

       You d- I, I, I'm sure you know, I, uh, well, I hope you do. Um, you did a brilliant video. Um, I saw it on Twitter the other day where you got two random people, and they basically said that Liquid Death was like the worst water ever or whatever it was.

    5. MCMike Cessario30:25

       Yeah.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings30:25

       And then you did a blind taste test, and you'd like tasered them, and you gave them-

    7. MCMike Cessario30:29

       Yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings30:29

       ... I think $1,000 or whatever. And bluntly, it, it was probably the, the funniest thing I'd seen in the day (laughs) getting-

    9. MCMike Cessario30:36

       Thank you.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings30:36

        ... seeing two guys get tasered for water. Um-

    11. MCMike Cessario30:39

        Yeah.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings30:39

        ... uh, my point is you said before everyone hates your marketing, and I thought about that, and I was like, huh. And I thought-This is a great opportunity to ask. What did you mean? Why does everyone hate your marketing?

    13. MCMike Cessario30:53

        I don't remember saying everyone hates our marketing, unless it was in

11. 30:57 – 33:03

    Why People Love Liquid Death’s Marketing

    1. MCMike Cessario30:57

       some weird context. I don't, I don't think... I think people love our marketing. I think that's why we're so successful is everybody loves our marketing and I think at the end of the day, that's really what Liquid Death is. It's the universal thing that connects all of us and there's plenty of data to show that. We all hate marketing. Like look at the data, it's like 90 plus percent of people just hate marketing. We will pay a premium for ad-free services, you know. My wife, when we're watching sports, she's a big sports person, she gets mad if I don't mute the commercials when they come on 'cause it just annoys her to hear commercials. It's just like, I think people are so over this toxic waste marketing that has just been around for decades and now I think it's even, it's even getting worse. Like you're seeing less funny commercials, you're seeing more shouting, hard-selling things where what we're really doing as a brand is we're sort of making fun of marketing. And I think that's what people really identify with. It doesn't matter if you like heavy metal or skulls. If you think us putting a skull on a can and calling it Liquid Death is funny because we're sort of making fun of all this marketing bullshit, you can identify with that and be all for it. "Oh, I'm not a skull person, but this is funny. I see what these guys are doing and I'm all about that 'cause I hate marketing also." Um, and, and that's how we approach stuff. Like a lot of the commercials we do are sort of like parody, like doing parodies on these types of ads that are so bad and people have just known they were bad for years, and it's almost like marketing will always be bad, so there's almost like this just constant fodder for ideas of just sort of making fun of marketing.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings32:47

       Why, why do you think it's getting worse? Specifically ads. I think we all agree actually that the creativity behind ads are getting worse. When you look back at the '90s though, Mike, I mean, maybe I'm speaking from a UK and European perspective, but ads used to actually be quite creative, quite witty. Um-

    3. MCMike Cessario33:01

       Yeah.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings33:02

       ... and now they're not.

12. 33:03 – 35:21

    Why Today’s Advertisements Suck

    1. HSHarry Stebbings33:03

       Why?

    2. MCMike Cessario33:05

       I think a big part of it, and this is, you know, a, a guess, is the current... Two things. The current state of data. People are trying to make too many decisions based on data rather than insight of what's funny. It used to be like people in a, in an agency were saying, "Oh, this is funny. We should make this." Now it's like, "Okay, well let's run this through a bunch of testing and see at what point do people's eyeballs go to this thing and then, hey, uh, you know, data shows that if we show the pizza in the first three seconds, people's feelings towards hunger are higher, so..." It-

    3. HSHarry Stebbings33:47

       (laughs) .

    4. MCMike Cessario33:47

       It, you know what I mean? It's, it's letting data shape these things and it's losing some of that human spirit that I think is what makes things clever or funny. Um, so things just become very... What's the word?

    5. HSHarry Stebbings34:01

       Artificial.

