Standing Out in a Dry Industry - Lessons from Liquid Death

Jason · 00:00Welcome to episode 221 of The Numbers Game. I'm Jase, I'm here with Nick and Marty and today we are talking about murdering the competition. Marty, what are you doing over there, mate?

Marty · 00:10Well, let me just, uh, jump on YouTube now because, uh, just have a listen to this.

Marty · 00:19How'd that sound? That sounded a bit racy, didn't it? I've just got a can of, uh, liquid death that I'm about to hook into. Oh, Jesus. Refreshing. Your complexion just changed. Well, this is the magic of liquid death. Uh, what do you, what do you think, Sydney? Come on, you know already. Oh.

Nick · 00:41Water out of a tap. We were just talking about water out of a tap.

Nick · 00:44Overpriced tap

Marty · 00:45water. Or water out of a hose like we talked about in the 90s. It's um, What I want to talk about today is just murdering your competition and one of the most boring industries I would have to think would be

Marty · 01:00water. You know, not to diss them too much. Not accounting. Big players like accounting, finance, but water, you know, Evian, mostly it's about hydration and liquid.

Marty · 01:10Deaf have come out and created a cult of, uh, canned water. They do a mineral water as well, and they do ice teas and everything. So, but their whole take is, um, rebellion. And I was just thinking I wanted to talk about today, boys, you know, what's one bold move you could make in your own business, um, to really stand apart from the competition.

Marty · 01:38And it's very varied in regards to, and we're talking about water here. But, uh, you know, dry industries like ourselves, how do we do that? Not lose credibility as well, where we, when we take on something like that. But have you heard of liquid death before, Jase?

Jason · 01:54Yeah, I, uh, traveled in the States last year and, uh, noticed it a fair bit over there and then

Jason · 02:00started to see it more on the shelves here and, uh, I actually noticed it cause, uh.

Jason · 02:04a friend who's in like the yogi and um, health space actually came out and had cracked the, cracked the shits about it being called liquid death. There's an association with using the word death with something that's meant to give you life, like water is a form of life, life form and something good. So there's a bit of a.

Jason · 02:22A side thing of people who were very, and look, and this is where the branding again, murder your competition, do something that's so out there and gets attention. Um, you know, if you want to upset a whole bunch of people, just name something like water, that's good for you, call it liquid death. Um, and then have people unhappy about it.

Jason · 02:38So yes, I've heard of it, have seen it and look, the can stand out, right? Like, I mean, you can't help, but be attracted by the eyeballs when it sits on the shelf and it's got the different colors and the fancy images on there. And if you're going to pay. Five bucks or more for an overpriced can of water. I mean, you want to, I think, you know, the younger crew as well, they want to look.

Jason · 02:57Looks, look like they got something cool in their hand. It's,

Jason · 03:00um, yeah,

Marty · 03:01don't worry about the, uh, younger crew mate, the 53-year-old running around like, uh, it's better than Harley Davidson. You know, I, I don't drink alcohol anymore, so now it looks like I'm, uh, living very, very dangerously. But I, I like, I really like the concept, like, and particularly having a background in standup comedy.

Marty · 03:19When I was younger, it was always about. Shock. Fascination. Agreement. Absurdity. And when I looked at, uh, Mike Cesarea, I think, founded this Liquid Death in, uh, 2019. He's utilized all those traits. He had a punk rock sort of background. And he's brought himself to the brand, which I found was, uh, Really invigorating and and just some and even the sales like in five years like something like 263 million dollars of sales.

Marty · 03:51It's worth one point billion dollars I mean four billion 1. 4 billion now. I mean they raise something like I think I had it here was

Marty · 04:00around 60 67 million in funding, so hire 345 people, but they've built a whole cult and community of, uh, of this brand. I just, and I just love some of the slogans that they've got for it, like murder your thirst.

Marty · 04:17I mean, you know, reinforcing the brand's hardcore nature and aggressive style. Deaf to plastic, because they're actually, they give away a lot of money to um, you know, try and do the right thing by the environment and they use aluminium cans, so pretty cool. Don't be scared, it's just water, you know, playful response to, you know, people that are intimidated by the brand and uh, hydrate or die.

