Andy Pearson • VP of Creative • Liquid Death

FRED MOORE (00:00):

Hello and welcome to What the Luxe with me, Fred Moore, and me, Anand Sharma. Together, we lead

Matter of Form, a design consultancy specialising in brand, digital experience and content. And this is a

podcast that calls time on tired ideas of luxury. Alongside industry luminaries

ANANT SHARMA (00:17):

And thought leaders, we explore what truly defines category leading products and services. Today I'm

joined by Andy Pearson, Phoebe of creative at Liquid Death. Andy's career sits at the intersection of

culture, advertising and entertainment, and Liquid Death is how it build one of the most distinctive brands

of the past decade. You really have defied the semiotics of an otherwise quite saney category ended. And

I'd say that's true not just of jokes, but in modern brand building more broadly. On paper, you sell water,

which is arguably the world's biggest commodity. Well, perhaps we're lucky to all be able to say that.

That's probably not true everywhere. In reality, you kind of build value through humour, attention, belief,

a clear point of view on how brands should show up in culture. Today, we're going to talk about how

brands compete for attention, where value really comes from when the product itself is symbol, and what

it takes to build something that's entertaining, provocative, but still commercially durable.

(01:18):

And be welcome to all the lucks.

ANDY PEARSON (01:20):

Thank you very much. That was such a professional intro for a very unprofessional job I'm doing here.

ANANT SHARMA (01:26):

Thanks. I appreciate that. I enjoy the intros. I can tell. Andy, can we just start by talking about you?

Because you started on my side of the table, you were at agencies and you now work at Iqua Death and

you do most of the work in- house. And I'm just interested in understanding your journey and how your

relationship with the world of marketing and advertising changed.

ANDY PEARSON (01:53):

Yeah. I don't feel like I'm on the other side other than I am so out of touch with what's going on in the

agency side of things these days, because I've been over here for about four and a half years now. But

yeah, prior to that, I started off in university. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to be in

journalism until I wrote a piece for the school newspaper about the history of our university having a

world streaking record where 1,500 kids went running naked through campus one day and it set a world

record. And I thought this was going to be the best thing ever. And I wrote this huge three-piece article

about it. And I brought the newspaper and they're like, "We're not going to run this. " Or they're like,

"We'll run one piece of this.

(02:44):

We're not doing a three-part series on streaking." And I was like, "Oh, maybe journalism isn't the thing

for me. " And I did get a picture, an old picture of butts on the front page of the paper, this picture from

1974, which I was very proud of.

(03:06):

And so I kind of realised through various things that I actually loved ads and I thought there was such a ...

You have to be so clever and intelligent and funny and such a restricted space. And then even going back,

I realised more recently, one of my favourite movies growing up that I watched all the time was Back to

the Future Too. I don't know if you remember that one, but it's amazing. And it's said in the future. And

ANDY PEARSON (LIQUID DEATH, PODCAST) (Completed 03/02/26)

Transcript by Rev.com

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the thing, and I had it on a VHS and I would watch it at any time. I had a tummy ache and was home from

school, which was often because I just wanted to watch Back to the Future too a lot. But what I loved

about it was there were all these brands imagined into the future. So if you go back and watch it, it's like

the Nike shoes and the Mattel Hoverboard and the Pizza Hut Rehydrated in the Black and Decker

Rehydrator and all these brands that are sort of in it that are imagined into the future.

(04:08):

And thinking back, I think that's what makes that movie ... I mean, there are many amazing things, but it's

what makes it so kind of fantastical and real is to imagine our real world projected into the future in a way

that I don't think had been ... It was always sort of flying cars and all the other sci-fi stuff, but to bring it

down and make it really real, I think at the time I wasn't realising it, but that was really interesting to me,

trying to make something out of commerce and this thing that these brands that we all bump into every

day. And so from there, I went to school at this place called the Creative Circus. It was an advertising

portfolio school and then went out and worked at ... I was really lucky to come out and was briefly at

Wine and Kennedy Portland.

(04:48):

Then I went to Crispin Porter, Bogusky at the very height, and then right as the sort of decline began at

Crispin Porter and a number of other places. And so I was on the agency side for about 13 years in that

time doing mostly agency, but then I took some time to freelance for a while in there as well, which I

think was really formative and I think something that everybody should do because it gives you a chance

to pull your head out of your own ass for a while, I think, and the asses of other people and get a

perspective on what you're doing and why, and why everybody else is doing what they're doing too. And

so that was a really formative time to go in and work at a bunch of different agencies that I probably

wouldn't have worked for anyway. And so see how they operate, see what works, see what doesn't, mostly

what doesn't.

