[00:00:00] Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where we explore brand manufacturing in the digital age.
[00:00:16] Hey everyone, Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. Standing out in a crowded
[00:00:20] beverage market takes creativity and less energy and at least in one case a passion for murder,
[00:00:27] murder, murder. I'm talking of course about the brand Liquid Death which has grown from an
[00:00:34] Amazon listing in 2019 to a massive online presence as well as showing up behind 110,000 brick
[00:00:41] and mortar doors. The bond they have created between the liquid death brand and their humans as
[00:00:47] they call their consumers is truly remarkable. Natalie Cotter, Senior Director of Digital Retail
[00:00:53] Liquid Death, join Lauren Lee Vaat Gilbert in me to share some thirst quenching details on how they
[00:00:59] continue to kill it in the beverage aisle. Welcome to the podcast Natalie, we are looking forward to
[00:01:05] chatting with you thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me excited to chat with you guys
[00:01:10] today. God, we're thrilled. Liquid Death is such a unique brand and for those of our listeners
[00:01:16] who are under a rock or something and don't know about Liquid Death, they are a brand of
[00:01:20] canned water with an awesome twist on their messaging with the tagline Murder Your Thirst.
[00:01:27] I'm hoping that this now makes us a true prime podcast because those ratings are out of control
[00:01:32] but thank you so much for it's such an awesome brand. I remember seeing it for the first time
[00:01:37] and just was compelled by it and it was the best quenching that I've had in a long time. It's really
[00:01:45] just an awesome, awesome brand. Yeah, it's been a really fun ride for us to continue to grow the
[00:01:52] brand over the last few years and continue to grow into the future. When Natalie is here to share
[00:01:56] Liquid Death's journey from a digitally first brand to now selling in over 110,000 doors and
[00:02:03] what other brands our listeners can learn from that journey so tell us how you came to be a killer
[00:02:09] brand and Omni Channel. See what I did there? Yeah, so our founder and CEO Mike he started with
[00:02:15] a video before ever having even produced the product and so he used that video through different
[00:02:22] social ads and digital channels to essentially generate interest amongst viewers and then from
[00:02:28] there there was such great adoption that the team started building the company. So like you
[00:02:34] said Peter we were a digital first brand getting started on Amazon in 2019 where virtually all of our
[00:02:41] brand sales occurred in the virtual world and then from their whole foods was actually the first
[00:02:46] retailer to take us in brick and mortar selling our our first product so just our white can still water
[00:02:53] and since then we've expanded the assortment but as both shoppers and retail buyers fell in love with
[00:03:00] our brand it led to broader adoption in large format digital convenience on premise and much more
[00:03:07] and so fast forward a few years later now you know we're a robust better for you beverage company
[00:03:13] with products across water sparkling water iced tea and now hydration packs with our newest launch
[00:03:19] of death dust last month and we've added new flavors to structured stagnant categories with our fun
[00:03:27] entertainment led marketing. I saw the death dust I'm really excited to try that and I love
[00:03:34] the twist and you even have you have a fan club too I saw right so that you can get additional
[00:03:40] loyalty for people to sign up to be a part of the liquid death club right? Yeah yeah absolutely
[00:03:47] so you can also on our website you can sell your soul to liquid death which is a fun contractual way
[00:03:54] for you to engage with the brand again very entertainment driven. My soul is pre-sold but
[00:04:00] but if I still had it I would definitely use it. I did I did sell my soul over I have to say I'm a
[00:04:08] hugely liquid death fan when I first saw the brand I found them in Canada when I was there and
[00:04:13] I joined the website I thought it was super cool you get like a certificate that says you signed
[00:04:17] your soul over to liquid death it's just really cool the way you branded it and how you kind of
[00:04:22] brought it through all your channels so big kudos to you and I have to say when I first saw it
[00:04:28] I thought it was super cool but I did have this question about you know where does this go from here
[00:04:35] you know because it's a it's a very I think a very brave courageous and incredibly wildly creative
[00:04:42] idea to make water and now it's so many other things but be branded and drive a premium out of that
[00:04:51] I just think it's genius and I love that you've been able to build a community through the
[00:04:58] authenticity of the brand you've created and I would imagine that keeping control of that
[00:05:05] brand and nurturing it must be just super important to your to your path. We definitely try to get
[00:05:12] creative in how we entertain with our humans um and you know the the folks that are buying our
[00:05:18] products and you know oftentimes that's not even always a product first approach that's actually
[00:05:23] how can we make our people laugh in their everyday life so how can they be you know scrolling
[00:05:28] their Instagram or TikTok account see a post from us that just makes them laugh um something that
[00:05:34] we did within that entertainment realm as well was on Spotify we actually created a unique album
[00:05:41] called Greatest Hates where we went in and actually took some of that the review feedback from our
[00:05:49] our biggest haters and made a fun album out of it so constantly looking for ways to do things
[00:05:55] differently um and just ultimately make our our humans laugh when they interact with our brand.