Marty · 04:42So you've got some pretty, you've got some pretty impactful Uh, things that, uh, that come out of it. And I was just trying to think about how do we apply this into, you know, into our own genres? Um, like I remember a guy, you know, Harry

Marty · 05:00back in the year 2000 did something like chocolate home loans, like sweet money.

Marty · 05:04And that was, I was always annoyed because it was pretty catchy. Don't know what the business did, but it was like, you know, it was something different that you don't usually see in our industries. Um, What do you come across, Nick or Jace? Have you come across any businesses that, and I was thinking about your gin, um, stuff too, Jace, like there was something where.

Marty · 05:25Death gin.

Jason · 05:26Yeah, I think, I think liquid death copied us and just decided to do water, which I think applies to, you can sell water to more people than gin. Um, but the, the. The people that I got together with to do Death Gin, again, it was just like, the, the story at the start was a bunch of the other co founders were in Rutherglen at a festival, and they drove past a cemetery that was on, uh Whatever the ride was called anyway, and then somebody threw them, Oh, we should make a gin, just call it death gin and have a skull on the bottle and some black wax strip.

Jason · 05:56And then all of a sudden, you know, the brand came to life and maybe go to

Jason · 06:00deathgin. com and check it out. It's like, yeah, it's edgy. There's a big skull. It was hand drawn by one of the guy's partners. And, you know, and. Yeah, there's some fun slogans on there. I don't have it in front of me now, but oh, it's like a beautiful sacrifice and it's all about how we kill the 19 botanicals and smash them into the gin.

Jason · 06:18And that's how you get the flavor. So like macerating and yeah, the word, the wording around it, but I do love the idea. And Death Gin's a great example. But the edgy brands that do really cool, fun marketing and have like a great play on words. And I know the first version of our accounting firm, you know, we used our three letters of our name, um, Greg and I and another mate and.

Jason · 06:40At the time we were like, Oh, yeah, but you know, PWC's on the side of a building and KPMG's on the side of a building and look and doing sexy branding and accounting like that's, that's hard, right? But then down the track, it was like we had this opportunity to rebrand and future, future accounting or future advisory is what we're decided to become.

Jason · 06:57And again, it's still not the coolest, sexiest, funky

Jason · 07:00brand out there, but we're dealing with accounting and advisory, right? But still now we get to have more fun with players on words. We get to use rockets and aliens and different things in our branding and marketing. So yeah, I think this is a great one for people to think about if they're already in business, how can they have fun with their brand?

Jason · 07:15Or if you're thinking about starting a business, you know, what can you, you know, how much needs to go into the branding and marketing idea before you even launch something.

Marty · 07:24And Nick, in a way. It's not spelt as innovate, uh, that in itself is like just a little edgy without going over the top. It was ahead of

Jason · 07:34his

Nick · 07:34time.

Nick · 07:3415 plus years ago. Yeah. Cool dude. The marketing, the marketing brain was just going wild. Um, man, I think that had a lot to do with someone having the name innovate already to be completely honest. But. In hindsight, it's actually been a really cool move. It's annoying when you're trying to explain what your email address is.

Nick · 07:54I know that, uh, I can't remember what the business is, but there's a business out there that has innovate with the, the end being an

Nick · 08:00eight. Um, so yeah, I was just thinking too about your question around edgy. Um, brands and the first two that I thought of were actually energy drinks. So I don't know what it is with drinks, but the first one I thought was, was Red Bull and, and, and Monster was the second.

Nick · 08:18And, you know, Red Bull have attached themselves to that extreme sports, um, um, game and to the point where, you know, they're sponsoring events, they're actually holding their own events. So that's really unique. What. Red Bull have done. And then Monster Energy have come in and they've, they've kind of played the same game to a degree.

Nick · 08:36Like if you ever see Monster Energy sponsorship, a lot of the times it'll be extreme sports, whether it's, you know, motocross or where it's going to be. So it's interesting. They're the first two that come to mind and they'll both drinks. But for me, Red Bull's the one, like if you look what they've done with branding to the point now where they can afford their own F1 team and not F1 team.

