Liquid Death CMO Breaks Down Viral Marketing

Liquid Death CMO Breaks Down Viral Marketing Speaker 1: We define ourselves as an entertainment company that monetize through healthy beverage. I actually right now missing on this meeting that we have once a week. It's a four hours meeting. Think about Saturday Night Live room where you have 10 people that are just coming up with ideas. What should we do? What could it look like? Who should we partner with? So there's a lot of creative juice going in the room, in person, in LA, every damn week. Knowing that we will find a very strong viral person that is pregnant at the time that we are ready to literally push our water, like who would have thought that would all come together? Well it did, so we had to act super quickly to make it happen before she actually delivered. Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today we have the chief media officer at Liquid Death, arguably one of the most viral brands of our time. And what I'm really excited about today, first of all, thanks for taking the time out all the way from LA to come out to New Jersey to record a podcast. I think this is going to be a really exciting one for our viewers because I think part of what you guys have done from the media side, the marketing side, and just building an incredible brand, Also, Wild Going Against the Grain, right? Everything you guys do has a lot of question marks, whether it's pregnant women in a bar, or you're doing collaborations with Elf Cosmetics and Yeti, it's incredible to see it. So, Benoit, before we jump into what Liquid Death is today, give us a little bit about your background, what have you been doing, and then how'd you get into the role of Chief Media Officer? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurship background. So I did my first startup out of college, was born and raised in France. Did my first startup, which was Indie US was known as E-Pinions, so that was kind of the E-Pinions version, French version of E-Pinions. Sold it and then moved to LA in 2003, so spent the last 20 plus years in LA. And keep on building in the digital space. Heavy media, a lot of media buying. Got, spent maybe like a few years or so, still have PTSD of heavy arbitrage. Google to Yahoo arbitrage, so like deep in the media world, trading clicks. And then the last, I would say seven, eight years went deep in the mobile media world. I was CEO of Play Heaven, which was one of the largest gaming network. Ran that, sold it to Rock You. And then after that, started back again to build and I built in the mobile space outside of gaming, which I thought was very saturated. So I went into the content side of mobile and build apps. A couple of them, you know, top 20 apps in the app store, which again went heavy into media buying because the growth was through media in this old world of like, you know, revenue per daily active users, like that old thing. And from there went deep into the creator world, build actually TikTok creator exchange. With TikTok, built one of the largest TikTok creator network. And after that, from there, keep running into the same question from brands that I was getting content built for. It's like, hey, is it driving sales? And I was like, well, you tell me. And I was getting views on TikTok. I was getting views on Instagram, but was it translating into sales, especially in retail? I didn't know. So I ended up building this tool, this platform that was going to build basically attribution between creators and retail sales. So build the entire platform. At the same time, I was a really good friend with this guy that decided to put water in a can and started to actually deploy that platform within Liquid Death. And through that, starting to understand what was working, what was not working, stop powering, sweepstakes, because sweepstakes was a great way to actually bridge Creator content and sales in retail because you had to go buy in retail to submit your receipts in order to enter the sweepstake. So we powered last year the big sweepstake that Liquid Death did with the Jet, to win the Jet, as you know, trolling Pepsi. We can talk more about this. But it was very successful and as, you know, Liquid Death was growing and growing, Mike at one point says, hey, we need you to come here full time because We obviously have a massive upper funnel, but what can we do with media to drive sales in retail? And that's the last 20 years of my life. Speaker 2: I'd love to dive right into this because it's amazing to have that much background. It looks like you're building with purpose of what you've known and what you're What you've been exposed to, so tell us a little bit about, you know, you kind of interjected into Liquid Death, you know, at a point in the journey where obviously retail has been super, super key, is the number one channel for you guys. Is it fair to say, if you really try, there is ways to be able to properly track What you're doing on the upper funnel side on marketing to be able to see how that impacts velocities? Speaker 1: 100%. Yeah, and there's, I mean, obviously, the last three years have been crazy in the retail media space. And what I say today will be very different just two weeks from now, because people are building and building and building. But this notion of exposed audience, At all level of the funnel and be able to see if that expose audience ended up swiping a credit card at the retailer is happening. And that gives you proper attribution. Now, is it the right attribution? Obviously, it's a view through attribution because someone have seen an ad somewhere and now they swipe a credit card at a point of sale at a retailer. So it's not a click that led to a transaction at the store, but this is a view through. Now you can start also building a lot