(05:41):

Can you walk me

ANANT SHARMA (05:41):

Through a couple of very frustrating moments? You've had agency side, which you feel represent actually

a broken system.

ANDY PEARSON (05:50):

Yeah. I mean, I would say I was very lucky. Let me start by saying that because I mean, I was, especially

to be at somewhere like Chrisman Porter where everybody understood what we were trying to do,

everyone understood the goal was to make really great work that made our clients famous and everyone

was pulling for that. So everyone up and down from the account team to strategists to everybody there

was all in sync making amazing work together. And so I was really lucky to have grown up in that

environment. It probably shielded me from what a lot of, I think, people experience in a more run of the

mill agency, I think, because we were somewhere where any idea that we could possibly come up with,

everyone would go, "Yeah, we can figure that out. " Producers, whether that was video, we were doing a

lot of crazy digital stuff at the time.

(06:49):

It was sort of the forefront of social media and Facebook had just launched in Twitter and no one knew

what to do with it. So we're just inventing stuff all the time. And so I think there was kind of a mentality

of we can always figure everything out. And having gone to some agencies subsequently, I don't think

that that mentality always exists everywhere. And that's the part that bums me out a lot of times, is I think

the fun of this job gets to be, how do we make something that no one's ever done before? Because if we're

not doing that, we're just kind of throwing more ads that are going to interrupt you between the things that

you actually want to watch.

(07:30):

But yeah, I mean, I had times where I saw boneheaded stuff across the board. I remember one thing I've

talked about is I was on the pizza account for about a year at an agency and it was about the worst year of

my life, I think. It was just so violently depressing to be trying to work for people that clearly did not have

taste and didn't care to. And the thing that was really wild, the thing that really got me specifically, and

these details will be a little foggy because I was only partially involved, but the agency had worked on

this big rebrand for half a year, putting all this design work in, all the strategy and trying to elevate the

menu. They were rolling out this big new menu and they went and shot this big campaign that I was not

really much involved in, but they had gone out and shot this huge launch campaign in Italy and the whole

idea was bringing this weird American style pizza to old Italian people and getting their honest opinions

on it because they had all these crazy new ingredients.

(08:39):

And the campaign launched and a week after a launch, the client had seen that the sales had not jumped in

stores and they pulled the plug on this whole giant rebrand campaign like a week into it. And it was like,

you're trying to turn around a ship and rebrand an entire thing. You've introduced a new logo, you have a

whole new strategy, this whole new thing, and you guys are expecting results in a single week or two

weeks or whatever it was. And it was insane to dump millions of dollars in a year of work because it

didn't turn around immediately in a week. And so I think there's a lot of ... That was sort of emblematic of

the sort of results driven work that some people expect from a giant rebrand or something like that and

just is wildly unrealistic. So that was kind of one very silly episode with them.

(09:44):

But yeah, I just remember used to travel to Plano, Texas, which imagine Dallas, Texas, but just outside

and there's nothing and it's just these big corporate parks and there's just nothing there. And I was just

going there in hotel rooms to present work that I knew that they were going to hate and just like in a hotel

room in the saddest little town by myself. And I was just like, "Man, why am I even trying for these

people? They don't even care." So yeah, I think that's sort of one silly little story. So you did that

ANANT SHARMA (10:21):

For a period of time and you got a good lens on the industry by doing it. How did you chance upon the

liquid death role?

ANDY PEARSON (10:30):

I was really lucky in that because I, unbeknownst to me, the guy who would go on and found Liquid

Death, he and I worked or just missed each other at a bunch of agencies. And so my first job at Crispin,

we probably met the first week there. He was kind of there early and Alex Paguski eventually went on to

become an investor in the very early days of Liquid Death and helped out a bit in the early days. And then

later on, I took a period of about four years and left to go freelance. My wife convinced me to quit the job.

One of my jobs, she was a freelance creative as well. And we spent a year just travelling Southeast Asia,

Europe, the United States, just totally took a sabbatical from our jobs for a year. And we ended up

freelancing together during that period.

(11:24):

And in that time, one of our first freelance jobs was for this little agency called Himanaut out of

Tennessee. And I learned years later that we were actually backfilling for the role of Mike, the founder of

Liquid Death. He was their first creative and he had just left and they needed some help. And so we were

actually coming in and backfilling for his role. And then as I freelance more, I actually ended up taking a

bunch of jobs that I was either directly working for Mike or indirectly working for his creative directors

and the work was filtering down to him just through connections, like kind of mutual connections that we

had. So I was actually weirdly doing work for Mike for about almost two or three years as he was kind of

formulating the liquid death thing on the side as he was working to build that.