    6. MCMike Cessario34:02

       Artificial, yeah, yeah. Or, or, or they're overly functional. Like they're trying so hard to function on every level. I think that's one, and then I think the other part of it is the current state of social media. The fact that if one person doesn't like your commercial, they can go make a bunch of noise on your brand social page about it and now the brand is like, "Oh. Two people said they hate our commercial. What do we do? Should we take the commercial down?" Blah, blah, blah, blah. That never used to be a thing. It's like if, you know, Budweiser launched a hilarious commercial in the '90s and they heard through the grapevine that two people somewhere didn't like it. Would they really care? No, but now that people can publicly post their opinions, I think brands are ultra, they have this irrational fear now where it's like, "Oh, we can't make anybody upset at all." So they try to be so safe and try to do something that could not possibly offend or anger anybody, and then that takes all the creativity out of it as well I think. So I think those two things together sorta just create this world of stuff that no one really cares about.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings35:15

       Does the criticism grind you? Does it hurt you? Like when I get criticism for whatever, um, (laughs) happens

13. 35:21 – 38:27

    How to Handle the Haters

    1. HSHarry Stebbings35:21

       often, um, uh, (laughs) it, it hurts me. I'm like sad. Does it hurt you? And how do you develop that thicker skin to respond and reflect it in a like bluntly continuous positive way?

    2. MCMike Cessario35:34

       Yeah. No, you're right. It's hard. Like anything, it's like we're human beings. Like there's no- And we don't, you know, we, we work hard on things and when you see that somebody totally shits on your idea or your product or whatever, yeah, you have this initial emotional reaction of, uh, to it, but I think what we've had to do and what I've even had to help train our marketing team on is like being able to take a step back and look at everything in context. Like if we post something and we have 10,000 likes on it and in the comments there's five negative comments, 10,000 people said this is awesome, 5 people said they didn't, 10,000 to 5 is a pretty good ratio no matter how you, how, how you strike it. Imagine you're a football team in a giant stadium. There's 50,000 people and they're all screaming and chanting your name and their faces are painted and like, they love your team, but then there's a small little section that, that doesn't like your team. How much should that actually affect the team on the field? Like they don't care. You don't, you don't care about them. Look, you have a whole stadium of people, this is their whole livelihood, they love you.... those couple little pe- like, you're not gonna ever please anybody, so I think in social y- y- you're in this very small thing where you just see a number and you see these comments and because, uh, the internet, the, the way social typically works it's like most of us are not actively commenting in social media. It's like the extremes are the ones who take the time to, like, comment or even leave happy things. It's like not everybody is, like, everything I see on the internet I don't say, "Oh, wow, that was great." (laughs) You know what I mean? But those few.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings37:29

       Yeah. I, I, I watch your, I watch your video and I think it's great. Respectfully, I like it, but I don't go, "Ha ha, this is the highlight of my day." Respectfully. It's, it's great, but-

    4. MCMike Cessario37:39

       That's great. Yeah. A- a- and that's how most of, that's what most of us, I think most mainstream people, that's where we fall. It's like we observe the internet, we laugh, but we don't comment to say, "Oh, we thought that was funny." Or, if we see something we don't like, we don't say, "Oh, fuck this." We're just kind of observers. But it's like these small fringe folks on either side are the ones that make all the noise, and you just have to be able to realize, like, they're, uh, uh, realize how, what's actually happening. Don't put too much stock in the couple people that make the noise.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings38:13

       I love ones that are really, like, pernickety, which, like, "You know, Mike, that would never happen. That's very unrealistic."

    6. MCMike Cessario38:18

       Right. (laughs)

    7. HSHarry Stebbings38:18

       And you're like, "You know what? It's, uh, fuck off." (laughs)

    8. MCMike Cessario38:22

       Yeah.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings38:22

       Uh, huh. So I'm totally with you. Can I ask you, you know, you understand content and marketing in a

14. 38:27 – 41:38

    How to Pick which Social Channels to Focus On

    1. HSHarry Stebbings38:27

       way that I think so few people do. When you think about innovation of social channel in particular, you know, and we look back to your spending $1,500 I think it was on the first video.

    2. MCMike Cessario38:36

       Yeah.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings38:37

       Um, and then $3,000 on Facebook ads. Now we live in a world of, uh, you know, bluntly where short form is bigger than ever. TikTok has created this rise that's been unprecedented, but it's, you know, parallel with YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels. How do you guys sit internally and think about marketing strategy with the rise of different social channels? Where you're gonna place your emphasis? Where you're gonna place budget? How do you think about that in changing content landscapes?

