As a teenager I smoked Rothmans cigarettes, but the packaging was really uncool, a stiff cardboard, flip-top pack, all English cigarettes were in those days.
Much cooler was the soft-packs American cigarettes came in, we saw them in the movies, you could flip a cigarette out with one hand.
There was only one place in Soho that sold imported American cigarettes, so once a week I’d go there and buy a pack of Chesterfields.
But I hated American cigarettes, so I’d give the Chesterfields to my dad and fill the pack up with Rothmans instead, then I could flip one out one-handed like they did in the movies.
I liked Rothmans cigarettes but hated the pack, I liked Chesterfields’ pack but hated the cigarettes, so I just put together the bits I liked.
That’s what ordinary people do, unlike the way marketing experts believe, we don’t find brand and product inseparable.
Understanding that is what made the founder of Liquid Death a multi-millionaire.
Mike Cessario was a creative director at Crispin Porter Bogusky and was impressed by Richard Branson’s business philosophy: find the most boring category and become the only cool brand in it.
Cessario noticed that bottled water was a boring category, every brand had to have mountain spring imagery, beautiful smiling models, and a plastic bottle.
Bartenders told him that was why no one would be seen drinking water in bars, it looked uncool.
Cessario decided to disrupt the category; when he’d been young he’d been into skateboarding and heavy-metal, all of that imagery was dark-humour: skulls and death.
Cessario noticed that, at the concerts he went to, young people refilled their Monster energy-drink cans with water, so they looked cooler, almost like a can of beer.
They wanted the product but hated the packaging, so Cessario redesigned the pack in a way that ignored the category rules.
No references to beautiful people, no mountain spring imagery, and definitely no plastic bottles; just a 17oz tallboy can with ‘Liquid Death’ in a gothic typeface and a screaming skull.
He used the straplines: MURDER YOUR THIRST, and DEATH TO PLASTIC.
He made a test commercial for just $1,500 and ran it online, it got 3 million views, more than Aquafina, a leading brand, and his product didn’t even exist yet.
When he began production, Wholefoods gave him nationwide distribution for his anti-plastic stance.
711 followed, so did grocery stores, bars, and supermarkets all over America.
In 2021 Liquid Death sales were $45 million, in 2022 the were $130 million, in 2023 they were $263 million, and by 2024 the company was valued at $1.4 billion.
Moving further away from conventional marketing, he launched new flavours: Mango Chainsaw, Severed Lime, Convicted Melon, and Berry it Alive.
He also launched teas: Grim Leafer, Rest in Peach, and Dead Billionaire.
All of this by doing the opposite of conventional marketing wisdom.
Mike Cessario says that marketing wisdom will just tell you what’s already been done in a category, if you stick to those rules you become just like everyone else in the category, which is the opposite of thinking.
He says, the best way to break free is to ask yourself “What would be the most stupid thing to do in this category?”
Keep asking yourself that until you’ve got a lot of ridiculous answers that you couldn’t possibly do.
Then begin throwing out the worst ones, until the one you’re left with is exciting and disruptive, and you wouldn’t have come up with it if you’d followed the conventional marketing rules.
That’s when you’ll have the coolest brand in a really boring category, while everyone else is following the rules and looking identical.
Because you’re using your brain to disrupt the category while they’re just following the rules instead of thinking.