(12:12):

And he launched it. I remember him launching it and I was like, wow, this guy Mike is really going for it

with this whole liquid death thing. This is insane. And I was kind of watching from afar, just admiring it

and also just amazed that someone had kind of the balls to go do that. And then out of the blue, he still

had my number and he texted me one day and was just like, "Hey man, what are you up to? I'm doing this

liquid death thing. I don't know if you've seen it, but I need some help on the creative side as we're

growing." And so he's like, "We always seem to connect on the same ideas." And he had the kind of the

same outsider mentality as I did where he didn't have ... I didn't have time for people's bullshit, but I tried

to be nice about it and that sort of thing.

(12:59):

And I think Mike kind of shared that thing where Liquid Death was a way to start something where no

one could tell you no anymore, essentially, right? You're your own client. And so I kind of took a leap

and went for it with him.

ANANT SHARMA (13:13):

It's like, how do you take a unit of the most commoditized base product and give yourself permission to

just go wild and create?

ANDY PEARSON (13:22):

Well, the interesting story behind that was that Mike had years prior started his own liquor brand. He had

started a brandy brand because he was kind of looking at it and he was like, "What's the only liquor that's

uncool?" You have cool tequilas and vodkas and whiskeys and all this stuff, but what's the one that

nobody really cares about? And Brandy, he started a brandy company and he basically felt, he was like,

half my money was just going to legal fees. It's basically the most regulated industry you can get into

alcohol. And so as he was looking after that kind of sunset and he was looking to do the next thing, my

understanding is he was like, "What's the least regulated thing you can do? What's the thing with the least

amount of rules around it? " It's like water. It's literally water. And so that was sort of part of the ... It

definitely helped, I think, in the decision to fully jump into this water thing.

ANANT SHARMA (14:27):

I think non-alcoholic drinks is a pretty good category to get into because by calling it a non-alcoholic

drink, it mentally put ... Basically people pay what they pay for an alcoholic drink for non-alcoholic drink,

but without compliance or tax. And it's like a wildly profitable and it's a good category.

ANDY PEARSON (14:50):

Yes, but also beverage is super capital intensive, right? It's to really do the manufacturing, to do the

distribution, to really, if you're working store shelves and getting out into bars and restaurants and all that,

that's a hard ground game that you have to play. It's really, really labour intensive. So it's easy to get into.

It's hard to excel at it.

ANANT SHARMA (15:14):

But then it likes snowballs, I guess. What did Mike put into his investor deck?

ANDY PEARSON (15:20):

I've never seen it, but I can tell you one thing that was in there. Before the brand ever existed, he made an

ad for it. And his background is an advertising creative and designer as well. And so he had the idea of

Liquid Death. They had designed the cans. The product didn't exist yet though, and they shot a video for,

I think it was about $4,000 that they went out and shot. And the premise of the video is this woman and

she's holding this can directly to camera so you can't see it. And the funny thing at the time, because the

can didn't exist, they took a Miller Light can, which is American beer and Miller Light, and it has this

gold top to it. And it's a white can. And so if you are just looking at it, you only see the top of the can,

which is what the Liquid Death can would become, but the can actually didn't exist.

(16:20):

And she's standing there doing this whole thing about how dangerous water is and kills snowboarders and

kayakers and stuff. And then you cut wide to reveal at the end that she's been waterboarding someone the

whole time with this can of water. And then it cuts to a render of the Liquid Death can. It's like Liquid

Death. And they put it out and it ended up, I think in five months time, it ended up getting four million

views or something. And this is years ago. This is now probably seven or eight years ago.

ANANT SHARMA (16:52):

Is that how I'm brand? Eight years, nine years.

ANDY PEARSON (16:56):

Yeah. We've been available for purchase for, it was beginning of 2019, I believe. So yeah, it's been

around for about five, six years as like a consumer brand. And then he was working on it previously, but

they'd made this ad before it existed and they put up a Facebook page and the page itself got more likes

on the Facebook page than the Aquafina Facebook page, which is a Pepsi property that's been around for

how many years. And they actually got calls from distributors that were like, "Hey, we're interested in this

product you have. " And so all that stuff, no one in their right minds would invest in anything called

Liquid Death that looks like a beer that has a giant trippy skull in it, but he was able to have this really

great package of say, "Hey, actually I have this huge market. Look at all the emails we've already

collected.