[00:06:01] And you can really hit multiple different audiences I know for me the reason one reason why I really
[00:06:05] like it wanted tastes good but also because I don't drink and so when you're holding that can
[00:06:10] and you're out it actually looks like you're drinking something other than a glass of water and so
[00:06:15] it is nice to have something outside of just like a gruel of glass of water with a straw
[00:06:19] and be holding a liquid depth because it's it's cool and it's fun and people ask questions and
[00:06:23] you can talk about it so I'm sure you have many different audiences that enjoy it but I know
[00:06:28] a lot of my friends who also don't drink that's a really great group of people that love you
[00:06:33] having liquid death and you can like bring it to a party and you're bringing the liquid
[00:06:37] depth versus bringing an alcoholic beverage so it's venturing also into that space I'm sure as well.
[00:06:43] Yeah and that was very intentional because some of the some of the most fun brands out there in
[00:06:48] you know commerce and in CPG they're actually the products that aren't the healthiest for you
[00:06:54] so you you look at some energy during brands or maybe junk food and they're kind of the fun
[00:07:00] marketing and that's where our team really thought okay how can we bring those same principles
[00:07:06] to categories and products that are actually healthy for you right so we don't have high caffeine
[00:07:11] we don't have high sugar contrary to the name of our brand nothing's actually going to kill you
[00:07:17] right it's actually better for you in comparison to some of those junk food alternatives.
[00:07:24] I love it so we're talking a lot about the role of the brand and you talked about that from
[00:07:28] the beginning and and it can be forgotten sometimes in the focus of where brands are looking right now
[00:07:34] because they're focused on conversion or clicker or ads but now more than ever it's really important
[00:07:40] to bring out that loyalty so can you tell us more about kind of where you focus and how you focus
[00:07:46] on brand loyalty and how you build that into your overarching strategy when you're thinking about
[00:07:52] like launching a new product like the death test.
[00:07:54] But loyalty is very important to us especially as we think you know what are the touch points where we can
[00:07:59] first resonate with someone who would be interested in our brand so maybe it's at a live nation concert
[00:08:05] or it's at a restaurant or it's in the the aisle of a whole food store you know how can we
[00:08:12] not only adopt them into the brand but then drive that loyalty long term and so you know what
[00:08:18] we really try to do with our brand is just one in a digital way how can we continue to engage with
[00:08:24] them so some of those things that we chatted about around social are super important to the brand
[00:08:30] and just engaging with them on a regular basis but then additionally too we try to look to do things
[00:08:35] differently in the real world as well. So you know one thing that we did was we actually partnered with
[00:08:42] our buyers at Target we did an exclusive Metallica case art which was a really cool way to continue
[00:08:49] to drive that that repeat shopper behavior for those customers who had already purchased our product
[00:08:54] but maybe wanted the exclusive Metallica case art as well as bring new shoppers into the brand.