    4. MCMike Cessario39:02

       Because we're a startup and, you know, e- especially in beverage it's, it's one of the few industries where four or five big players literally own 98% of the market between Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors. I mean, that is 98% of the beverages you see on a shelf in a store anywhere. So we are up against a, uh, massive, massive behemoth, so the only way we can really survive is we have to be ultra-efficient with our marketing. For every dollar we spend in marketing, you know, we need to generate X amount of dollars in awareness. So we have a very much, you know, we, we're very much an earned media approach to marketing. Like, we know, hey, it's not enough, like, wha- if we post a TikTok video or if we post an Instagram video, we need that video to be shared without us paying people to share it. It's gotta be that interesting that people are sharing it or that way more people are commenting on it 'cause it's so funny it actually gets a couple of the real people that don't typically comment, uh, uh, it's actually enough for them to be like, "This is fucking amazing." Um, which generates the algorithms for the social to show it to more people for free, um, or to get it so interesting that press has to write about it. Like, you know, Forbes says, "Hey, did you see the TikTok that Liquid Death just did with, you know, Martha Stewart?" Or whatever. That's all free eyeballs, free awareness that we're not paying for because the idea was so interesting that people have to talk about it. So that's always our strategy. These social platforms are really just vehicles for how these ideas get out there. And th- those vehicles might change. It's like right now it's Instagram and TikTok. Those are, that's most of social now. That's where we focus. If TikTok goes away, there'll be another platform that comes up and that'll be the platform and we'll use that. And it's like these platforms are really just vehicles to get in front of people 'cause that's where they are right now. People are not watching broadcast television. They're scrolling Instagram. They're scrolling TikTok. That's where they are, so you have to find a way to just be where they are to get your, your funny ideas out there.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings41:22

       Two things from that. Idea generation. You have very creative and unique ideas. Tasering, you know, water drinkers is one.

    6. MCMike Cessario41:28

       Yeah.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings41:28

       Not, not, (laughs) that Tuesday morning in the office I thought about tasering people. Um, uh, so how do you think about, like, idea generation in teams? Is it the responsibility of everyone? Is it the responsibility

15. 41:38 – 46:49

    How Liquid Death Writes Great Advertisements

    1. HSHarry Stebbings41:38

       of a few first? Let's start there.

    2. MCMike Cessario41:40

       Well, ideas can kind of come from anywhere. We think about our marketing team more like we are Saturday Night Live. You know, like, Saturday Night Live has a group of professional writers, comedians who are writing these funny skits day in and day out. They have celebrity guests that come in. You have to write funny skits for this particular celebrity that's interesting and, you know, if you think about, hey, Saturday Night Live, where do you get your funny ideas from? They don't say, "Oh, well, we ask everybody in every department from accounting to wha-" It's like, no, no, no. We rely on the professional funny people to, to figure out what's gonna be funny and, and, and what's gonna work, and, and I think we take that approach too. Like, creativity we hold at a very high level, like, because we're trying to make entertainment. We're not trying to make marketing. We're trying to make actual entertainment that is in service of a brand, and when you're talking about actual entertainment, that's way harder to do. Like, if you ask somebody, "Hey, do you think you could come up with a cool c- cool idea for a commercial?" Most people would probably say, "Yeah. I think I could do that." If you ask most people, "Could you write a hit television show and sell it to Netflix?" they'd be like, "No fucking way."... marketing is easy in people's minds because most marketing is so bad that it is. But when you're actually trying to make entertainment, it's much, much harder and you kind of really need experts who know how to execute that. An idea might come from somewhere, like, "Oh, it's so funny, like, my, my kid, I, I love giving Liquid Death to my kid when he goes to school because everyone thinks, you know, the teachers think he's drinking beer and I think it's funny, you know, because he's just drinking water and being healthy, and I would much rather my kid drink water than soda or an energy drink." And it's like, that's an idea, but then, okay, how do you execute that idea into a commercial? And then that's where, like, our professional team was like, "Oh, well, let's do, let's do, like, a typical beer commercial but do it with kids and water." And then how do you execute that and write that and shoot it and direct it and light it and do all of those kinds of things to make the final piece that then becomes really successful?