Nick · 08:56Affiliate teams as well. Um, un,

Nick · 09:00unbelievable. And, you know, no one was doing what they did. And they, they really attacked that, um, Uh, that extreme sport market for sure.

Marty · 09:08I'm glad you brought up the extreme sports, because this is where Liquid Death is different. And they're, they're obviously trying to differentiate where they're going for more alternate people, and they're promoting their products at rock festivals.

Marty · 09:22And anything that's slightly, off the beaten track to really appear and how they're getting it in people's hands is they're giving it away at these alternate type of events where sometimes it's the first time people are drinking it and they're hydrating in the sun and then all of a sudden they're going to the stores and buying it and I thought.

Marty · 09:42Isn't that brilliant? So something, something uniquely different, not tagged into sports. You're a little bit different. You're at an alternate rock concert, drinking liquid death, and, and it's, it's very viral the way they get stuff out there. Like, they're not spending, like, mega money on

Marty · 10:00advertising dollars.

Marty · 10:00It's all people sharing it. And probably the point that I've even brought it up. You know that Charlie had seen it on the weekend and brought it up to me and going holy crap who is this actually appealing to here and Yeah, it's it's I'm promoting it now on the podcast and this is what's happening And that's how they're getting their brand to be so viral.

Marty · 10:21So rather than just making content for the sake of content They're actually just building Interesting, funny stuff that people are sharing. And I think that's an interesting thing when it comes to social media and creating content. People say, just create a lot of content, create a lot of content.

Marty · 10:39Someone will find you somewhere. But we should be always looking to create the content that people absolutely froth over and want to send it to a friend or send it to people because it's really cool and it's really different and it gets, uh, it gets another level of exposure. So. Yeah, interesting.

Nick · 10:58Yeah.

Nick · 10:58And I think I'm just

Nick · 11:00thinking about our own business here, but it's so difficult to do with service based businesses because your market, your market share, or your, your actual market that you're playing is so small compared to an energy, an energy drink, like an energy drink. Uh, or water is, is something that every single person on the planet can use.

Nick · 11:19Whereas if you look at what we're doing or what Jace is doing, you know, we're, we're mortgage brokers, we're financial planners, we're kind of stuck to a certain, uh, group of people. And then they were stuck to that group of people within our country. So I think if you, uh, if you have a brand that. that could go global and absolutely could appeal to, to most people or most people could have use in it, then it's important to think about this kind of stuff, but I'll think about us and I don't know, we just have such a small market compared to an energy drink or a, you know, or any kind of drink that, that people, um, can consume.

Marty · 11:57And I think you nearly got to flip it and it's something I

Marty · 12:00talk to the brokers about a lot in regards to, What's your point of difference? And we did a great leadership, uh, workout, uh, we've shout out to Phil Evans, if he's, if he's listening. But, um, and Phil always said, you know, you know, a lot of the answers of what you're going to find in finance or when you're doing an activity, bring more of yourself to the activity.

Marty · 12:22Bring more of your own ideas because that's going to differentiate you. And I always think with the brokers as well and people within the business, how can you be a point of difference? Everyone's doing a home loan. You know, everyone's dealing with the same amount of lenders. What do you bring to your service as a point of difference?

Marty · 12:40Maybe showing people how to save money. Maybe how to invest. How to buy a commercial property for the first time. How do you be more? than just transactional and bring something uniquely to the table where the client will always remember you. And because you're a part of the brand that holds credibility,

Marty · 13:00then that can set you apart in a market of 20, 000 people.

Marty · 13:03And that's sort of where I think, for us in service industries, we can, we can almost flip it, um, more from a personal level.

Jason · 13:11Yeah, I was just looking up a couple of like fun examples and then trying to find, well, before I found the professional service examples, I mean, the big ones like Virgin, Richard Branch and started Virgin.