of incrementality testing, which there are so many platforms that are coming out every day, and some are really damn good. So yes, you can really have a true understanding of Your ROAS overall. Again, I think measuring ROAS at the platform level is probably a mistake. It's important to understand at the platform level, but there's so much that happened in between platforms, all the way to transaction, and if you don't look at it overall, you won't understand if your marketing mix is working or not. Speaker 2: Fair point. And I think it'd be really good to understand, from what you guys have been looking at with Liquid Death, where you're choosing to do More and more campaigns, more and more of these collaborations, etc. Part of it is obviously there is an element of what we all call virality, right? You guys almost have gotten to a point where you can manufacture virality, right? Yes. But like, how do you guys look at this from like, walk us into the day of like, hey, we're thinking of doing this. How do you go from idea to execution and then obviously look and say, hey, was this worth it? Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%, that's a very good question. Actually, we define ourself as an entertainment company that monetize through healthy beverage, right? And so first we are entertaining. So everything we do is entertainment. I actually right now missing on this meeting that we have once a week, it's a four hours meeting. Think about Saturday Night Live, room where you have 10 people that are just coming up with ideas. And this is every week and we threaded a lot of ideas and a lot of ideas are being acted on and thinking, is it gonna happen or not? And what should we do? What could it look like? Who should we partner with? So there's a lot of creative juice going in the room, in person, in LA every damn week. And then from there, It comes to life and you never know when it's going to come to life. Because there's so many factors that will come into play to make it happen. Like if you take Cakes for Pranks with Katie Kelsey, like that thing, knowing that we will find a very strong viral person that is pregnant at the time that we are ready to literally push our water. Who would have thought that would all come together? Well, it did, so we had to act super quickly to make it happen before she actually delivered. And it was awesome, and it went extremely viral. So the way we do it is like that, it's like just ideas, ideas, ideas, and then at the right time based on also Obviously products that we want to push, time of the year because we have some seasonality as well in beverage, right? It's not, yes we sell throughout the year but I would say mid-April to end of September is really peak season. That's when people drink beverage, right? Then in order to understand, did it work or what are we going after? We're always going after first exposure, new audience, always thinking new audience. Especially for me, it's all about new to brand. I don't need to get someone that already bought four times to buy five or six times. I need someone to buy for the first time and to get that person to buy a second and third time. So what I call my live buyers. I need more of those live buyers. So if I go again with Cakes for Prags, that was awesome. Let's go in front of those new moms. Are they really buying Liquid Death right now? Yes. Are we talking to them a lot? Not as much. Should we do that? 100%, right? And now we get in front of that new audience and from there it's all about funnel, right? So now that I got this massive exposure of like millions of people that engage with the brand, But they are like, literally like when you watch the thing, it's like, what is going on here? What is this, right? If you know Liquid Death, now you are not surprised anymore. But if it was the first time you see it, it's like, oh, this is wild. And it's water. So now from my standpoint is I'm gonna educate them about the product. I'm gonna tell them it's water. I'm gonna tell them it's healthy soda. I'm gonna tell them it's iced tea. I'm gonna tell them where it's available. I'm gonna tell them where to buy. So it's like multi-touchpoint to get them to conversion. But first and foremost is, can we entertain? Can we get in front of a new audience? Speaker 3: Clearly you guys have a ton of content to distribute, right? For Liquid Death being such a, the size of the company that it is, where are the primary distribution channels that you guys are focusing on in trying to get in front of as many people as possible? Speaker 1: For content, you mean, right? Mostly for us, it's, I would say, Instagram, TikTok are our two pillars. Obviously YouTube, after that, is the next one. But yeah, I would say those are the top three. Now, for organic, right? And after that, the organic goes into this paid world. And the paid world goes from TV, I mean, this year we're heavy on broadcast, linear TV, because we kicked off with the Super Bowl this year. And then as maybe you know or you don't, but when you, Buy Super Bowl, you have to buy a match, so it's not like, hey, I'm spending five million on the Super Bowl. No, no, no, you have to spend five million. In order to spend five million on a Super Bowl, you have to spend another five million for the rest of the year on the network, right? Speaker 2: So, we spend... Speaker 3: Did not know that. Speaker 1: So, yeah, when people say it's, no, it's actually double what you have to pay. So, we do a lot of that, we do a lot of connected TV, and then, I mean, for us, Next is obviously social, because it's a great way to follow the engaged audience that engage organically, not to get them to follow them with different messaging with paid. But enough to that for me, it's all we tell me, yeah. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, it makes sense. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: I mean, you guys probably have tested so many different concepts. I'm very curious if you've had a concept that you thought was going to do really well, but didn't end up doing well or Vice versa, where you thought maybe something that ended up doing really, really well was something that you thought was probably not gonna do well. Speaker 1: Well, and that's gonna be weird to say that, but honestly, everything, and we may have to talk more about why, but everything we pushed at some level of variety. And this is wild, right? And maybe we're super unique, but I think it's also because the way things are being done. It's not just, Hey, I have this idea, I'm gonna put that 30 second reels and let's hope. There's so much, like Kicks for Pranks, we can talk about another one, but Kicks for Pranks is the latest one that people know about, took a long time to get to that 30 second. It's not just, hey, we have this idea, we're gonna talk to Kelly and she's gonna do it and we're gonna fly to her house and she's gonna record and we're gonna push it. No, no, no, it was like scripting, it was thinking about what product to push, what was gonna be the angle. So it's a long prediction. So it's very well, at this point, we know how to create morality. We have a formula. So I haven't... I haven't seen things, things performing better than others, yes. But I've never seen yet something that just didn't work. And Kali for sure is the one that was like, I thought it was gonna work. I didn't think it was gonna be that big. Like, it went big. Unknown Speaker: It went really big. Speaker 1: And that's awesome. But I think we have now the creative team, which is not me, right? Mike, Andy, those guys that are the best, I think, at what they do right now, are so good at thinking through first making people laugh. And I understand social so well. They don't think algo, like I know when I talk to a lot of paid media, think about, wow, how is the Facebook algorithm works, what is really, they don't think that at all. They really think about a skit, they really think about, literally like putting an SNL skit, that's all they think. They don't think about the platform, they don't think about the first five seconds, how the algo is gonna react, no, they think about making people laugh. Speaker 4: That's interesting. Just to go off the virality factor, let's talk about your packaging. I mean, this is water. And it looks like a can of beer, right? And I feel like that is a lot of, you know, a lot of the virality goes back to the packaging. And how much easier does that make your job when the product is just so much cooler than everybody else? Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, all of that makes my job so much easier. Like the content is awesome, it goes viral, the can is fun, but also can be a challenge. Because, guess what, Facebook, TikTok think it's a beer. So, because they think it's a beer, they don't let the content go. So I have to talk to them all the time, like, remember, this is not beer, this is water. Right, so. Speaker 4: Remember, Mark. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Unknown Speaker: This is, don't shut it down. This is okay, this is healthy. Kids can drink that, right? So it is, yes, it makes the job a lot easier. And also because it's fun, because the brand is entertaining, we get so much people, so many people talking about it and so much content created on a daily basis that we don't ask for. I've been in companies before where I had, you know, I would say micro-creators strategy. We're gonna go and find those micro-creators and we're gonna seek products and we're gonna make sure they create content. Speaker 3: I don't have to do that. Speaker 1: We have thousands of videos a week being created. So yes, I think we're unique, but we're unique because also it didn't happen just overnight, right? I mean, like the creative team had to come up with that name, Liquid Death, which trust me, talking about building, when Mike came with this name and start talking to retailers, Richard's like, there's no way we put the word death on the shelf, right? Speaker 3: This is not gonna happen. Speaker 1: So you can imagine how much he had to go through to get to that point. So it was not easy, like back to building, this is not easy. Now it's at the scale that obviously it's fun and people get it or when they get in front of it, it's not anymore a problem. But yeah, it's been work. Speaker 2: I'm super curious on, you know, you guys are obviously doing a lot on the actual media and content side, but then there's also these really cool product collaborations, like you said, like the Elf Cosmetics, you had Yeti, you had I think Nixon Watch, and tell me a little bit about that as well, because I feel like that's a world where I think it's almost been forgotten, right? There used to be a lot of brand collaborations, then there's like years where like you didn't even hear about one. You didn't even see it happening at all. And now you guys come out and you can't even keep those products in stock. Tell me a little bit about how that works. How are you making Yeti be okay with putting death on their product for branding and stuff? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, kudos again to the creative team. We are at the point right now, it was not like that, but now it is, where brands come to us. Where brands pay us to do this. We don't have to go and pitch. We get pitched, like you should see the number of emails we get about brands that want to be involved. And how we think about this for ourselves is new audience. How can we get in front of a new audience? That's number one. Number two is I remember that meeting where Mike, I think it was Mike or Andy, saying like, Do people expect us to do that? And if the answer is yes, then we don't do it. So that's kind of like how we triage the brands that we work with. And then as we know that, yes, it's a new audience, yes, it's unexpected, then we Take it on like it's our own campaign. So the creative team creates everything and we'll go at it. And that's why a lot of brands want to go with Liquid Death because they want a viral effect of Liquid Death, but a lot of them are not ready for it. Like because obviously we're gonna push it and not every single brand is ready to get that push. Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's really, really cool. Speaker 3: You talk a lot about just trying to reach net new audiences, right? And I think even if you try to relate this to the DTC side, you're spending so much on paid and getting that true top of funnel is very difficult for brands, right? And I think the reason is because the content that we're all trying to make is this very similar UGC style, testimonial, straight to the point, what is the product, the benefits, et cetera, et cetera. You guys are going the other way, which is I'm just trying to get in front of As many eyeballs as possible create content that people want to consume, right? But the question here is, how do you actually strike the balance between having a concept that can go viral, can be entertaining, but then still tying it back to a product to have somebody want to go out and actually, you know, learn more about it? Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very good question. And this is, I think, where Liquid Death is super strong. But it's also very difficult or difficult and probably not the right word, but very uncomfortable to do. Because I've been talking about that for a while. You cannot in a single ad, even in a 30 second, to mention the brand, expose the brand, get people to understand the benefits of the product, understand what you buy it, and then go and click and buy it. You cannot do a full funnel in a single ad. You have to agree that that very single piece of content is going to have one purpose. When we do upper funnel, we think upper funnel. What is going to get attention around the brand name? I fully get that don't be scared is just water. So the word water. So getting attention, water. That's what we need to do. Or healthy soda, you know. And from there, you have to be okay that yes, it's gonna take you probably another 10 impressions. For people to understand a little bit more about the brand, then understand about the product, and then understand that, yeah, let's give it a shot. And so it is difficult because now you're like, holy crap, I'm gonna have... For a certain amount of money, not have a true return. And that's, I think, what is very challenging in the world of, I mean, any world, but in the world of DTC, you expect to have a return on your last click that you got. If it doesn't return and you don't see return from that spend that you did over the last week, You are starting like, okay, I need to change. I need to change my creatives. I need to change the messaging. I need to like throw something else. I need to change the campaign setting and like the day partying, the frequency cap, the like. No, we can't think that way, because if we think that way, we go down that rabbit hole of optimization, four last click, four ROAS, and it just doesn't scale. Or it would scale, but you're gonna hit a wall sooner rather than later. So, it is not easy, and yes, at the scale we are right now, it's probably easier, but you have to think stages of the funnel, and make sure that you have only a single stage per ad, or per sub product. Speaker 4: Most people that come on this show, they're almost giving us the opposite of how that funnel works. You put almost brand at the top of your funnel and then you let the kind of the direct response stuff come towards the bottom. Very, very interesting. Speaker 2: Chew on This is sponsored by, if you want to build a profitable e-comm brand these days, then you need retention. Lifetime value is the lifeblood of your brand. Especially when CACs keep going up. 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I'm curious on, you know, you talked a little about the funnel piece, which is really interesting, but like you mentioned, once you get people to think about water and the brand name, after that, you still have to educate them a little bit more. Then you have to let them know where you are, right? So you have the Amazon, you have the Walmarts and calling out retail and stuff. How do you also manage knowing what to push when, right? And I'm talking about both products, but also more on the retailer side, right? Someone like a Walmart compared to a Target compared to a Costco compared to you know an HEB or wherever it may be, all of them want velocity, all of them want to be mentioned. Part of it is your product is just moving because the top funnel piece is so important but how do you manage like what to mention in terms of where you're available when you're available everywhere? Speaker 1: And so this is how I do it and we get first up a funnel without mentioning where. And from there, you will see actually, if you do it right, like a lot of, for me, my KPIs on top of the funnel are actually branded search, right? And I will see when I push a top of funnel campaign, did my branded search went up on Amazon? Did my branded search went up on Walmart.com? Did my branded search went on Target.com? So I start monitoring my branded search across all retailer, across all .com. But then what I do in order to push, what I do is I take that exposed audience from a profano and push that exposed audience to every single retail media network. So I grab that