    3. HSHarry Stebbings43:57

       You mentioned efficiency of dollars there. Okay, let's take that idea. We think it's great. Kids in beer commercial style, ha-ha-ha, we're sitting there in Liquid Death's office, this is funny. Um, we put a lot of budget behind it, it doesn't work. You don't wanna be a gaming studio in that kind of capital concentration way. Do you split test and do idea, like 10 ideas, minimal budget, and then double down on what works? Do you concentrate budget to strong ideas that you just really like internally? How do you think about that kind of strategy?

    4. MCMike Cessario44:28

       Well, we don't do any big budget things. Like, even the Super Bowl commercial that we did, that was the f- the beer commercial with the kids, I think all in we spent 100 grand on that commercial when other companies are spending millions of dollars. And, you know, we're able to do that, one, because, you know, we have a really strong creative team, so it's like, oh, we don't even necessarily need some big fancy director for this thing. It's like we just need someone who knows how to shoot this and help arrange it, and then our team can kind of, our creative guys have the power to direct this thing and it's like, oh, we know how to creatively cut corners. Like, oh, if we film it like this, it's gonna be way cheaper than if we try to film it like this. And it's like we have, like, good producers that know how to produce things very cheaply so that we're very rarely making big bets. Like, we've never produced a single piece of content that is, like, a million dollars. Like, we've never done something like that, and we probably, we might not ever do that. When you have a really good idea, you could film it with an iPhone sometimes and it'll actually still be good. But when you have an idea that's not very good, you have to start throwing all this production value at it to have something that people care about, right?

    5. HSHarry Stebbings45:44

       How many of your content bets work versus don't? What's the ratio? Is it like the classic, oh, 10% work and 90% don't?

    6. MCMike Cessario45:51

       No, I think we have, um, we have a really healthy track record. It's like almost every, you know, like, we call, like, big thing has, has essentially hit. A- and I think that's, uh, and, uh, that's just because of our approach to how we think about these things. Like, we don't, like, you know, for instance, like, that Super Bowl commercial with the kids drinking beer, we didn't just come up with that out of the blue. It was we were seeing on social tons of people were posting photos of their kids with Liquid Death thinking that it's funny. Like, there was hundreds of them. We're like, "Oh, this is a thing that people think is funny, let's just turn it into something else funny." And it's sorta like you know it's gonna work because you're basing it on something that you know to be true versus just, like, hey, I wonder if people would think it's funny that kids are drinking Liquid Death? You know, that, that, that's different.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings46:45

       Final one before we do a quick fire. Someone said this-

    8. MCMike Cessario46:47

       Yeah.

    9. HSHarry Stebbings46:47

       ... on Twitter actually. They said, "You're

16. 46:49 – 49:11

    Why Liquid Death is Underrated

    1. HSHarry Stebbings46:49

       often praised for the brand build that you've done with Liquid Death. What other than the brand build do you think Liquid Death doesn't get enough credit for?"

    2. MCMike Cessario46:57

       I think it, it would be just the execution of building a beverage brand in the insane beverage market. Like, the, our sales team is, is top-notch, you know? Like, we hired some of the best people. We, we invested in tons of bodies that are going into stores. Like, the marketing and brand makes people love the product, but that's just the beginning. Then it's like when you're in the store, when a store orders product, "Oh, w- we need more Liquid Death," they order Liquid Death. A distributor comes, drops cases off in the back of the store, store employees are busy with all kinds of other things. The shelves of Liquid Death might be sitting empty for days or a week because the product's just sitting in the back of the store because no one gives a shit. Unless you have a sales team where somebody is going into that Target once a week to make sure, "Oh, what the fuck, guys? There's no more Liquid Death on the shelf. Uh, oh, it's in the back." And you have someone actually come put it on the shelf, or you have other beverage companies and competitors, they'll come and literally move your stuff out of the way, and if you don't have somebody going in there to, to make sure your stuff looks good, you'll be like, "Oh, how come we have no sales at this store for the last month?" It's like, oh, uh, th- there's even things that where, uh, competitors, th- there's, um, these tags that, let's say, a retailer will stick onto your case so that their s- clerks come by and scan it and it'll say what their inventory is. Beverage competitors were coming and pulling those stickers off their competitor's cases so when the guy came over to try to scan it, he couldn't scan it, he's got a lot of shit to do, he's not gonna go all the way to the back and go print out new s- he's just gonna keep going, doing the rest of his job, and you're not gonna get a reorder of your product because he didn't scan it. So that's the stuff that goes on in beverage that is what makes it really hard to succeed.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings49:03

       ... one, final one, final one, I promise.

