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Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2022 Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario argued at ThreadX 2026 that successful marketing is fundamentally about entertainment, because memorable, shareable campaigns make brands stick in consumers\u2019 minds.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2022 Authenticity and a distinctive brand identity are a company\u2019s strongest competitive advantages, since larger competitors can easily replicate product features but not genuine brand culture.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2022 For smaller brands especially, marketing should prioritize creative, shareable ideas that spread organically on social media rather than polished but forgettable traditional advertising.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The task is to entertain.<\/p>\n Marketing is entertainment, and that includes your messaging, your printing, your packaging, your promotional products \u2013 all of it. If your product isn\u2019t entertaining, it\u2019s not sticking with the audience.<\/p>\n Liquid Death has personified this ethos of marketing through entertainment since its inception. It\u2019s been very clear from the get-go: It\u2019s just water. There\u2019s nothing particularly special about the water itself, other than that it comes in a can. They didn\u2019t invent water. But what Liquid Death might have perfected, or at least progressed, is the art of marketing itself using entertainment and memorable campaigns, positioning itself as one of the tastemakers in a product category famous for not tasting like anything.<\/p>\n Your branding is your identity and what makes your product or service unique and therefore worthy of the customer\u2019s money and attention.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Liquid Death founder Mike Cessario spoke at the 2026 ThreadX conference about how to stand out with entertaining marketing no matter what your product might be.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf you think about it in beverage, sure, you can have some new ingredient that no one else has,\u201d Mike Cessario, founder of Liquid Death, said at the ThreadX conference last week in Sundance, UT. \u201cBut, as soon as your thing starts showing some growth, Coke, Pepsi or anyone else will replicate the exact thing for cheaper, put it in more places, and you\u2019ll lose. The one thing they can\u2019t replicate easily is brand and authenticity. Even if you\u2019ve got hundreds of millions of dollars \u2013 and they\u2019ve tried this many times \u2013 manufacturing authenticity with money just doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n Liquid Death is a unique case study in branding. Since its inception, the branding was always at the forefront alongside, or sometimes overshadowing, the \u201cmain\u201d product, which was water and eventually other soft drinks like tea and flavored seltzer. The company did this with humorous commercials and unique promotional campaigns, like skateboards screen printed with skating legend Tony Hawk\u2019s actual blood, an enema kit branded in conjunction with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and a lot more.<\/p>\n Standing out in the beverage market is how Liquid Death has managed to grow as quickly as it has despite not really offering anything that the competitors with much more money and clout could offer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve gone into these categories where there aren\u2019t many interesting brands,\u201d Cessario said. \u201cBy being this sore-thumb brand, we can take market share without spending what everybody else spends. That\u2019s how we can do it as a small company.\u201d<\/p>\n That lesson translates over to promo, where a distributor might be tasked with creating a campaign for a small company that just doesn\u2019t have the financial strength of some of their competitors. Cessario\u2019s lesson drove the point home that money can buy a lot of things, but it can\u2019t buy creativity or authenticity. If it could, every rich person would be a writer on SNL or have their own talk show.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the core of marketing, brand is really this: Why should anyone care about your company beyond the functional differences between your product and a competitor\u2019s?\u201d Cessario said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to make a cool product. It\u2019s really hard to make a cool company.\u201d<\/p>\n Never leave the safety of the mosh pit for a mid-show bathroom break ever again with the Pit Diaper from #LiquidDeath<\/a> and powered by @Depend<\/a>! The Pit Diaper is already SOLD OUT but you can still watch the commercial here: https:\/\/t.co\/803tKCLfxQ<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/uudDNPGRtU<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Liquid Death (@LiquidDeath) December 5, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, what makes a brand or campaign cool? That\u2019s harder to quantify. It\u2019s more that people and consumers \u2013 end-recipients in the case of promotional products \u2013 can sniff inauthenticity. Younger generations especially can detect desperation to be seen as cool or cultivate some aesthetic that isn\u2019t legitimately your own.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t think your company is cool because it uses taurine or some other ingredient,\u201d Cessario said. \u201cIt\u2019s what you do. It\u2019s how you put your company out into the world that makes people want your company, not just your product. That\u2019s how we think about Liquid Death. We\u2019re an entertainment company that monetizes through beverage.\u201d<\/p>\n Liquid Death benefitted from their commercials and content spreading on social media. He and his team recognized that this was just the way things were done now. It wasn\u2019t advertising on TV. It was creating something provocative that would be shared by gazillions of people using social media platforms every day.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s basically a Super Bowl every day on social media in terms of eyeballs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For a promotional products distributor or print campaign designer, this is worth considering. How can your campaign live online in addition to the real world? Creating some sort of connection between social media and the product will create more interaction and enhance the reach of a campaign. If the packaging or design of the product alone is clever enough, it encourages people to share it around their own social media networks.<\/p>\n The trick is making your marketing effort feel like something fun, not a commercial. It\u2019s the \u201cspoonful of sugar\u201d for the medicine (the brand).<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can actually entertain people while also delivering a message, that\u2019s the key to unlocking this digital world,\u201d Cessario said.<\/p>\n He likened it to the dawn of soap operas, where Procter & Gamble used dramatic television to market their products.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s how you got into people\u2019s minds: by entertaining them first and then tagging your brand to it in a subtle way, so maybe they\u2019d remember your brand a week later when they were in the soap aisle,\u201d Cessario says.<\/p>\n The takeaway, Cessario says, is not to just try to copy what Liquid Death did in terms of making funny, irreverent copy to disrupt the beverage industry. That\u2019s just what came naturally to him as someone with a background in writing funny copy and a bit of a punk rock past. If that\u2019s not who you are, it won\u2019t be authentic. And creating a campaign for a customer using a certain vibe that does not suit them doesn\u2019t help anyone.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re running a company, it\u2019s much easier to lean into what you naturally understand and know how to do than try to force a totally different kind of brand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Introducing a life-sized casket for death-sized beverages: The Casket Cooler from @liquiddeath<\/a> x @YETICoolers<\/a>. Featuring Triple Foam ColdCell\u2122 technology, once you fill this one-of-a-kind giant casket with ice and Liquid Death, it will become the life of any party.<\/p>\n We only made\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/jOMhbVlVNZ<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Social Media Integration<\/h4>\n
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