[00:09:01] I also recently saw that you did the biggest ad ever campaign where you put a blank space on a liquid
[00:09:07] death box and said okay you can bid on this as an ad and then it's an opportunity for the retailer
[00:09:12] and for the consumer to have an interesting box that has a one-centile lifetime ad created by this
[00:09:18] retailer can you talk about that and how you built that partnership. So that was our biggest ad ever
[00:09:25] campaign which we did right around the Super Bowl which we all know in marketing as a really big time
[00:09:30] when there's a lot of ads going on and we thought at liquid death how can we do this differently
[00:09:36] and so we actually auctioned off the back of our case where we would normally have our case art
[00:09:41] with an exclusive partner who could bid to put their logo there and so it was actually really
[00:09:48] fun marketing activation for us and we ultimately partnered with someone that will be
[00:09:56] actually producing their logo on our cases later this year which will be kind of a fun way
[00:10:01] to bridge both of our companies together and then give the shopper a unique experience when
[00:10:07] they're purchasing in store online. That is so fun. The degree of creativity that you continue to
[00:10:16] put into this brand to extend it and advance its momentum is really impressive and
[00:10:24] Lauren was talking earlier about the many people praying at the altar of performance marketing
[00:10:31] these days but ignoring brand and I'd love to have you talk a bit about how you think of
[00:10:38] successful digital product page on a retailer website that brings those two things together for
[00:10:46] the goals to achieve the goals you're looking for. That's a really great question Peter and
[00:10:52] it's really how we look at it is it's really twofold right like you can have the best conversion
[00:10:58] driving page in the world but if you don't have traffic to your product page you're never going
[00:11:03] to get sales right and so it's really that balance of driving the traffic and awareness alongside
[00:11:10] the conversion rate and so if we focus on just the the traffic and awareness piece of it first
[00:11:16] that's where we we partner with our digital marketing creatives that have all these fun crazy
[00:11:21] ideas from the Spotify greatest hates album all the way through to biggest ad ever and so it's
[00:11:27] activations like that that we can actually quantify and track and measure the awareness that
[00:11:33] we're driving to our product pages and so you know oftentimes we try to lean into digital media
[00:11:40] ad placements or different activations on retailer sites to drive that traffic to our product
[00:11:46] page but we also think how can we kind of secure that organic viability and so that's a lot of
[00:11:52] times how we try to do things a little bit different and so that's where a lot of our campaign
[00:11:58] marketing moments sort of originate from is just driving that that broad scale awareness and then
[00:12:03] once we get someone on our product page that's where you know our team is looking to optimize are
[00:12:08] we priced right do we have the best images do we have how how our ratings and reviews look
[00:12:15] is there any confusion with our products can we answer some questions and answers to help our humans
[00:12:22] better understand our products and so you know that's when we start to look at the actual product
[00:12:27] page conversion level and so as a company were very fun and creative but we're also very
[00:12:33] data driven and how we approach a lot of these things so really pairing the traffic and awareness
[00:12:37] with the conversion pieces together it's how we look at optimizing our digital our digital product pages
[00:12:44] yeah and I love the way that you really do bring the brand to life on the product page
[00:12:49] you guys have such great imagery and videos and enhanced content modules and Q&As like you really are
[00:12:57] investing in a way that a lot of it seems like there's there's often silos between the brand creative
[00:13:04] work um and then what shows up on the product page and I remember back uh talking with folks from
[00:13:13] Accenture who uh did a lot of the work on um the George Clooney coffee ads I think it was this
[00:13:21] Nespresso that he would do and they had all these TV commercials and everything going on but you'd go
[00:13:27] to the page and it's like where's George like it just didn't show up and it's because they hadn't
[00:13:33] structured it in a way where it could be everywhere and it feels like you all do not make sure
[00:13:40] that that's not the case for the work that you do with your brands and with the the influences
[00:13:44] that you work with is that is my impression correct yeah we definitely try to bridge as much as we
[00:13:51] can those experiences that people have off the product pages are off of our websites with what we