(17:48):

Look at all the people that want this. I have this distributors already reaching out to me. Will you give me

money to make this thing that clearly there's desire for? " So that was a big piece of it was from the very

beginning, the idea that marketing was going to kind of lead what we were doing. And

ANANT SHARMA (18:03):

So in those early days, how do you do things like ... This is a stupid question, but how do you source the

water? Do you care about tasting different types of water? You know what I mean?

ANDY PEARSON (18:13):

Yeah. So it was actually very difficult because the idea was that they wanted to make it look like a beer

and be in a can, an aluminium can. And because I think also early on they identified that we wanted to

make part of our mission also feel good about eliminating single use plastic bottles. And that was just

another broken thing about the bottled water industry in general. Only about 5% of plastic actually gets

recycled despite what the big soda companies want you to believe based on their ads. So that was a big,

important part. And then on top of that, and this is kind of what's interesting, is the other idea was to make

it a premium product. So a lot of bottled water is just municipal tap water. It's pulled straight out of the

system and it's put in a bottle, they use reverse osmosis.

(19:12):

They maybe add a couple, we'll maybe add a couple minerals back in for taste, but it's sort of inert water

essentially. And then you have obviously the premium spring waters of the world. And early on, they

knew that they wanted to make this a premium product because it was going to inherently cost more

because aluminium costs more to can. And so the price point was going to be higher than ... They couldn't

compete against, again, the Aquafinas and Dasani's and everything and Nestles and everything else out in

the world. Those big guys set the prices on the industry essentially. And so that's why beverage is really

hard to get into because it's set by all the big players. And so as this little player coming in that was

already in a package that was going to be a much higher price point, the idea was, "Hey, let's lean into it

being a premium product and making it a spring water." So that's all what they're thinking on.

(20:07):

Problem is that there was nobody in the world that could can spring water at the source. And to be

considered springwater, it has to literally be canned or bottled right there. That's why a lot of you'll see

with natural waters and spring waters it says, "Bottled at the source because it legally has to in order for

that designation to be applied." And so Mike, as he tells the story, he was like, "We just spent a year

Googling and trying to find anywhere in the world that would have a facility that was at a natural spring

source and could put it in a can. " They finally found a bottler that had the capabilities originally in

Austria. And the interesting thing is since then, now it's very easy to find that because water and cans is

not that wild of an idea anymore, but at that time, no one was basically doing it.

(21:06):

And in fact, not only that, people thought it was like an aberration where people would tell ... I mean, we

would get on calls and people would be like, "No one's going to drink water out of a can. " It felt like such

an unnatural thing for people.

ANANT SHARMA (21:19):

It's funny, it almost feels like it's more wasteful than you really think about it and you realise that it's not

anywhere near as wasteful as this uncomfortable contrast that exists in the bottled water industry, which is

you buy it if you sort of care about the purity of a thing, but then you're actually having it in plastic.

ANDY PEARSON (21:38):

Right. Well, but that goes to the strategy with bottled water, which had always been about purity, right?

So I mean, we could get really into evolutionary psychology, but water, the most essential element on

earth for life is it has to be pure because if you go all the way back, you drink muddy pond scum, you get

sick and die. And so purity of water is sort of inherently baked into the human psyche on almost like an

evolutionary level. And so when you look at all the water marketing until kind of Liquid Death came

around, it was all about purity and the purity of the source and crystal and mountains and root streams.

And you'd have to see it in the bottle or the glass bottle or more likely a plastic bottle. And so to put water

in a can that you could not see, there was like an actual mental barrier for a lot of people that felt it was

very unnatural to drink water from a can because we've been conditioned to drink water out of plastic

bottles for the last several decades just based on sort of marketing strategy alone.

(22:49):

And so people didn't trust it. We'd hear people say they're not going to drink water they can't see, but then

it's like, look at all the sodas and energy drinks and beers and everything else that you're drinking that has

all kinds of chemicals in it and who knows what, and you can't see that and everyone's slurping those

down. And so the psychology was so fascinating that it was like, as long as it has a tonne of chemicals in

it and I can't see it, all good. If it's water, I have to see it.

ANANT SHARMA (23:20):

That's so weird about how like Coca-Cola ever got ... Yeah, it's like a black substance that doesn't actually

represent anything in the natural world, which is so counter how we build an appetite for a taste.

ANDY PEARSON (23:34):

Yeah. And now besides water, we make a whole line of soda flavoured sparkling waters and iced teas.