Jason · 13:20And these was all about having fun and, you know, having different branding, being cool. Patagonia, they're almost the anti marketing brand. So when you think of Patagonia, the people who want that and wear that and what they do, then this one I love, cause it's like. Just straight away thought of the ad campaigns, Old Spice, you know, the guy on the horse and it's, you know, going backwards, you know, and like, I'm like, have I ever had Old Spice?

Jason · 13:41Would I wear it? But I know the brand, um, you know, probably see it in my dad's cupboard when I go past his, uh, and yours. Yeah, that's it. But then try to go beyond, um, you know, those, those big brands that we know and go. More local level and professional services. And this was quick chat, GPT, which is interesting what it came up.

Jason · 13:59And I know this firm

Jason · 14:00quite well, there's an accounting firm called inspire and they have a social mission. So basically they attach the word inspire in accounting every time you transact with them to do a tax return or whatever else they will donate a meal or eyesight or do something through the buy one, give one organization.

Jason · 14:18So all of a sudden, like, Hey, like, you know, you got to get your tax return done, but if you're going to do it. Why wouldn't you choose something that has like a social mission, like inspire who donate clothing or meals or eyesight as a part of doing business with them. So I think that's, that's a really cool way to go.

Jason · 14:33If you are going to try and brand and think of a way to do it, liquid death is one extreme. Professional service is hard, but what they say is you do, do like niche positioning where you do something special. Um, and that was like a neat little example. And, and then the, the founder one as well, you said, Marty, you know, King Kong.

Jason · 14:50King Kong, the digital marketing agency. I think can't remember his name at the

Marty · 14:53moment. Yeah. Aussie,

Jason · 14:54Aussie bloke. Um, you know, he's got a shaved head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look up his name,

Jason · 15:00but you know, the King Kong guy, you know, he's in the ads. He's gets out of a car, slams the door. He's strolling down like, and they're really engaging.

Jason · 15:07And it's like, you know what? Like, cool. Then some good Aussie professional services brands that are doing something a little bit different and having a crack, but they position themselves very differently.

Marty · 15:16I don't think it hurts if you're starting a business to have a red hot crack at it. Like if you're established, it's like a pretty big 360 to go.

Marty · 15:24We're all running around in tank tops and, uh, doing finance. Right. But, uh, but it's like you, if you're starting something new and you want to stand out and you want to get that viral type of, and it depends on the industry, I get it, but you got to challenge your thinking. And think about how you can get traction because that can save you an absolute packet in marketing dollars And I just look at some of the things these guys have done Which I thought was pretty pretty interesting go and have a look at the videos.

Marty · 15:53We'll put a link in the uh Some of the videos are great. It's like a grandmother shotgunning a can of liquid

Marty · 16:00death, a doctor skulling a can while operating on a patient. Police and pilots in uniform, you know, hooking in and school bus drivers just downing a can before they drive the kids, uh, off to school.

Marty · 16:13So it's very, um. It's very, very interesting stuff and they're selling products like they've got coffin snowboards. They've got golf euro clubs, watches, alternate hair styling. They're doing collaborations and even your, remember you were talking about that piece of art, the banana with a tape on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marty · 16:32And it's sold for, you know, I don't know what it's sold for, but millions. Yeah, it was absolutely, you know, a lot of money. So they've got a can of art cost. So they've got a can with sticky tape over it, selling for 10. 4 mil, taking the piss, you know, on their website. Right? It's just like, it's just I'm just having a go at what everyone's, you know, that that was an interesting piece of, you know, art that went viral.

Marty · 16:58So they just tapped

Marty · 17:00into it, you know, hot tubs, water tubs with sparkling water in it and everyone in the ads are drinking this, you know, liquid, liquid death. I just go, there was just something really, uh. Uh, really fascinating on how far outside of the square when you think of other water companies and how it's paid off for them.

Marty · 17:18And the quality of product's actually good. Like when you drink the, yeah, at the end of the day it's water and it feels a bit anti intuitive drinking water through that can. You go, it's um, you want something more out of it. But it's um, but, you know, all credit, and I think as a, as business owners. You know, we, we got to test the boundaries sometimes and just see what is a point of difference out there.