    4. MCMike Cessario49:05

       Yeah. Yeah.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings49:05

       What's the craziest thing that's happened in the beverage industry where you're like, "You won't believe it, but this happened."?

17. 49:11 – 50:09

    Craziest Thing Mike has Ever Seen

    1. HSHarry Stebbings49:11

    2. MCMike Cessario49:11

       Oh, man. There's just all kinds of things. I mean, I mean there was, uh, I won't say, th- the brand, but there was a, stories of a, you know, well-known energy brand with a CEO that was, you know, people thought was pretty crazy where they would have these company meetings and, you know, big, you know, staged people, and the guy made his employees chant his name before he would come out on stage to speak with them. And they had other people being like, "Chant louder, chant louder, or he's not gonna come out." Like, that shit (laughs) actually goes on in beverage and it's crazy.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings49:52

       That is absolutely fucking bizarre. He needs to see a therapist straight away. Um. (laughs)

    4. MCMike Cessario49:58

       Yeah.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings49:58

       Uh, tell me, I wanna move into a quick fire.

    6. MCMike Cessario50:00

       Yeah.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings50:00

       So, I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. What book has currently or most recently captured your heart? Or piece of content. We've talked about entertainment. Fuck

18. 50:09 – 51:34

    The Menu on HBO

    1. HSHarry Stebbings50:09

       book. It could be book, could be TV show, movie, I don't care.

    2. MCMike Cessario50:12

       A movie I just saw last week was something that stood out. I hadn't seen anything like it. I thought it was so great, so funny, that new movie on HBO called The Menu. It's kind of like a horror movie, but a dark comedy. Like it's not supposed to be scary, it's horror, but it's supposed to be funny and it's basically taking the piss out of, like, high cuisine culture, like fancy pairings and, you know, multi-course meals and, like, this high society dining culture. It uses that to make this really funny horror movie. I just thought it was so funny, so creative, and the fact that it's super successful. Like, I think it, it's got like a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and people are talking about it. And it, it's not a high budget thing either. Like, it, you could tell this was all filmed in, like, one location, they probably did not spend a ton of money on it. And then the main star of it, I forget the actor's name, he's the, uh, British guy who plays Voldemort in Harry Potter. He plays, like, the main chef and he's incredible.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings51:19

       That is hilarious. I'm looking at it now. I haven't seen this. Budget, $30 million. There you go.

    4. MCMike Cessario51:26

       Yeah. That's for sure.

    5. HSHarry Stebbings51:26

       Not, not very much, really.

    6. MCMike Cessario51:28

       That's for... Yeah, not very much. I mean, it's not chump change, but yeah, it's not a $100 million movie, that's for sure, so.

    7. HSHarry Stebbings51:33

       It is

19. 51:34 – 54:10

    Marketing Strategies: HBO vs. Netflix

    1. HSHarry Stebbings51:34

       not.

    2. MCMike Cessario51:34

       Yeah.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings51:34

       Tell me, what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

    4. MCMike Cessario51:38

       I've, we've kind of dramatically changed our approach to, um, to content. And not to, to slander either of these two companies, it's just two different strategies. Moving more from the Netflix approach to the HBO approach. Meaning Netflix puts out, they produce tons and tons and tons of series of stuff. Like, cheap things, expensive things. Like, they make all these things, so you're kind of making a ton of bets and you hope that, like, a couple of them hit, which is kind of like the VC realm of things, right? It's like, hey, you bet on all these things and then one thing takes off and that's supposed to pay for kind of the rest of 'em. Um, and I think a lot, a lot of brands have been doing that in the social space where it's like, "Social is about always on. You need to post something every day. It's all about just getting lots of content out there." And I think, you know, we took that approach as well. Like, "Hey, let's just put tons of little things out there that are, you know, and, you know, we'll see what works and what doesn't." But the reality is doing a little thing often takes as much time and headache and even budget sometimes as a big thing. And it's like you have all these things to manage and it's sucking everybody's time up. And, you know, by design, most of it's not gonna be like a home run. And then, like, you're like, "Wait, do we need to hire more people so that we can make more stuff?" But then, like, what are we getting? And then we start taking a look back, we're like, hey, well, when we do these big pieces of content with, like, you know, Bert Kreischer, a comedian, or we do the Tony Hawk skateboards. When we do the, or the, the Martha Stewart thing, it's like that one video gets billions of impressions. And we don't spend a ton of money to produce those either. Like, a lot of these celebrities we work with, they, they're investors in the company, we have relationships with, um, we, you know, come up with really provocative ideas that we wrap around these things. So, it's like, oh, maybe it's a lot easier to focus on big moment, like less big moments rather than trying to spread ourselves too thin trying to be always on. And it's like, oh, and maybe rather than someone seeing Liquid Death every day in their feed and not everything is great, maybe they only see Liquid Death in their feed every two weeks, but they know when they see something, it's gonna be really good. "Oh, shit. Liquid Death posted again. This is gonna be fucking great. I gotta watch it." Versus just kind