And now we just got into a better for your energy drink that we just launched. But yeah, so we have colas

and soda-based soda flavours and they're all clear. There's no caramel colouring that is essentially added

by soda companies to all their flavours.

ANANT SHARMA (24:02):

You've used AI for a lot of your recent advertising, for some of your recent advertising.

ANDY PEARSON (24:08):

Not really. Have I completely got this wrong, but did you not make a hat? There was an ad that was made

that was a spec ad that was put out last summer in July about ... It was made by these two guys who, yeah,

they made ... Are you talking about the one, the police officer stopping his son?

ANANT SHARMA (24:30):

Yeah, I think so. I saw it ages ago. I thought it was you guys.

ANDY PEARSON (24:33):

Yeah, a lot of people did. And I think that's kind of an interesting ... I think it's an interesting time to be a

brand because for those who don't know, it was an AI ad that it was this police officer in the middle of

this very wintery scene, and he's pulled over this young kid, this kind of deadbeat kid on the side of the

road, and he asked him if he knows why he pulled ... He goes, "Do you know why I pulled you over,

son?" And the guy's like, "Is it the liquid death?" And this actually happens a lot where people do get

pulled over because they're drinking liquid death in the car and then a cop thinks that they're drinking beer

or something. And so, I mean, this happens all the time where people will send us very funny videos

about how they got pulled over.

(25:14):

So it was kind of based on something real actually. And then it proceeds to kind of devolve into, "Is it

because I did this? Is it because I did this? " And then the joke at the end is that it's because it's his

birthday and the police officer is his dad. And it's set up at the beginning with, "Do you know why I

pulled you over sun?" Which would be something that a police officer would say to someone potentially

they pulled over, they throwed the sun in, but it was literally the meaning of sun. So it was a really clever

ad. I thought it was really well done and it blew up and it was like, I think maybe half the people that saw

it thought it understood it wasn't us. And then another half or more assumed that we did it. So I mean, it

speaks to the fidelity of the work and that it was a fairly well-written ad.

(26:00):

So I take that as a compliment to us because I thought it was fairly well done. And it was also one of the

... I think people paid attention because it was one of the first times that I'd seen an AI created ad that

genuinely was using humour and smart writing. I don't know how those guys wrote it, but I think a lot of

people that espouse the AI sort of revolution are also using it to write things as well. It's like not just in

the ... It's like, "I can make it, but also I can have it write all this great script for me. " And I would

venture to guess that these guys wrote it on a computer with their own fingers and then they took it off

and then they made it using their process. And so that's sort of what I thought shined through on that.

(26:49):

And I think why people thought we actually did it was just because it was a pretty clever, funny ad at the

end of the day.

ANANT SHARMA (26:56):

What's your view on it? How are you exploring if at all? And is it relevant actually as a topic of

conversation where you do or don't use AI to enhance or supplement your creativity?

ANDY PEARSON (27:11):

I mean, for us, we don't really tend to use it. I mean, obviously there's little tools here and there that we

use all the time that are really helpful, but when it comes to the actual video production, I think for us to

really lean into it in a way, we'd have to use it in a way that was funny to begin with because making fun

of the fact that we're using AI or something. Again, it's simply a tool and a lot of times you don't have to

use every tool for every job. And so for us, at making comedic work all the time, we shoot everything

ourselves in- house. We have an internal production company we call Death Machine. And so for the last

four years, basically everything has been produced 100% in- house. I direct a lot of the work myself or

one of the other creatives will direct some of the work as well, another guy.

(28:08):

So we rarely bring in anybody else, literally, beside ourselves to make everything. But I think to make

comedy, you have to have the time to have all the organic, weird stuff in the room as you're shooting it

and have ideas come to you. And we like to leave a lot of room for improv or coming up with ideas when

we're on set, because that's where all those little magical things come into play that you wouldn't have

thought of when you're sitting there writing on the page, or even when you're drawing boards and you're

making work, that you have to allow yourself in the moment to have a great idea and go with it. And you

lose that when you're writing prompts into a computer and refining and refining it until you get something

that looks like the thing you kind of want, but you're missing out on all this other stuff.

ANANT SHARMA (29:00):

Collaborations have been a really key part of what you've done in your advertising, but you've ranged

from an enema kit, Travis Barker. Do you like Bottle, Ozzy Osborne's DNA? Bottle, sorry, tin, I should

say.