[00:13:58] can you know offer humans from an entertainment perspective but then also just from an assortment
[00:14:02] perspective um you know one really fun thing to your point Peter around like questions and answers is
[00:14:08] um on the ratings and review side we actually activated a module on our website where we wanted to
[00:14:15] enable our humans to leave ratings and reviews but we didn't want to just call it ratings and reviews
[00:14:20] because that's the typical way of doing it so we ended up calling it feedback from internet
[00:14:25] randos um and again layering in that entertainment and humor on our on our website
[00:14:31] and you also you you embrace the negative which i think is a challenge for a lot of brands
[00:14:39] and they might shy away from that where if you got a negative review i've seen on your site you
[00:14:44] address it and you say and you explain like okay that's okay if you don't like it here's what our
[00:14:49] our goal is and you actually bring it to light can you talk a little bit about that because I think
[00:14:53] a lot of brands tend to think oh negative reviews like let's get a bunch of positive reviews
[00:14:59] or no one looks at that or like we don't want to call it out or we don't want to make sure that
[00:15:03] that's a prominent part of our messaging but you fully embrace that so can you talk about that
[00:15:07] of it yeah we really flip it on its head and turn it into entertainment uh you know a la the greatest
[00:15:14] hate album but then also too yeah you know if people have negative things to say we oftentimes just
[00:15:19] laugh it off and think they're okay how can we make this uh you know funny it's usually the vocal
[00:15:26] minority you know um but how can we kind of look at that differently where is yeah i think a lot of
[00:15:31] bigger CPG brand houses would look at that no more shy away or try to cover it up
[00:15:36] whereas we we approach that differently than i would say the the average CPG company
[00:15:41] we recently had a really experienced consultant and author john rossman on our podcast and
[00:15:50] uh he he came from amazon and created the amazon marketplace uh brought it to life and
[00:15:57] and then has since become you know a wonderful consultant and his his whole book new book is about
[00:16:03] big bet leadership and and and how important it is and i think particularly now to be taking big
[00:16:11] bets and really putting them into practice and i feel like your founders first effort was in fact
[00:16:20] that big bet it was the big bet of would this work will people engage with this story and it sounds
[00:16:26] like and i don't mean to put words in it but like he almost did it before he had to
[00:16:30] it's ready to go like is this worth trying and that's exactly the concept of big bets like you have
[00:16:37] to get your hypothesis together test it and then and then be ready to go and uh so i just
[00:16:44] want to i just want to encourage that in in the listeners but also what's wonderful is to see that
[00:16:51] as you grow it's easy as you grow to slow down to get more cautious to not want to rock the boat
[00:16:59] and it feels like the energy of that big bet remains and is and just tell me what that's like
[00:17:06] at your company to keep that alive to make sure you don't get complacent and maybe that builds into
[00:17:11] a larger question of what are the things that you're doing at your organization that that other
[00:17:17] larger organizations could be could be um putting into practice so it's a great point Peter and i think
[00:17:25] so many startups just in general you know whether cpg or elsewhere they they want to have the
[00:17:29] business plan completely built out you want to have the product ready you want to have your marketing
[00:17:33] plan it's really um you know comfortable to know all of the pieces and how they're going to work
[00:17:40] together and have a really structured plan the thing with that is it it can slow you down right and
[00:17:45] so there's always going to be that speed to market how can we get out there how can we test quickly
[00:17:51] how can we adjust to what our people are saying and really just look to optimize the brand and
[00:17:59] blitz scale the company so to say so i would say from a very tactical standpoint
[00:18:04] we're always looking to do things differently so you know on different retail platforms they might
[00:18:09] have very structured requirements around how you can use your titles or use your bullets or
[00:18:16] the images that you can include on your product pages and that's where we try to think a little
[00:18:20] bit outside the box and really layer in our brand voice there so that we can resonate with
[00:18:26] our humans at any touchpoint throughout their journey with us whether it's in the aisle of a
[00:18:32] Walmart store or online and so i think for us it's just always staying on that cutting edge