20. 54:10 – 56:32

    How to Make Celebrity Investors Work

    1. MCMike Cessario54:10

       of people getting used to scrolling by it regardless of what it is, right?

    2. HSHarry Stebbings54:14

       What's your lessons been in terms of making celebrity investors work? Do they have to share? Do they, is it discounted sharing for them? What, what's the lessons in terms of making celebrity investors work?

    3. MCMike Cessario54:26

       It, it's finding folks that truly love the brand and understand the humor and want to be a part of that. Um, and that's why they, they invest, because they truly believe in the brand. Like, they're like, "Hey, I love this. This is hilarious. Like, this is..." You know, they want to be a part of it. It, like I said, using the Saturday Night, Saturday Night Live reference again, you know, they have these guest celebrities come on their show from all different backgrounds. There'll be professional athletes or professional comedians or actors or whoever, and the celebrity comes into their weird world-... and does some funny, weird things for a little bit that are out of character maybe for the celebrity, but that's what makes it entertaining, and that's kind of what we do. It's like, we don't have one celebrity that we try to make the spokesperson or face of Liquid Death. We have all these different folks, and they come into our weird world, and we make this funny, weird thing with them that they wouldn't typically make, and then people talk about it and share it because it, 'cause it's interesting. Like Tony Hawk, for example, if we were to just posted a video of Tony Hawk doing a crazy skate trick, it would have gotten no engagement on our social. But we found a funny way to use him where we take his blood and mix it into ink that we printed limited edition skateboards with and filmed it all, to film him taking blood and showing us silk screening skateboards, that cost like $10,000 to shoot that. It was nothing. But the idea was so provocative, every media outlet covered it. Everybody shared it. Everybody talked about it. Um, that's, that's how we approach celebrity. It's not, you know, how do we do the funny Liquid Death thing with this person and that they're on board to do it as well.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings56:12

       I think that's what people misunderstand is the importance of the amplification on other outlets, which is like as you said, Forbes write about the crazy thing you did or BuzzFeed write about that and, and it's more their reinforcement which really gets the matter. Um-

    5. MCMike Cessario56:25

       Yeah.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings56:25

       ... which brand do you most respect and admire? Not Liquid Death. Which brand do you most respect?

    7. MCMike Cessario56:30

       Um,

21. 56:32 – 58:42

    The Most Underrated Brand of All Time: Trader Joe’s

    1. MCMike Cessario56:32

       (laughs) I say this one a lot becau- and I like it because I don't think any, I think it's one of the most underrated brands of all time, which is Trader Joe's. Do you know that brand?

    2. HSHarry Stebbings56:41

       Yeah, well, I mean, I, I've been to the States. I know Trader Joe's. Sure. Why?