ANDY PEARSON (29:14):

Yeah. He drank from Ice Tea tins and then we sold that as his, so that you could own one of 10 tins that

had Ozzy's DNA on them theoretically. And the

ANANT SHARMA (29:31):

Month he unfortunately left us as well. Then he painted escape or ran with Turdy Hawk's blood, I think.

ANDY PEARSON (29:40):

Yeah, that was actually the very first thing that I did when I was here. It was already in motion, so it

wasn't my idea, but that was the first, I don't know, the second or the third week I was here, they were

like, "Hey, you got to go down to Tony's skate ramp down there and go draw blood from him and film it

and then put an escape Of course, I was like, "All right, let's go.

ANANT SHARMA (30:01):

Sure." You get the really strong sense when you look at what you've done, that you just hire people with

this similar sense of humour and just go for intuitively feels like a funny idea. And I guess you have a lot

of flexibility because you work in water. Do you think we could over-strategize what we're trying to do

and who we're doing it for? And by doing that, strip away the unexpectedness of everything,

ANDY PEARSON (30:26):

Ironically. Yeah. I mean, in a single word, yes. I mean, I can expound, but emphatically, yes. Yeah. I

think, again, I think we, and I say we as an industry, tie ourselves in knots over, is this exactly the right

strategy? And trying to get the wording right and all the ... Eventually, you've had so many meetings and

so many decks and presented so much work that just all of the edges get rounded off until the thing that

ends up at the end of that pipeline, nobody likes, but we've all committed all this time and money into that

you have ... I mean, I did it all the time. You get into an edit bay to edit something and you're like,

"Whoof, this is bad." But we've committed to it and now this thing is going to run for the next four

months on air or whatever it is.

(31:20):

I think Liquid Death is sort of a sort of reaction against that. And the thought of like, "Hey, can we just

make stuff that people genuinely enjoy?" And I think that is what has been so refreshing for people is that

can be a strategy too. The strategy can be like, "Hey, can we respect people and give them something to

laugh at?" And we always talk about, "We just want to be the best thing that someone sees that day." And

whether that's the video we put out, whether that's the funny email that we send that's about a new merch

item we're launching or whatever, however big or small, can that thing be one of the best things that

someone sees that day? And I think that's a kind of a lovely way to look at it and it doesn't get more

complicated than that. And of course, we have certain things we're trying to do with different categories

and stuff like that, and we have strategy baked into them, but I think the overintellectualization of

marketing is to its detriment at the end of the day.

ANANT SHARMA (32:20):

How does it work when you collaborate with other brands?

ANDY PEARSON (32:23):

What's the process? Usually it's quite easy for the most part. I mean, upfront, we're very kind of blunt in

the early stages where we say, "Hey, if we're going to do something together, here's going to be our

approach to it. " And a lot of times people are coming to us. Sometimes we're reaching out to other

people, but a lot of times it's inbound stuff. And so we're lucky where they're coming to us and they want

to do something in our universe. And so we say, "Hey, you're here. You want to do it. Here's our

approach and everything we're going to make is going to ... It's going to be something like this. You're

probably going to see one idea that we're going to present to you and that it'll be sort of a take it or leave it

because we believe in the idea and then let's get into it.

(33:13):

" And then we have pretty wide ranging creative control. We're lucky that people trust us with that. And

then usually we'll handle all the sort of aboveline marketing stuff. And then sometimes if it's like a weird

product or something, sometimes that's given to that team to develop like the Yeti cooler, the coffin

cooler, they got really excited and they took that to their internal development team and they built that

thing out. And then we worked on the ad for it and how it was going to launch and all that stuff. So we

sort of divide and conquer based on what each party is going to be best at.

ANANT SHARMA (33:46):

What are your favourite collaborations? What are the weirdest ones? And also what's the impact of some

of them being?

ANDY PEARSON (33:51):

Yeah. I mean, the original Elf one I love, the Corpse Paint one is so, it feels like it's ripped from another

dimension. So the background was Elf came to us, to their credit, they're like, "Hey, we really want to do

something with you. " And we were like, "I don't know, " in the initial phases. And the very first idea we

had was Corpse Paint. And if you don't know what Corpse Paint is, just Google Black Metal and it's

basically what all the Norwegian metal bands, it's all the black and white paint. You probably know it

from Kiss, but that's sort of fake metal. It's like the real black metal dudes have kind of a crazy chequered

history, and they had had a history of a couple collaborations before that they'd done one with this

restaurant here called Chipotle that makes burritos and it's like this burrito bar.

