How Liquid Death Turned Plain Water Into a $1.4 Billion Beverage Brand

Liquid Death built a $1.4 billion brand by marketing water with a rebellious, counterculture image, leveraging organic marketing and retail expansion to grow rapidly, diversifying into sparkling water, iced tea, and merchandise while competing with luxury water and nonalcoholic beverage brands.

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*Source: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/the-economics-of/how-liquid-death-turned-plain-water-into-a-14-billion-beverage-brand/BE9CE03E-578D-4145-B62B-269B2916CCE1?mod=retail_videos_pos2

Liquid Death is a company that sells water like a booze, and quickly gained a $1.4 billion valuation on the company. Liquid Death was built on one idea: to “make the plainiest drink in the world feel rebellious.” “While Evian, a water brand highlights water’s journey from French Alps, SmartWater markets its vapor distilled H20 with added electrolytes, and Fiji emphasizes its pH scale of 7.7, Liquid Death has none of that” according to the Wall Street Journal. The consumers focus on purity, as they think that bottled water is safer than tap water. However, Liquid Death focused on differentiation, being the counterculture to compete with other luxury water brands. Moreover, Liquid Death used organic marketing, using millions of dollars to distribute ads. This helped Liquid Death to be in physical markets, such as grocery stores, convenience stores, and bars.

Liquid Death’s main audience was the people at concerts or festivals. Then, the marketing of Liquid Death was heard from people, and its social media could quickly grow as one of the most followed beverage brands worldwide on Instagram. There are now 113,000 retail stores selling Liquid Death in the US and U.K. There were $263 million in retails in 2023, a 140% increase from 2022. Liquid Death has more competitors, such as nonalcoholic beverages, sodas, and functional beverages. Liquid Death also began to sell sparkling water after their first year of their launch. Their improvements continued introducing flavored sparkling water after two years and introducing ice tea in 2023. They also added Death Dust, a packaged electrolyte, to target customers who want refillable water cans. The company stated that sparkling flavored water and iced tea are the main products. Liquid Death also made money from their t-shirts and gold watches, signifying that the brand means more than a water brand to the people.