Liquid Death: Selling Water Like It’s Heavy Metal

An Idea Backstage

In 2009, while living in Denver, Mike Cessario, a marketer whose experience spanned design and underground music, went to watch friends’ band play the Vans Warped Tour. Monster Energy was a sponsor, and Cessario noticed the musicians drinking water out of Monster cans during their sets. He started asking why healthy products couldn’t have the same funny, rebellious branding that was usually saved for unhealthy products such as junk food. In 2014, while working on a public service ad campaign about sugary energy drinks, he pitched canned water as a stunt that poked fun at energy drinks. The client turned it down, but Cessario kept refining the idea, trademarked the name Liquid Death in 2017, and launched the brand two years later.

Before selling a single can, Cessario put the idea in front of the public. In 2018, he created a Facebook page with a 3D image of the can and a two-minute commercial that cost $1,500. Four months later, the video had 3 million views, and the page had nearly 80,000 followers. Science, a Los Angeles startup studio that helped launch the company, provided a $1.6 million seed investment in January 2019.

A Premium Brand in a Can

Liquid Death went on sale in January 2019, offering still water from the Austrian Alps in 16.9-ounce aluminum cans. Its tallboy can deliberately resembles beer packaging, its logo is a melting skull, and its tagline is “Murder your thirst.” The company has argued that aluminum cans are better than plastic bottles because aluminum is more recyclable. Today its website calls the cans infinitely recyclable and says the company donates a portion of its proceeds to fight plastic pollution.

Cessario originally expected his customers to be punk-rock musicians and sober “straight-edge” fans. The real audience turned out to be broader: young people drawn to the name and the design, and parents who wanted healthier drinks for their kids. In 2022, TechCrunch reported that the brand’s customers skewed younger and male, and that the company aimed to make healthy drinks as fun as junk food and alcohol brands.

Liquid Death did not try to win by being the cheapest water on the shelf. At launch in 2019, a 16.9-ounce can cost $1.85, about the same as other premium water brands, and customers who ordered 12-packs for home delivery saved 10 percent on bulk orders. By late 2022, cans sold for $1.89 each at stores such as Kroger and Target.

From an Online Store to 60,000 Locations

At first, Liquid Death sold only online, through its own website and Amazon. Its next plan was to place cans in bars, barbershops, and tattoo parlors in cities such as Los Angeles and Philadelphia, which the company called a lifestyle play. Until it reached a deal with Whole Foods Market, its online store was its largest sales channel. Whole Foods began carrying the water nationwide in February 2020, the same year the company added sparkling water, and by that September Liquid Death was in more than 1,000 7-Eleven stores in Southern California. In 2021, Live Nation began stocking the drinks at its concerts and events; it later invested in the company as well.

By early 2022, Liquid Death was sold in more than 29,000 U.S. locations, including Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, and 7-Eleven. Amazon had also started buying its drinks wholesale, so Liquid Death now sold directly to Amazon instead of paying fees on each case sold through Amazon’s site. By late 2022, the brand was in more than 60,000 retail locations, and CNBC reported that it was Amazon’s top-selling still water brand. Today, the company lists retailers including Walmart, Target, Kroger, Albertsons, Whole Foods, Publix, and 7-Eleven.

Promotion as Entertainment

Cessario has described Liquid Death as both an entertainment company and a water company. He told TechCrunch that the company did not have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on a campaign, so each piece of marketing had to be entertaining enough that people would pass it along on their own. In May 2020, the company released Greatest Hates, a 10-track death metal album whose lyrics were real complaints people had posted online about the brand. It sold skateboard decks made with investor Tony Hawk, using ink mixed with his blood; all 150 decks sold out. In February 2022, it ran a regional Super Bowl ad in 23 major markets that showed a party of 8-year-olds wildly guzzling the brand’s water to a cover of Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law.” Adweek called the spot controversial, noting online chatter about “drunk” children, although the kids were only drinking water. The brand also created a loyalty program, the Liquid Death Country Club, which offered early access to merchandise and entry to a physical Country Club at Live Nation festivals. Today the company says it has about 7.5 million Instagram followers and 7.2 million TikTok followers.

Growth, and Where Things Stand

According to figures reported by CNBC, sales grew from about $2.8 million in 2019 to about $10 million in 2020 and $45 million in 2021, and in late 2022 the company was on track for about $130 million that year. Investors bet on that growth: funding rounds valued Liquid Death at $525 million in January 2022, $700 million in October 2022, and $1.4 billion in March 2024, when it raised $67 million. In 2023, shoppers spent $263 million on its drinks in stores, as measured by retail scanners (see Exhibit 1). The product line kept expanding, from sparkling water to flavored sparkling waters with names like Mango Chainsaw and Severed Lime, iced teas, and an electrolyte powder called Death Dust in 2024. As of October 2026, the company’s lineup also includes zero-sugar energy drinks and soda-flavored sparkling water, and its Country Club is offline while the company overhauls it for 2026. As Liquid Death moves beyond water, the question is whether the same marketing mix that made canned water exciting can work in other drink categories.