Two days ago (August 14, 2025), I published an article tithed Coca Cola Liquid Death Tag. That article was centered on a photo I took of a retail refrigerator where glass Coke bottles were situated next to cans of Liquid Death, but the Liquid Death price tag was placed under the Coke. I noted that part of why the visual caught my attention in the first place was my own ignorance of the latest hip ‘n happenin’ drinks:
Had I been aware that there is a drink brand called Liquid Death, I may have passed by without thinking anything of it. But my ignorance coincided with the odd misplacement of the Liquid Death price sticker to make me investigate what was happening there.
I published the article after final formatting on the afternoon of August 14. That evening, I sat down to go through the newest posts on my RSS/ATOM/JSON feed reader, Miniflux. I came across a headline that I would have almost certainly passed over had I not just finished writing and publishing an article featuring Liquid Death hours earlier: Want to partner with Liquid Death? Get in line. This article, authored by Kristina Monlios for Marketing Brew and published on the same day I published my own Liquid Death article, went live with impeccable timing. The headline suggested that I may have really missed the boat on this whole Liquid Death marketing thing.
I published an article on January 29, 2024, titled Missing Temu Ads Through Good Internet Usage. In that post, I explained that I first learned about Temu that same month in an article about how it had been impossible to miss Temu ads for a while before I learned what Temu was. After considering the evidence in the article, I determined that I was ignorant of Temu because I use the internet correctly – that is with uBlock Origin and a well-curated collection of RSS, ATOM, and JSON feeds. This headline about Liquid Death marketing reminded me of my Temu post, so I decided to investigate to see if I could learn (A) how well-known Liquid Death is; and (B) whether I had been ignorant of Liquid Death for the same reasons I was apparently the last person to know what a Temu is.
Let us begin working through the Liquid Death article, beginning with the first on-point quote:
The canned-beverage brand has been inking more than sports partnerships in the last year, striking deals with a bevvy of other big names, including Yahoo Sports (the aforementioned guillotine league), Sheetz (chainsawed sandwiches), and Depends (moshpit diaper), all of which are shown off in splashy social posts.
I watched many sports through 2016, and especially through 2011 or so when I was still following football. There was a time when I had ESPN’s Sports Center on every morning. Back then, I was certainly aware of companies that tended to run advertisements during sporting events and sports shows. For example, while I did not and do not drink, I knew all of the beer brands that ran sports ads. I also remember a soap brand that had a commercial wherein a bunch of guys singing a song that included manly manly men in its lyrics. That was a classic. This article suggests that if I still watched ESPN and sports today like I did back in the day, I would have known about Liquid Death. I would probably also know more about all the big sports gambling brands. Lose some, win some.
‘We hope to be one of the better things in your feed,’ Dan Murphy, SVP of marketing for Liquid Death, told Marketing Brew.
I learned about Liquid Death’s apparently well-known marketing through my feed. Of course, by feed, I mean Marketing Brew’s feed, which I added to my feed reader. I suspect Mr. Murphy is referring to feeds as in big tech social media feeds on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X, Snapchat (that is popular, right?) and the Chinese video thing that should be banned. I have X for The New Leaf Journal, but none of the others. I do not have the right feeds.
My suspicion about feeds is subsequently confirmed:
For interested brands, Liquid Death has a big stage to offer. Since its founding in 2018, the brand has built a dedicated fanbase on social media, with 7 million followers on TikTok and 7.3 million followers on Instagram. Murphy says the brand regularly earns more than a billion media impressions each month, all while keeping costs relatively low.
I do not follow Liquid Death on TikTok or Instagram. I follow no one. I leave it to readers to decide whether I am saying that I do not have an account or that I think the algorithms are so good that I leave it to the machines. (Set aside the fact I just wrote that I do not have accounts on TikTok or Instagram.)
‘We’re very much an influencer,’ Murphy said. ‘We ended [2024 with] over 30 billion [earned media impressions], and that was on a spend of—I’m talking every production dollar, every talent fee, because we work with celebrities too—that was under $2 million.’
I quote myself from my March 26, 2025 article, Creators and More and More Content (which was also prompted by a Marketing Brew report):
Influencer is probably worse than creator. Is it someone who influences in the abstract? How does this person influence? What is this person influencing people to do? Do you have to actually influence a certain number of people to do something before you become a bona fide influencer? Assuming arguendo that I am correct in inferring indirectly that most so-called influencers are creators who are seeking ad and sponsor revenue, how are they different than pitchmen and women? There is no need to go too far into the influencer weeds; I venture that much of my analysis of the disembodied creator applies with almost equal force to the ill-defined influencers.
Nicholas A. Ferrell
Mr. Murphy’s quote plays into my complaint about the term influencer. He appears to state that Liquid Death is an influencer because it has many social media impressions and celebrity endorsements. However, having social media impressions and celebrity endorsements is not the same thing as having influence (unless they are trying to make you buy weird litterboxes). Many cat videos have a ton of social media impressions and may be re-posted by celebrities. But they are not influential. Liquid Death does use its social media presence to influence – specifically to influence people to buy the Liquid Death drink. It does not influence in the abstract.
While the details of each brand partnership deal vary, Liquid Death’s typical arrangement when partnering with a brand is to contribute whatever creative that its five-person, in-house team lands on. The company generally asks that its brand partner cover ‘hard costs’ of production, as well as the marketing budget and media resources that could include anything from influencer spend or light paid spend behind the campaign, Murphy said.
To be fair, Mr. Murphy’s concept of influencer may include brands wanting to partner with Liquid Death to get a piece of Liquid Death’s social media impressions. But again, Liquid Death’s goal is to influence people to buy their own product. To the extent which Mr. Murphy says in the next paragraph that Liquid Death prioritizes working with brands “aligned with our creative sensibilities,” I suspect he means maximizing Liquid Death’s ability to use its branding to drive sales, which necessarily requires brand consistency.
The rest of the article goes into the details of a specific Liquid Death collaboration. Lest we lose the plot of this article, I will end my survey of the Marketing Brew report here. From what we read, it sounds like Liquid Death relies primarily on sports advertising, Instagram, and TikTok to increase brand recognition and drive sales. I do not watch or follow sports like I used to and I do not use Instagram or TikTok other than as occasional punching bags for new articles. We have solved the mystery of why I did not know what Liquid Death was until I saw a misplaced price sticker under glass bottles of Coke on August 14, 2025.
The cause of my being ignorant of Liquid Death is similar, albeit not entirely coextensive, with my past ignorance of Temu. I missed Liquid Death primarily because I do not use its preferred social media platforms. Temu, on the other hand, escaped my attention primarily because I use an ad blocker and use my feed reader to avoid sites promoting it. But there is a common thread — I missed both because of how I use the internet and filter out content in favor of interesting writing and media. With that being said, I did opine two days ago that some of the Liquid Death flavors look good, whereas Temu, as far as I can tell, sells cheap trash. There may be a real product beneath the Liquid Death advertising, but I think that it is more likely than not I will stick with more down-to-Earth and better-priced flavored seltzer and similar drinks.
