After Red Bull essentially created the energy drink market when it reached US buyers in 1997, an entirely new category in the Food & Beverage arena began a meteoric rise. Hundreds of knock-offs, imitators, and innovators have come and gone, fortunes have been made and squandered, and dozens of major energy drink brands remain. The annual US energy drink market is estimated to be around $19-24 billion, with an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7% or more through 2030.

But do you know what F&B category is even larger than energy drinks in the US? Bottled water. That’s right… The US bottled water market is estimated at between $47 billion and $100 billion in 2025. Globally, bottled water is a $330-$360 billion market as of 2024, with projections placing it between $500 billion to over $670 billion by the early 2030s. However, to stand out and earn a place in the super-crowded H2O-for-hire market, you can’t just be another me-too brand extolling glacial purity, volcanic filtering, or raindrops glistening on pristine flower petals. You need a hook. And with plastic water bottles coming under serious fire across social media and environmental regulatory agencies alike, you’re also going to need a packaging solution that’s both economically viable and ethically sound. Well, one fast-thinking, quick-moving upstart has carved out a serious niche in this market and has grown to a billion-dollar-plus business in less than 6 years: Liquid Death.

Liquid Death: Murdering your thirst… and the competition

“Don’t be scared… it’s just water,” says the company. However, scary, edgy, skulls-and-gore imagery has been the mark of the Liquid Death water brand since its inception. In 2008, founder and CEO Mike Cessario had an epiphany while attending the Vans Warped Tour: He saw band members and crew chugging down what looked like Monster energy drinks, but upon closer inspection he realized that it was simply “tour water” canned by Monster and dolled up in colorful, edgy labels. The idea stuck in his head, and he licensed the Liquid Death trademark in 2017. He officially launched the product in 2019, envisioning the edgy-looking, but totally clean beverage catching on with punk-rock musicians (and their straight-edge fans) looking to stay hydrated during long sets and festivals, without having to rely on sugary energy drinks.

Cessario, who had marketing and design experience as well as a feel for the underground music scene, told CNBC he initially thought his water would have only a niche following. “I didn’t think it would be this big... I think one of the most surprising things to everybody with this was how wide the audience really was.”

Viral social media marketing has been the mainstay of the brand since day one, and sales have absolutely skyrocketed from $2.8 million in its first year, to $45 million in 2021, to an estimated $333 million in 2024, representing 110X growth over 5 years. Initially launching the brand with just still and sparkling (unflavored) water in “infinitely recyclable” aluminum tallboy-style cans, Cessario has since expanded the product line to include “better-for-you” energy drinks (with less sugar and caffeine), flavored iced teas and Arnold Palmers (with B vitamins and less sugar), and soda-pop-flavored sparkling waters.

The company has held to its alternative, rock-and-roll image by teaming up with Ozzy Osborne, Spinal Tap, and Metallica, among other hot members of the music, movies, and entertainment scene over the years. They even created a campaign with skateboard legend Tony Hawk, who provided his own blood to be mixed with paint for a limited run of $500 Liquid Death-themed skateboards. Liquid Death always endeavors to stay edgy and funny in their content for social media, with some of the company’s unabashedly boundary-pushing ads pimping the company’s new “small ones” (12 ounce cans) with obvious innuendo, or urging customers to choose “more pop, less poop” poking fun at the amount of fiber in today’s popular prebiotic sodas such as Olipop (which we’ve discussed in another article).

At their series E funding in 2024, the company was estimated to be worth an astonishing $1.4 billion. So how did something as basic as water get to be so cool (and so lucrative)?

Disruptive marketing: creating product demand by building an “entertainment-first” brand

Liquid Death isn’t the first brand to test consumer response and potential marketability by advertising a product that didn’t yet exist, but it’s a rare example of this NPI strategy in the F&B industry. Cessario spent just $1,500 on his first commercial, “The deadliest thing on Earth,” intending to test the market before spending any serious cash on product development, sourcing, production, marketing, or distribution channels. He didn’t even have a completed can or artwork, but rather 3D renders of the proposed product. The over-the-top video (which created the viral-friendly message that water isn’t cute… it’s deadly) was a hit, earning over 3 million views in 4 months. An initial investment of $150,000 resulted in first-month internet sales of $100,000, and things took off from there. Online campaigns included incentivising early adopters to “agree to be brainwashed by Liquid Death marketing through rare (but hilarious) emails” and even joining the Liquid Death Country Club (basically a rewards/perks club) where you are required to literally sign away your eternal soul to the company by contract.

Another viral-friendly message is Liquid Death’s #deathtoplastic initiative (including non-profit support organizations), with the company insisting on using aluminum cans that can be easily recycled, rather than the plastic bottles ubiquitous throughout the industry. Social media’s growing “green” movement denigrating the environmental harm caused by plastic water bottles helped make the case for water in cans even more strongly. The company even employed adult film star Cherie DeVille in a “Don’t F*** The Planet” ad campaign decrying the use of single-use plastic bottles. The obvious bonus feature of cans is that they more closely resemble beer, mixers, hard lemonades, or energy drinks, all of which add to Liquid Death’s edgy, punk-rock-style marketing messaging.