exposed audience, push it to Walmart, push it to Amazon, push it to Target, push it to Kroger, push it to all of them. And now I have that audience that I know is aware of the product and the brand. Now I'm gonna work them within the retailer. Now from a retailer standpoint, you can push them to convert on the .com or you can get them to convert in store through a lot of different mechanics, through the app, through the loyalty, through a lot of things. But then you have a lot of different paths to get them to conversion. But I just work where they are. I go find them where they are. I know that they sell the brand. I know that they are aware. Now I'm gonna get on every single retailer and grab where they are. So you can match their shopper audience With your expose audience, overlap it and go at it. Speaker 2: Wow, that's really cool. Speaker 3: Is that quite literally like advertising on these platforms like Walmart Connect and things like that? So you guys are taking the content that you guys have because at least for Walmart Connect you have search and then you have like display, right? Is the main focus for you guys, obviously a little bit of search, but are you guys also pushing this like top of funnel, middle of funnel through display? Speaker 1: Oh yeah, on and off site. So all the work that I mentioned was actually not even content, it's just audience that I'm moving around. So I'm grabbing an exposed audience on CTV or an exposed audience on Meta, take that audience, push it on Walmart Connect and target Match my audience to the Walmart audience, find the overlap, target that overlap onsite on walmart.com and target offsite, so on the web with different messaging with at this point a click back to Walmart. And now I can build my I would say meet and lower funnel on Walmart.com. And I'm gonna build the same thing on Amazon.com and I'm gonna build the same thing on Target.com. But then the lower funnel could be swiping your credit card on Walmart.com or could be walking into the store. But Walmart is smart enough and most of the big retailers are smart enough to tell me where they convert it and be able to attribute that back. To the different touch point that I add. So we build a lot of path to purchase. Like I have a lot of mapping of this is what the path to purchase is for Walmart shopper, for Target shopper. Speaker 3: Are you using the bottom of the funnel metrics to inform top of funnel again or is it vice versa? Speaker 1: Yeah, very much so. Like I said, I'm mapping what is the path to purchase that has the highest conversion rate with the biggest audience. Because as we know, sometimes what performs best doesn't really scale. So I have to find the one that perform and it's maybe a CTV plus a branded search plus an on-site. 7, 8 touch point, but make sure that I can replicate and scale that one because I may not be able to. Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 2: I love that. I'm really curious on product development. You guys started with just a simple water in a can to obviously now a lot of product variation and whatnot. At the same time, you guys kind of stayed very focused, right? In the sense of like, there is a lot of distraction out there. You can easily go and replicate what Celsius is doing, right? You can also go and do what Poppy is doing. But there is this, you know, innate ability for you guys to stay in this water, maybe healthy soda kind of expansion. Is that purposeful? Like, is that, you know, give us a little bit of like, because you guys can literally do anything now. Yeah. But you're still choosing to do what you really, really want. Speaker 1: Yeah, for us right now, our focus is healthy beverage. So it's not going to be alcohol. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: As far as I know, it's not healthy. It's definitely water, it's definitely healthy sodas, which are sparkling water with flavor in it, but we're trying to be as healthy as we can with everything that we do. And then it goes into iced tea, same thing, low calorie, low caffeine, low sugar. And everything we're looking forward is always with that healthy angle. Right, and something that a kid could grab off the fridge and consume. So it's not necessarily just water per se, but it's gonna be a liquid, at least for now, and it's gonna be a healthy liquid. Speaker 3: For us at Obvi, right, when we were kind of expanding our flavor line, a lot of it came from, our inspiration came from our customers, right? So, you know, they would be vocal about, hey, we really want this flavor or we want this product and so we would kind of go out and source it and do what we were told, basically, from our consumer standpoint. How are you guys coming up with the roadmap for the product? Are you guys, do you have ears to the ground on what the consumers want? Or is it more so, hey, like here are the flavors that we really want to push out and this is what it's going to be? Speaker 1: No, no, it's really about what the market is telling us, right? So it's really, we have a great insights team that is looking at what is currently flying off the shelf in beverage and what are the flavor profiles and what are Not only the flavor profile, but is it also high sugar, low sugar, like those kind of thing. What are the trends that are right now really moving product? What are the retailers saying as well? We'll pay attention to what the retailers are telling us. Like, oh yeah, we believe this is gonna really work or we see a lot of potential in this. So now we start thinking. And yeah, so it's very driven by data and what the market is either already telling us or some signals that This is gonna happen, so we should probably get into it. Again, it's not because we think about one new flavor that that flavor will drop in two