    3. MCMike Cessario56:44

       Okay. Well, so Trader Joe's, I mean, people here love Trader Joe's. Like during the pandemic, like there was like lines around the block of people s- even though they could only have a certain number of people in the store, people were still wi- willing to wait in line an hour just to still get their fucking Trader Joe's. And Trader Joe's is the first time a grocery store, all the products in the grocery store are Trader Joe's brand. So Trader, it's Trader Joe's butter, Trader Joe's soda, Trader Joe's candy, Trader Joe's frozen pizzas, and they found a way to like make a store brand where all these things are, they kind of have a similar design feel. They kind of have quirky names. And it's, it shows that like, oh, when people just believe in this brand where they'll buy Trader Joe's wine, you know. Um, because when people see Trader Joe's, they've established in people's minds, oh, when it's Trader Joe's, it's gonna be, you know, healthier type ingredients, like not a bunch of artificial stuff. It's gonna be really good tasting and it's gonna be really good value, like pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. And they have like kind of a quirky sort of fun design vibe to it. So as long as people believe those things about the brand, you can kind of make all kinds of things like that, and I think even Whole Foods, like one of the top grocery brands, they have their own store brand called 365 and no one really cares about that. Most private label store brand stuff in the US, no one cares about. It's just literally, "Oh, it's cheaper so I'll buy it." But Trader Joe's I think they did it in a way that nobody has ever really been able to do it.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings58:30

       If you want my, my take on what I want-

    5. MCMike Cessario58:32

       Yeah.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings58:32

       ... for 20VC brand is that you trust 20V so much regardless of if you know the guest, you don't know the guest, you will listen because you trust that we will curate for you.

22. 58:42 – 1:00:37

    What would you have done differently?

    1. HSHarry Stebbings58:42

       That's my-

    2. MCMike Cessario58:43

       Exactly.

    3. HSHarry Stebbings58:43

       ... that's my goal. Um, uh, penultimate one. You can go back to the early days of Liquid Death. You're sitting down with Mike Junior. Um, what do you advise Mike at the founding of Liquid Death knowing all you know now?

    4. MCMike Cessario58:56

       Yeah, I, I, I don't know. It, it, it's tough to say. Like you, I mean, it's like all the things that, all the tough wrong decisions you've made are, are kind of what help you better approach the other things. You know, it's like, but I guess it's really understanding how raising capital, like how much you're going to have to always raise capital. You know, it's like you get excited, "Oh yeah, we're gonna raise." And then it's just like you're almost constantly raising as a startup, especially in beverage that's very capital-intensive. It's like you have to get to a certain level before a beverage company can become profitable unless you're selling a $9 can of something that's got 80% margins on it, which no one's doing. Being smart about how you do that and when you do that and, and all of that, I, I think like, you know, I didn't know much about any of that going into it. You just kind of, in the early days, you sort of, you know, you, you kinda have to lean on other folks that you trust to, to make the right decisions there, and I think we made a lot of the right ones, very few of the wrong ones. But yeah, it's like that side of the business, like thinking about dilution and the, the intricacies of how, what happens to the shares and those kinds of things, like as you're a growing company going through rounds. It's like most people going into that don't know much about that, and I think the more I, you know about that going into it, it, like the better position you'll be in. But there are-

    5. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:19

       That's right.

    6. MCMike Cessario1:00:19

       ... I mean there are co- there are companies that, plenty of companies I've talked to who have brought the complete wrong investors on board that ended up becoming nightmares and almost tanking the company. Luckily, we've had nothing like that. Like we've been very lucky that, um, we, we've been able to keep really, really great investors and

23. 1:00:37 – 1:01:55

    Liquid Death in 5 Years

    1. MCMike Cessario1:00:37

       great relationships in, in the company. But I, I know it's a, it's a problem for a lot of folks.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:42

       Final one is 2028. Where's Liquid Death then, Mike, five years out?

    3. MCMike Cessario1:00:47

       You know, I like to think that we're, you know, not that far off from what you see in a brand like Monster or Red Bull, you know, just a, you know, much bigger brand, um, known for sort of blurring the lines between being an entertainment company and a beverage brand. Like look at Red Bull. It's, they, they have a very specific genre of action sports entertainment, but most people you think of Red Bull, you think of both the entertainment side and the beverage side. And I, and I think that that's ultimately what our goal is. Like how, how can we become a multi-billion dollar beverage company that is also in service of creating really great entertainment that people would consume even if they didn't consume the beverage? They're like, "Oh, this is fun. We're going after comedy." You know, Red Bull's not funny, that's action sports. We're all about being funny and comedy and irreverence and all of that, and I think there's a lot of room for, for that kind of entertainment.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:45

       Mike, I love these shows. Uh, I so appreciate you being so open. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I really appreciate your flexibility on the schedule.

    5. MCMike Cessario1:01:54

       Yeah, no worries. Thanks, Harry. Appreciate it.

Episode duration: 1:01:55