Liquid Death’s marketing formula explained

So how has the company created and maintained such strong customer demand and loyalty? As you might expect from a 2020s-era F&B brand, Liquid Death leans heavily into social media marketing. Entrepreneur outlines company SVP of Marketing Dan Murphy’s overall marketing strategy, which he readily shares and insists is replicable. “Whenever Liquid Death makes content, its team asks the same question: Will this get shared on social media? Likes and comments are fine, but shares are what it really craves. ‘Because if it’s not compelling enough for people to share,’ says [Murphy], ‘then it’s probably not good tip-of-the-spear, top-of-the-funnel marketing.’”

Murphy’s formula for creating viral demand for a product includes the following 5 steps:

• Build an “entertainment-first” brand: “The internet has completely shattered the attention economy,” Murphy says. Consumers can skip anything they dislike, which means you must earn every second of their attention. That’s why your marketing must be conceived of, produced, and presented as entertainment—and your brand must operate as an always-on content machine. Red Bull proved this concept decades earlier and became a leading producer of extreme sports content. Liquid Death (or at least its marketing/demand-generation wing) thinks of itself as a comedy content producer.
• Prioritize top of funnel: Early-stage brands often get bogged down in optimization, Murphy says. They spend too much time on bottom-of-funnel elements like manufacturing and distribution—which is understandable, but leaves them vulnerable. “If nobody knows about the product, and if nobody’s stopping on the shelf or searching for it on Amazon, then your other efforts were for naught,” he says. Instead, Murphy says brands should focus heavily on social media. It’s the only tool that can reach millions of people for free—and if you get it right, your other operational pieces will fall into place.
• Invest in your entertainment: Liquid Death hires top comedy writers from places like Adult Swim network and keeps the team separate from the rest of the company, so team members can focus on the funniest ideas without being influenced by sales or marketing worries. Some sources have the team considering themselves similar to Saturday Night Live sketch writers. Murphy is proud that his team has produced at least one “banger” every month since he took charge. He works hard to make sure the brand stays relevant in the culture.
• Be nimble and take risks: Murphy stresses that small brands have an advantage over large brands on social media. “You can get stuff to market very quickly, you can test it, you can learn, you can react,” he says—while larger competitors will move slowly and be risk-averse. Murphy urges his people to create ideas that can be articulated in a single sentence. Any more than that, and it might be too complicated or obscure. As an example, he shares the origin for the company’s viral, frankly disgusting, but utterly functional (and sold out) crossover product with Depend, the Pit Diaper: “What if we made an adult diaper for the mosh pit?” he says. It’s a clear, funny, instantly shareable idea.
• Problems? Entertain the solution: Being “entertainment-first” doesn’t mean abandoning all other marketing principles, according to Murphy. You must still be aware of the market and consumers’ perceptions. But when issues arise, your solutions must also be entertaining. The brand was certainly founded on parodying beer and/or energy drink advertising, but when too many potential consumers actually thought that Liquid Death actually was beer, some kind of hard soda, or energy drink, the company spent over $7 million in 2025 for its first Super Bowl ad, “Safe For Work,” which depicted Liquid Death being chugged on the job by cops, pilots, doctors, and even a school bus driver, all with a catchy song saying “everyone is drinking on the job,” and finishing with the now well-known “Don’t be scared… it’s just water” tag line. It was funny, but it was also strategically responding to market research and helped clarify things for a huge international audience of potential buyers.

Liquid Death also keeps a close eye on all mentions and fans of its product on social media and reaches out to many of them, giving them positive feedback, and occasionally even sending them monetary bonuses as a “thank you” for helping keep the brand in the conversation.

Liquid Death’s response to supply chain disruption

Every new company faces serious challenges, and one of the biggest faced by Liquid Death was the result of its original source of spring water, located in the Austrian Alps. By 2022, soaring ocean freight costs and other logistics issues were eating up nearly half of the company’s expenses (47%). Cessario hatched a plan to shift production to the US (the company’s water is now sourced in Virginia and possibly Idaho based on what we could determine). Changing the source of your main product line is a huge supply chain disruption, but in the case of Liquid Death, the company handled it with aplomb and seems only to have earned even more loyal American customers, while saving a grundle on logistics. The company can also now hype its all-American sourcing and production in a tariff-heavy economic environment that rewards domestic businesses.

In another example of using potential disruptions as fuel for innovation and growth, Liquid Death’s original name for its new half-tea, half-lemonade beverage was a brand-appropriate and macabre “Armless Palmer.” When famed golfer Arnold Palmer’s estate sued and issued a cease-and-decist order, the company publicly posted a message that they were being forced to change the product’s name, and doubled down by instead calling the product, “Dead Billionaire,” which it retains to this day. This kind of stick-it-to-the-man attitude delights fans, earns new business, and helps maintain the cult-feeling, edge-of-society status of what is objectively now a very mainstream product. Well played, people. Well played.

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