Liquid Death's founder aims to turn water into 'the funniest brand in the world’

Consumers have plenty of options for bottled water, but Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario saw an opportunity to make plain water exciting.

Before founding Liquid Death in 2017, Cessario worked in advertising, where he learned how brands could break through the noise. He spent his early days playing guitar in punk and metal bands, where he noticed that most products marketed to the crowds were energy drinks, sodas, and other junk food, according to publicist Jake Tredo.

These insights became Liquid Death, a canned beverage company known for its aggressive branding, irreverent humor, and heavy metal-inspired aesthetic that, according to the company, was valued at $1.4 billion in 2024.

Initially the company’s biggest challenge was creating demand for a product that, while essential to human survival, is difficult to differentiate from brand to brand.

“We came up with the crazy name that felt provocative, and then you start using marketing to, in a funny way, rationalize it,” Cessario told Founder Brew. “Water is the healthiest thing you could drink. Why is it called Liquid Death? And it’s like, ‘Well, because it murders your thirst,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, got it.’ You start finding ways to make the crazy thing all of a sudden actually seem reasonable. That’s where you start creating the brand and the marketing and everything else.”

The company has since expanded its beverage offerings, with iced tea and flavored seltzers available with the same irreverent messaging. “My marketing goal for Liquid Death is like, I want to be the funniest brand in the world,” Cessario admitted.

Cessario views that humor as Liquid Death’s competitive advantage.

“Comedy is really hard, and when something’s hard, it means it’s more rare, and something more rare intrinsically has more value to people,” Cessario said.

In a conversation with Founder Brew, Cessario explains how Liquid Death built demand for a commodity product, and why laughs became its secret weapon.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Water is one of the most commoditized products in the world. Why did you believe there was an opportunity to build a brand around something people traditionally don’t get excited about?

Brand and marketing is more important than maybe people think…We didn’t want to be in a plastic bottle...and that in the early days became what sort of our differentiator was. There was really no other aluminum canned water brands at that time.

We always wanted to lean with what makes Liquid Death an interesting, almost uncopyable brand first—the comedy, the irreverent humor, the reason you want to walk around with the can and give your money to this company.

Why do you think comedy can be more powerful than traditional healthy lifestyle messaging?

Comedy has more value because it’s a lot harder to create, especially for companies.

When something’s hard, it means it’s more rare, and something more rare intrinsically has more value to people.

It becomes our moat because you can’t just create comedy with a normal marketing machine…We’ve had to build our own internal marketing team that’s comprised of former stand-up comedians, professional funny people, then you interlock them with marketing executives that understand the business need marketing needs to solve.

Liquid Death took a big branding risk by making water feel aggressive and irreverent—from the name to the packaging. How did you decide that risk was worth taking?

When you’re a small brand, if you’re trying to do what everyone else is doing and playing it safe, I would argue that that is more reckless because you don’t have limitless capital.

You have to think about “How do I make small amounts of money work really hard for me?” and that’s where being interesting, being different, being provocative is where you’re getting the highest ROI on your money.

What do you think is going to grow your money more? A small company doing the same stuff every other bottled water company is doing with just a fraction budget, or something like Liquid Death, where people are going to be talking about this for free, and people are going to be sharing it for free?

What’s something you tried early on that didn’t work? How did you recognize it wasn’t working?

The heavy metal stuff was funny as that initial shock…but to some people, it was just too off-putting where they’re going to skip past it…They don’t even get to realize that it’s funny.

We always were thinking about the first few seconds of a video, especially social being our main place where we were posting content.

What’s a decision you made that was expensive but ultimately taught you something important?

When I first launched Liquid Death, we wanted to put noncarbonated mountain spring water in cans. But in North America, there was not a single bottler who could do that.

We ended up having to use a place in Austria. For the first several years, we were canning Liquid Death in Austria and shipping finished goods to the US.

When Covid happened, ocean shipping went up like 5x overnight…All of our margins got obliterated. We went from paying maybe $4,000 to ship a container of product here to like $13,000. Even though Liquid Death as a brand was really on fire and people were buying more of it, we were losing money on every single case we sold. It was like the more we sold, the more we lost.

We probably waited too long to move. When you’re a young founder, any big change, you’re apprehensive about doing…but you realize how expensive it can be when you wait too long to make the move.