“I’ll do everything in my power to destroy your company. This disgusting company will drag you straight to hell. Fuck Satan. Fuck whoever started this shit. You’ll get what’s coming. This is a promise.”
Typically, if a brand receives a public comment like this they either a) delete it immediately, or b) ignore it completely in order to deny its existence. What they don’t do is create an entire song and music video out of it.
This week, Liquid Death dropped a full music video for the track “Fuck Whoever Started This,” off the brand’s new full-length album (yes, really) Greatest Hates Vol. 3. The record is a 10-song album featuring lyrics all taken from less-than-friendly comments that the brand has received directly and via social media. Song titles that don’t include curse words or references to bodily fluids include “Worst Name For A Water Company,” “It’s Dumb And I Won’t Buy It,” and “There’s Not Even Alcohol In It.”
On the surface, “Fuck Whoever Started This,” and frankly, the entire album, may appear as simply yet another elaborate brand stunt from the water company that previously brought you a workout video with Bert Kreischer, and a severed hand candle with Martha Stewart.
But under its profane exterior is a valuable lesson in how brands should approach navigating the twisted hellscape that is popular culture in the year 2023: Have a point of view, and express it as creatively as possible.
The first album of Greatest Hates dropped back in May 2020, and Liquid Death quickly followed up five months later with Vol. 2. The musical genre of choice for Vol. 1 was death metal (of course), and Vol. 2 was punk. With Vol. 3, the brand has gone full dance pop, befitting its more mainstream profile than than three years ago. Liquid Death’s VP of creative Andy Pearson told Muse by Clio, “After a metal album and a punk album, we wanted to make an album you could dance to. I dare you to listen to the album and not find yourself humming them in the shower the next morning.”
Pearson and the brand worked with Tony Hawk, Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath, Frank Iero of My Chemical Romance, among others. The high quality of the tunes transcends the initial gimmick, to Pearson’s point about shower recall, and brings to mind that time in 2016 when Hamburger Helper dropped a mixtape that was actually good.
The idea of taking hateful comments and turning them into creative fodder isn’t new. Jimmy Kimmel’s recurring “Mean Tweets” segment has been a late night staple for years; singer Madilyn Bailey used this same hate-comments-as-lyrics gimmick on America’s Got Talent last year; and clever brand social media managers are regularly firing off politely devastating clapbacks to attention-seeking trolls.
Ever since the dawn of social media, brands have been forced to navigate the reality that the public conversations about them, their work, and their product are far, far beyond their control, and their choice has been either to participate or go full ostrich mode. Brands with a distinct point of view build in the confidence and conviction to respond to everything from broader cultural issues to a spicy troll—quickly and authentically. To put it in more recent Pride terms, you can be Bud Light or you can be The North Face.
Liquid Death founder and CEO Mike Cessario told me last year that having a perspective has been the key to his company’s success. “Dasani is just purified tap water in a plastic bottle, and they do $1 billion in revenue. Aquafina is just purified tap water in a shitty plastic bottle, and they do $1.2 billion in revenue,” he said. “Water is a category driven mostly by brand. So we build brand first, and we represent a point of view.”
This approach echoes a thesis of University of Michigan prof and Wieden+Kennedy’s head of strategy Marcus Collins that I cannot help but cite constantly. Once again for those in the back, Collins says, “Marketers have to get beyond the conventional wisdoms of marketing that it’s all about the product and product-consumer fit. That works on a transactional level. But if we want to get to a cultural level, it’s about conviction and conviction fit.”
For Cessario and Liquid Death, that conviction is to know that the brand’s sense of humor isn’t for everyone—and then have fun with it. Usually with skulls.
Now, let’s all sing along, “It’s just water in a fucking can . . . .”
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