weeks, right? There's quite a bit of work from idea to getting on the shelf. Speaker 4: Speaking of trends, so like we have this whole culture of people starting to quit drinking now. And I feel like you guys are positioned like you're right, right time, right place. You've built a water that looks like a beer, but it's not a beer. Is that something you guys capitalize on now as far as the audience? Speaker 1: Yeah, very much so, especially with the audience where we offer index, which is the Gen Z audience. The Gen Z audience is not an audience that drinks anymore, right? And so definitely for us, it's a great way to get in front of that audience and to get high velocity with that audience. And that's why also we got this great partnership going on with Live Nation. LiveNation with the official water of all their venues and festivals, right? So now if you go at LiveNation and you go to any kind of their venue or festivals, you're gonna see, you know, Liquid Death as the official water. Or right now we're also starting to work with a lot of stadiums. For example, now we are the official ICT of the Madison Square Garden, right? So same thing, right? We try to find ourselves in front of people as An alternative of alcohol. I also announced that a few weeks ago, maybe a little bit more, but we are the official ICT of the Eagles. So we're trying to get now in front, like in those big venues where there are a lot of people that, again, new to brand. Like, oh, I thought it was beer. Oh, it's tea. So also we have to be very, Creative about how we do that because a lot of those big stadiums are owned by Pepsi and Coke. So that's why it's difficult for us to go with water, but it's easy to go with tea. But at least we get the brand. Speaker 3: I'm very curious because now you have, at least when, just even looking at this table right now, you have so many different types. You have the waters, you have the sparkling, then you have the flavored, right? Does it become easier at scale when you have such a massive product line to kind of push everything at once? Or I would imagine it becomes a little bit more difficult to be a little bit more intentional with, you know, what are we marketing? What specific products do we need to push? And then that too, on a retailer standpoint, I'm sure different retailers have different requirements. So how are you guys balancing that? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not easy. I mean, I think what is interesting, at least from my standpoint, where I look at what the audience engage with, It's the same way as what Engage on the Shelf, you always have some hero flavor, right? So this one, the Cereal Lime, which is our lime sparkling flavor, has been our hero one for a long time. Speaker 4: It's my favorite. Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can see across all beverage, lime is a pretty famous or liked flavor. Then right now, as we start expanding to healthy soda flavor, now we got the Dr. Death, which is Dr. Pepper, and we knew which one it would be, because we launched Ruby of Wrath, we launched Killer Cola, and we launched Dr. Death. Which one was gonna stick? We didn't, we're not quite sure. Obviously some people had some ideas, like maybe this one, but we see Velocity coming in, we see engagement on social with, so we was like, okay, Well, if this is a cool one, maybe we're going to lead with this one now, right? So maybe we need more shelf space for that one. Maybe we need now to have our ad units to feature that can rather than another can. But we test that all the time on that need funnel. We really test what can, what messaging that really resonates, especially for the first time you get in front of it. An example is you have the two cans, the Dr. Death and the Killer Cola. Well, the Killer Cola is a very easy one to explain, right? It's a cola, so easy. So we actually lead with that one because it's a very easy one for people to understand what we're going for here, right? Dr. Death, yes, it's tough enough. People get it all, Dr. Death, Dr. Pepper, not everybody does. So maybe it's not as easy as the first touch point. So we definitely really think both from a media standpoint, but also from a, Shelf standpoint, like what are the ones that are basically getting the most attention or grab the most or flying through the cash register the most? Speaker 3: And do you think that at a certain point there are going to be certain products that you guys kind of take off the shelves because of that? Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that happens. We discontinued couple flavors because they just don't get the attention or don't get the volume that either retailer require or that we required. I mean, you know, guys, the MOQ. You have to order a certain amount and if it doesn't really sell through as much as you want, then why would you carry it? So at the end of the day, the consumer decides, right? Whatever they like, this is what we're going to push. Speaker 3: Are you able to at least leverage some of the other channels? Obviously retail has to be very specific of what's on the shelf, but maybe for Amazon or DTC, do you have that in mind where, okay, maybe we can do a certain expansion just for online or Amazon? Speaker 1: Yeah, Amazon is definitely a great place to get the product. To be tested at least, but to get the product first because you don't have the, you know, as you guys know, you don't have the reset period. You don't have to wait for next year to get back on the shelf. But I would say Walmart.com could be similar, right? They have the ability to get off cycle so you can start pushing new flavors sooner. But also we're going heavy More and more right now with LTOs, right? With those limited time offer, limited edition, and we also leverage that for