(34:46):

And so it's like they made a palette that looked like if you're looking at the top of the thing where you

pick out all the ingredients, it was like this kind of cute thing and it did really well. So we were like,

"Well, if we were going to make a makeup, what makeup would Liquid Death make?" And there was sort

of only one answer, which was corpse paint. It's like, "Well, it's corpse paint." And so this is literally the

first idea we had. And that happens a lot, I find, is I think in the industry, it's always like, "Oh, this is a

first idea." And you're always told to work all the way through your pencil until you get to the very end

and the best ideas when your pencil's the smallest because you've been writing all the ideas out. And for

us, I often find I'm like, "Hey, our first idea or close to the first idea is usually the best one." Because

again, we're writing for this character we're like, "Well, what would Liquid Death do?

(35:36):

If Liquid Death is going to make a makeup, what would make sense for us to do? " And in this case, we're

like, "Corpse paint." And we're like, "Well, that's funny because that is not something that anyone should

be walking around in for a makeup brand. It's a very weird thing for a makeup brand to promote." And

then also in terms of an actual product, the palette, you're like, "It's just black and white makeup. It's the

worst palette you can buy because there's no colour to it. " And so it's starting to take a lot of boxes. We're

like, "Okay, that's really funny. That's really funny. That makes sense." And again, in our world, in the

logic of liquid death, I talk about liquid death logic, we're like, "That makes sense to us." To the outside

world, if you're like, "Hey, let's make a corpse paint palette that's limited edition and it's in a coffin,"

you'd be like, "What?" And so we went back and just started watching all these dumb toy commercials

from the '90s on YouTube because there's a lot of products at the time that were marketed towards girls

that was like, "My first makeup kit or whatever." And there's this thing like caboodles and all these very

... In retrospect, some of the ads, if you go back and watch them are kind of troubling what they're sort of

pushing on preteen girls.

(36:51):

And so we're like, "This is perfect." And so we really studied the kind of format of those and how they

would work and then we're like, "Okay, let's do that, but for this and let's make the central joke be that in

this universe, black metal is just like a boy band. They're like the hottest pop band of the day and it's what

everybody's listening to. " And so of course it's what all the girls want to look like and it's the hottest new

look. And so just imagine this world where that is the case and then we make an ad to appeal to people

that live in that fucked up weird universe. And that was sort of what tumbled out was this idea of like

these two girls on the bed and then they're reading this teen magazine, but it's all black metal guys. And

then one of them eventually comes out of it and then you think something terrible is going to happen.

(37:52):

And then instead they start putting on all this chorus pant and dancing around and there's this jingle and

he's actually like this makeup expert. And the joke was also for us was like, we were like, who knows

more about makeup than black metal dudes? They're literally putting entire, they're covering their faces

with makeup every time they're getting on stage. These guys are experts. And so that was kind of the joke

too, was to take the piss out of that. Again, in a loving way that we listened to the music, we're like fans

of this stuff. So we always want our satires to be very lovingly kind of pokes at people. And so that was

sort of another funny element where he's talking about the contours of this pen or whatever, from this guy

who has his voice like this. And then at the end there's a real, I would say a real left hand turn at the end

when the mom walks in the room and of course she's carrying a tray of vegan goat blood because in this

world of metal, they're all drinking goat blood.

(38:51):

And it was vegan because elf is a vegan product and that was actually their idea to throw that in, which I

thought was so funny. And then she recognises this character Glothar and they realise they've met before

and then that they actually met 15 years ago and there's sort of this like tension to the room. And then you

realise that one of the girls is actually his daughter that she's had with this mom. And then it just ends

with the self like, Corps Bain, get yours now at elf.com/liquideth or whatever. And so it was like, I mean,

even describing it, there's so many weird, you can tell there's like all these weird things that we've mashed

together. So that was another thing early on where we're like, oh, this campaign will be insane because if

we assume that this is like the look of the season and that everyone wants this look, what if we just got a

bunch of ... Elf has all connections to all these makeup influencers and stuff.

(39:50):

What if we just got them to be applying corpse paint like a get ready with me? And so if you go on your

TikTok feed that day, it's just all these influencers putting on this really kind of shocking look that you're

going to stop and watch and see what the hell is going on. And so that we kind of timed it. So the day of

the launch, all these makeup influencers were doing corpse paint on TikTok. And so you literally, it was

like breaking people's brains a little bit what was going on because it's sort of a giant prank on everybody

essentially in some weird way, right? And because we knew it was really going to be a rusting visual.

And so that was another reason why we're like, I think this corpse paint idea is actually, it can be really

wildly successful and it was.