[00:18:38] and encouraging us to to push to that next level i also think from like a retail media investment
[00:18:45] standpoint you know we really try to be flexible with our budgets to understand hey let's test out
[00:18:51] this new emerging delivery app and see if it works or hey let's you know this platform was doing
[00:18:58] really well let's double down budget there to see how much we can scale our business so i think
[00:19:04] it's really remaining light on our feet and extremely flexible in our strategy which is the core
[00:19:10] of a startup and as we get to become this bigger company what's really great is we've been able
[00:19:15] to maintain those philosophies to still stay quick on our feet flexible to the market really close
[00:19:21] the ground with our humans that are buying our products which which will continue to be core to our
[00:19:26] DNA as we work together as a team and grow the business i've seen so often in terms of ad budgets
[00:19:35] many times you'll see that there are almost silos between stakeholders that hold a marketing
[00:19:44] budget because you know they want to protect those dollars because it's obviously tied
[00:19:50] to the success of the area that they manage and i was wondering how you managed to avoid that
[00:19:56] sort of you know siloed pressure of how spend is tied to success something that we're considering
[00:20:07] as a business too is that door count continues to grow right because we have more and more retail
[00:20:11] partners that are hopping on to the brand and more and more adoption from consumers but you only
[00:20:17] have so much budget right and so what we do as a business is we try to holistically look at our
[00:20:23] overall investment and look to optimize it at a total business level instead of you know hey we
[00:20:29] have x amount of dollars for why retailer for the next 12 months instead of looking at it in that
[00:20:35] siloed view we really try to look at it holistically which has worked really well for us as a business
[00:20:43] and you also come from an interesting perspective where you were digitally first and then you added
[00:20:47] brick and mortar where traditionally brick and mortar first for larger companies and then they added
[00:20:52] an e-commerce and they're struggling to build that muscle because they've been a brick and mortar
[00:20:57] retailer focus for a hundred or so years so can you talk about what that shift was like going from
[00:21:04] digital first to bringing in brick and mortar and and i don't know if necessarily you've been on
[00:21:10] the other side of it but what did you learn from going from e-commerce to brick and mortar and
[00:21:15] what kind of principles did you apply to in store from your digital focused mindset yeah i think
[00:21:23] one of the major benefits of being digital first is that we actually had a lot of data just around how
[00:21:30] people interacted with our brand what worked with our brand you know even in the digital retailer
[00:21:35] ecosystem we understand repeat rate and subscriptions and we can get a really good grasp on who
[00:21:42] our consumer is which has informed a lot of our marketing strategies as well but to your point
[00:21:48] Lauren then sort of bringing that over to in-store is is a totally different beast there and so
[00:21:54] you know i would say from a marketing lens what we do is we just try to continue to engage with
[00:21:58] our consumers in a really fun and interesting way whether it's online or if you're standing in the
[00:22:04] aisle of a wall mart store and so yeah you know there's not as much data in that brick and mortar
[00:22:11] ecosystem but obviously taking a lot of the insights that we're learning online to better inform how
[00:22:18] we go to market with new products or how we resonate with our with our humans and in brick and
[00:22:23] mortar stores i want to drill just in for a second on there's so much creativity coming out of your
[00:22:31] brand and and i was wondering whether what your approach is to doing that all of that ad and media
[00:22:39] creative because i know some companies can some can use an agency model some bring it in house and
[00:22:47] and then it also seems like it's it can be a revolving door of where agency on now we're in house
[00:22:53] now we're agency i was wondering where you've at and what you've found to be the best approach for
[00:22:58] liquid death right now we manage everything in house so our philosophy is we've hired some of the
[00:23:04] brightest and smartest people in digital media as well as different facets of the company and we've
[00:23:10] brought on the digital retail side we've brought that largely in house and it's allowed our team to
[00:23:16] execute extremely quickly so you know as business priorities change sometimes overnight our team's
[00:23:22] able to go in and implement those changes relatively quickly and so it's enabled us to be really