viral moments, right? Last year we did this hot fudge sundae flavor, which went crazy and we ended up being the fastest sold LTO on Amazon ever. I think we sold the all ...batch in six hours. Speaker 4: Geez. Speaker 1: Like, Amazon, most of the time now when we launch product, shuts down our pages because they think it's fraud. So we have now to talk to Amazon all the time, and we know Amazon, those decisions are made by someone who's like, oh, we need to shut it off. It's obviously tech behind it that sees like high velocity on a single PDP, and it says, let's shut it down, this is fake. So what do we have now? We have an Amazon employee that sits in front of the screen, and as soon as it shuts off, overrides it. So we stay live. So we still go offline for 30, 45 seconds for the time to override. So we have to be careful because when we launch, also we have a pretty solid CRM. So when we launch, we activate our own audience on that new flavor and that goes straight to Amazon or straight to Walmart.com and yeah, they feel the hit for sure. Speaker 2: It's insane. Speaker 3: It's amazing. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible. I'm super curious, like, one piece that I think when it comes to building a brand similar to yours, which a lot of, I think, beverage brands and even food brands kind of fall into, is like, you have a CRM up until an email, maybe phone number, but after that it starts to become data that is more so the retailer's data, right? How do you guys balance that because there's also an idea of like brands love to hoard information. We all love to have all of the information about each customer. Obviously, there's a part of like, hey, we just can't make DTC economically work. But like, there's also like, I think sometimes that leads you to say, Oh, well, how do we make it work? Is that something that keeps popping up in your guys's mind of like, at the end of the day, your consumer in terms of like, who that person is, and where they live and all that stuff, that's predominantly owned by someone that's not you. Speaker 1: True. And so a lot of different things on that we try to Amplify, augment our CRM data through a lot of mechanics such as sweepstakes. Through sweepstakes, we get a receipt. So we understand what they bought, we understand at what retailer, at what location. So we try to augment that. And for us, it's really to help us understand mostly what product they like and what retailer they are attached to. So that's the primary goal here. Yeah, I would say for us it's important. CRM is super important, but I always think about my light buyers versus my heavy buyers. A lot of people as part of a brand think about CRM to increase their LTV. I'm not thinking about increasing our LTV. For us, the I think there's probably a lot to be talked about, but the LTV, especially in the beverage space, 70% of the beverage shopper has the same LTV. It doesn't matter. You're not going to get people to drink twice more. Can't, that's not gonna happen. So what is really important for me is to get people to buy once, two times, three times, after that it will take care of itself. So my CRM is important for the launch of new products, but it's not like I need to know every single detail about that shopper so now I can get from buying three times to buying 14 times a year. So I'm not in that space. I think as you scale, You probably should not be thinking that way. I posted the other day on LinkedIn and probably got a lot of hate on that where I say loyalty doesn't matter. Because what I meant by that is loyalty doesn't matter at scale. This is not how you scale. You don't scale by increasing LTV. You scale by acquiring more YouTube brand. Obviously if people buy once and never come back, you're done. But if the product is good and then you have the right strategy to get them to repeat once or twice, you can scale. Speaker 2: It's really, really interesting. I think the mechanics of that is very different from how we're all wired to things. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And I think that's why it becomes like, oh, I need this data or I need this. And I think you're really, I like that you're challenging the fact that do you really need it, right? And I think that's really, really true. Speaker 1: Probably, yeah, I think you need, For a bit, to really be able to get that repeat, but beyond that, it's mostly for product launch. Remember also us, we are, at this point, because we're a brand, we also have a lot of people that become fans, right? And because they become fan, they come and they buy t-shirt, hoodies, and all those, Nixon watch, and all of this. So we definitely get a lot of information. We don't sell a beverage on our site, but we sell a lot of merch, which is great because we treat merch as marketing. We don't treat merch as a revenue channel. We treat merch as, hey, if you buy a T-shirt and now you're gonna walk down the street, now I'm talking about exposed audience, now I'm gonna get an even bigger audience. So that's how, and through that we get also. Speaker 3: Quite a bit of data. Speaker 2: That's really interesting. I had one question around just like if you can, you guys use a lot of different tech, right? Can you call out maybe some of the platforms you're really enjoying using or ones that are probably not on everyone's radar because we're not at maybe the stage you guys are at, but More so maybe whether it's certain pieces of tech or certain pieces of even agencies and stuff that you guys have been enjoying working with. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, it's gonna be... Obvious, but for me, the platform that I'm so deep in right now is AMC, right? So Amazon Marketing Cloud, where is all the Amazon data that you can start querying and understanding behavior, path to purchase. So I'm deep in that platform and that platform is crazy good and there's so much you can do because from understanding your audience, you can start pushing your audience to your Amazon DSP so you can buy on-site and off-site against the right audience. Here there is a ton. So a platform that I use a lot slash agency is Stackline. Maybe people are familiar with Stackline. They definitely work a lot with large retailers so we get access to data. Our own data, basically the AMC data or the cloud data that it can manipulate and basically put a visual layer for us to understand what's working. So Stackline is one platform that I would say I spend a ton of time on to really understand what's working and what's not working. But I would say the one that is right now, I think there's a lot That is about to happen and very interesting is Walmart. I think Walmart, it's kind of funny because Walmart is this massive retailer, but when it comes to ad tech, they are still growing and building. I mean, on the off-site and DSP side, they are with the trade desk. They don't necessarily have their own platform. Then they have their on-site, on-platform. But when you talk to Walmart, When I get on a call with Walmart, I get on a call weekly with Walmart, right? For on the media side. You can see they want to do better. Like they are really, really keen to get better and better. And what can we do? And what can we put in front of you to make better decisions? So I'm, from a retail standpoint, obviously Amazon is my go-to, but Walmart has so much. I think that is about to unpack. And then yes, Stackline is where I spend a lot of time. Speaker 2: Super helpful. Speaker 3: Love that. 2025, looking at 26 soon. What are you excited about when it comes to the brand? What are you working on right now that is exciting for you and is probably maybe newer to the brand and maybe to others to kind of hone in on this messaging for Liquid Death? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I'm pretty excited about a couple of campaigns that are going to drop over the next couple months. Leaning heavy on the healthy soda side of things and trolling few competitors. I think it's gonna be very interesting and very fun and the way to get in front of an audience in a very Funny way, but also like educational and making them understand what really is healthy and what is not. So that is for me very interesting because I think right now there's a lot more that we can do on making people understand what really the beverage is beyond just, you know, still water or plain water. What are those flavors? What are those healthy sodas? Because that, I mean, as maybe some of our listeners know, the healthy soda category is just exploding. Like it's just crazy. Did you see .com and on shelf, it's just crazy. And shelf space is increasing, velocity are increasing. I mean, you saw Pepsi acquiring Poppy. I mean, it just goes, right? So there's a ton in there. I'm very excited about what we're gonna do in that space. There's a lot more to come. And I think you see here, you have our 19 to the tall boys, but we just launched our six pack, 12 ounces. I'm very excited about that for the brand because It is also a price point that is a lot more, I would say, easy point of entry. It's easier to get in, especially for a trial for a YouTube brand, so that I'm very excited. And then next year, It's still in discussion, but there's probably new flavor, maybe new category, things that I think you are gonna be like, oh shit. So I'm really pumped about the next 18 months and expansion in retail. I think we're big, but we're small. When you think about it, for a startup, we're a very big startup and I'm coming from the startup world and yes, this is big, but look at Pepsi or Coke, we're like nothing. So there's so much more that we can do that is quite exciting. Speaker 2: That's amazing. Speaker 3: First off, this was amazing just to get an idea of what you guys are doing to build this brand. One, it's what you should be doing to build a brand and I think it's something that a lot of people miss. It's starting with acquiring new eyeballs and moving them down the funnel versus where A lot of brands are just playing at that bottom of the funnel and they're trying to, you know, go after each other. But for the viewers and listeners, what is one thing you would want to kind of leave them with to take back and implement to their business today? Speaker 1: I'm very passionate about this one. Don't let your strategy be driven by meta metrics. Don't just open meta and look at the numbers and because of the numbers decide what to do with your brand. There are so many brands that are driving their strategy off of what the latest hype around the algo is. Right now it just drives me nuts, this concept of I'm going to have to create as many creatives as I can through AI in order for me to find the best performing one. It's like, who does that? This is just everything that you can think that will just destroy your brand. Put some thoughts in your brand, create what you want, think about what the user journey should be, and build around this. And if Meta is not letting you build that, then try to hack through it or find other ways to get it done. But don't think you're going to change the consumer journey because Zuckerberg decided that AI should be the priority of Facebook now and they should get your dollars through that strategy. That is just for me, that drives me crazy and I think destroying so many brands. Dude's thinking that way. Speaker 3: I needed to hear that. Unknown Speaker: We all, all our viewers do. Speaker 1: Everyone. Speaker 3: Chew on that. That's awesome. If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok and check out the website ChewOnThis.io.