ANANT SHARMA (40:38):

What's the campaign that you've done that had the most unexpected impact?

ANDY PEARSON (40:44):

Most unexpected. I think that one was pretty high up there. I think the Martha Stewart one actually, you

mentioned that one, that was kind of earlier on. And we were still, I would say, very much an indie brand

at the time. And we were trying to figure out what to do for Halloween. Basically, someone was like,

"What about Martha Stewart?" We were talking about celebrities. And I was like, at the time, I was like,

"She's so overexposed." She's using a bunch of funny ads. It's like, "Oh, look, she and Snoop Dogg are

friends, he smokes a bunch of weed." It was a funny joke and then it's really been played a bunch. And I

was just like, "I don't know. " Unless Martha is hacking up human ribs to make a Halloween wreath on

her front door or something, I don't want to do anything with her.

(41:32):

And then we were like, "Well, actually that's kind of funny that she's this serial killer." And so that started

to be really funny to us. And we're like, "Well, actually, maybe that is the idea." And so it turned into

eventually she was hacking off hands to dip in wax to make these candles that are holding cans on Liquid

Death actually have one right here. If you're listening on a podcast, you can't see it, but it's a beautiful

candle. Yeah. So that one was fun because suddenly we're in high falutin food magazines here in the US,

like Bon Appetit Magazine and Food and Wine and all these things that my mom reads. And so my mom

is like, "Oh my God, you guys are in Bon Appetit." And so suddenly we kind of tapped into this other

market. And the thing that we'd done just right before that, I think, was we just launched something with

Metallica.

(42:24):

We'd launched some unlimited-ish in merch with them. And so it was just very ... When you talk about

range, the farther we push the edges, the farther we go into like, "Oh, you guys did something with

Metallica and you did something with Martha Stewart?"That makes the Metallica thing funnier and that

makes the Martha Stewart thing funnier too, because those things don't belong in the same room.

ANANT SHARMA (42:50):

Andy, we always ask the same outro questions, the first of which is, what would you change about your

industry? And I'm not sure actually what industry you're in it many ways, but is it marketing and

advertising? Is it water or is it comedy?

ANDY PEARSON (43:03):

Yes, all of them. I mean, I would say marketing probably. I think that I would love that people didn't take

it so seriously and they allowed, on all sides, on clients, on agencies, on internal teams that we stop

overthinking things so much and start trying to have more fun. And it sounds very stupid when I say that

out loud, but I always say it's like, if you have fun, people will have fun with you. People want to have

fun. And I think a lot of times we lose that as marketers and we try to shove too much of our own shit into

the work we're making.

ANANT SHARMA (43:46):

What would you do if you had to give out a job tomorrow?

ANDY PEARSON (43:49):

Oh, I would probably try to become a director, I imagine, and I would try to write a very bad novel. Sort

of the typical stuff you do, I think. That's not a good answer. Actually, I've been thinking about doing a

self-help book. I hate self-help books, so I feel like I could write a really banger one and make a lot of

money. So maybe that's what I would do actually. If I lost my job, I would go write a self-help book to

make millions of dollars.

ANANT SHARMA (44:21):

And what is the most exciting thing in the future the next five years when not writing self-help?

ANDY PEARSON (44:29):

I'm excited about Liquid Death fan. I mean, I think sky's the limit on everything that we can do. We're

just getting started. The stuff we have on tap that we're going to go shoot in the next couple months is

insane. So I can't imagine what five years is going to look like. Yeah. And I don't know. I'm very much of

living in the moment, so I can't project into the future very well. I just focus on what I'm doing and want

to make that really weird and fun and hopefully make people laugh. So I don't know, more liquid death.

ANANT SHARMA (45:04):

My final question, which is a build on more liquid death, which is when it's not liquid death, what's your

favourite beer?

ANDY PEARSON (45:10):

One beer for the rest of my life Cezanne DuPont, I think I would say a good, nice farmhouse. Normally

an IPA guy, but I mean, all the Belgian Abbey Alees and stuff like that, they're just so well crafted, but

Cezanne's almost like champagne, but of farmhouse sales and it's been around for hundreds of years.

ANANT SHARMA (45:36):

Andy, thank you very much.

ANDY PEARSON (45:37):

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

FRED MOORE (45:44):

Thanks so much for listening. This has been What the Lux. You can find us on socials at MatterReform

and drop us any questions or comments on Twitter using the hashtag What the Luxe. Or if you're a luxury

brand looking for strategy and design that goes beyond the banal, get in touch via

hello@matterofform.com and chat to one of our consultants.