[00:23:28] nimble in our approach to not only advertising but even hey you know we want to update the title on
[00:23:34] this product page to include another SEO term we can do that relatively quickly because we have all
[00:23:40] of that in house and so yeah our team is super strong and has a ton of experience with you know
[00:23:46] digital retail outside of liquid death and so bringing their expertise to liquid death has really
[00:23:51] elevated us as a brand so when you're when we're talking about launching a new promotion in store
[00:24:00] can you walk us through what that looks like because you're digitally first right so you have
[00:24:05] a e-commerce team then you have your brick and mortar side and you don't have as many silos as a
[00:24:09] large organization and you're a smaller team so what does that look like when you're like okay
[00:24:13] we have the new death counter like where do you start from there you know it is it is a pretty
[00:24:20] cool transition to sometimes you know test and learn online and then bring some of our best
[00:24:25] products to brick and mortar and one product where we did that last year was actually an exclusive
[00:24:31] iced tea flavor called slaughter berry that we ran at Walmart but now you can find more broadly
[00:24:36] available but last year it was just that Walmart and so you know what we did for that promotion was
[00:24:42] we worked really closely with our in-store buyer to secure a various placement throughout the stores
[00:24:47] as well as availability online and so you know there's really this bridge then that we start to build
[00:24:54] around okay hey Walmart let's work together to activate this in your ecosystem but then let's also
[00:25:00] activate an our ecosystem and so you know that's where on our website where we where we have where
[00:25:06] to buy we have you know all of the Walmart's local to you where you can go buy this exclusive flavor
[00:25:12] we worked with our social team to do a really fun flavor announcement not just hey we launched a new
[00:25:18] flavor but doing it sort of in the liquid death tone and so I'll just read you a little snippet
[00:25:25] of what that social post was so it was new iced tea flavor never heard of slaughter berries there's
[00:25:31] a good reason slaughter berries of the world most exotic sod after fruit harvested high in the
[00:25:37] Golgorf Mountains by half man half pigs who have been sewn together by orphans and picked on just
[00:25:44] one day a year these demented berries are valued over nine thousand dollars per ounce at market
[00:25:50] lucky for you we got our hands on a few bushels and put them in our new slaughter berry iced tea
[00:25:56] for a very limited time only and so again you know sort of bringing that that liquid death
[00:26:02] experience to an in-store promotion really really worked well for us last year with Walmart
[00:26:09] harvested high in the Golgorf Mountains by half man half pigs who have been sewn together by orphans
[00:26:17] I want to see the inside of that marketing room where we like came up with that idea that is just
[00:26:23] hilarious yeah I love that that's tremendous and I love you know mean obviously Walmart
[00:26:30] huge opportunity for just reach and but it's it's this is this is very fresh for Walmart I would
[00:26:41] think so it's great to hear that you were able to partner yeah they were a great partner not only
[00:26:46] in store but then activating online as well so continuing to have great partnerships with them into
[00:26:52] this year as well so Natalie we can't thank you enough for coming on and just sharing this journey
[00:27:02] and this fantastic burst of creativity and mixed with real savviness and and a real desire
[00:27:13] to keep the momentum up to keep the creativity and the engagement with your humans up the I can
[00:27:19] just feel the commitment and it shows up in every way that you go to market and that's
[00:27:23] that's that's super impressive and I think inspiring for for a lot of the folks who listen and certainly
[00:27:30] I heard from a little birdie who looks exactly like Lauren Lee van Gilbert that you will be speaking
[00:27:36] at our digital summit in April so we encourage people to get themselves to Nashville so they can
[00:27:45] meet you and pepper you with better questions that we asked in person no yeah I'm super excited for
[00:27:51] the event as well Peter I think it's going to be an awesome opportunity opportunity to connect
[00:27:56] with others in the industry so love digital shelf love digital media let's let's chat if you're
[00:28:02] gonna be there can't wait to have you on main stage in a panel about consumer experience so
[00:28:07] you haven't bought your ticket make sure you do so you can hear Natalie thanks again to Natalie
[00:28:11] for opening the coffin and revealing her deep dark secrets of omnichannel success last chance to
[00:28:17] snag tickets to see her in person at digitalshelf summit.org thanks for being part of our community