Marty · 17:41And that's probably what resonated mostly for me on it. So yeah. Do,

Nick · 17:44do, do you think to, to challenge it and I'm, I'm thinking more about services cause that's what we're in and people that are listening to us, but do you think in a smaller market like ours or like Jace's, you can,

Nick · 18:00um, you can risk. You can risk soloing out your business.

Nick · 18:04So, you know, like, um, the charity one is a great example, Jase, like how many people is that actually going to appeal to? So I think you've got to be careful that if you do to go down that path, that it's not actually going to push people away from your business at the same time, because we just don't have the market to, for that not to be a problem, because I'm sure some people would look at, uh, Liquid Death and would say, well, that's definitely not for me.

Nick · 18:30I'm going to go the other way, which might be Mount Franklin and, you know, uh, the, the, the ad is a natural stream and yeah, that one, I, that's where my water's coming from and I'm simple and I want to be as simple as that. So I'm sure liquid death turns a lot of people off just as Monster Energy would, and just as Red Bull would.

Nick · 18:48Um, so I think in a smaller market, you might need to be careful that, you know, you're not pushing people away because of whatever it is that you.

Marty · 18:56That's a good point, Nick, because they do say, look, if you can

Marty · 19:00win 20 percent of the people as raving fans, you can build a monstrous business, right? So you'll have 60 percent of people that are generic, and then you have 20 percent of people that hate your guts, right?

Marty · 19:12It's, it's like, you know, and, and that's, that's the interesting thing. And I think about our industry, you go. What's the, what's the biggest thing we think about that is a concern out there in society that involves finance and, you know, it comes back to financial literacy, whether it's in business or whether it's kids and, you know, people are not really taught how to manage their money and it's such a big thing in life.

Marty · 19:38So if you had a cause of that to, you know, really reshape that everyone loves numbers and loves managing their future. How do you do that in a funky way that's actually gets kids excited, gets adults more excited to, like we talk about it, have the goals and do the plans and everything like that, which is absolutely what should be

Marty · 20:00done.

Marty · 20:00But again, I think a future advisory. You think how do you, how do you create excitement around that by doing what we do in a unique way out there in the market? It's, it's an interesting balance.

Nick · 20:12Oh, I would argue, um, that you already do it, Jase, to a degree. I think, um, particularly your branding and dealing with a lot of your clients, it's futuristic.

Nick · 20:23Uh, industries seem to be, if that's even a way to explain it, but, um, startups, you know, tech kind of

Jason · 20:31e commerce, new age

Nick · 20:32kind of industries that, um, that you're dealing with mainly. And surely that's got a lot to do with your branding and, uh, and your appeal.

Jason · 20:40Yeah, I think so. Yeah, definitely. I mean, we, we're matched up to, especially with our online presence, our social media, our website.

Jason · 20:47If someone's in. social media themselves, marketing, design, um, they're building a website to sell things. So e commerce, I think when they look at us and go, Oh, they must get it because they're investing in those things too. Um, we have a

Jason · 21:00lot of people that have left other accounting firms because they can't, they can't go beyond just the tax and compliance and then start to talk advisory around beyond the numbers.

Jason · 21:08So, you know, how to build a business, you know, what, what ranking should the website be? What's a CAC, what's an LTV, like all these different things that are important to. Um, and then you know, an e commerce business as an example. Um, so you're going beyond the numbers. You can't just be doing a tax return these days.

Jason · 21:24And I think that's something we're trying to promote more and do more of that. We want to be doing advisory again. It's in the name and we have to progress more towards that. Um, but I agree with you, Marty. I mean, one of the biggest. Issues that we're going to face is education. And this obviously not the episode where we're going to talk about education, but it's why we exist, right?

Jason · 21:41So you go Liquid Death had some fun with their branding. End of the day, they sell water for hydration, you know, cool. Why does the numbers game exist? You know, the numbers game branding again, we, we did the exercise ourselves. We're like, what's a fun way to brand our podcast. Well, we're going to talk about numbers.

Jason · 21:55You know, the numbers game is a bit of a play on, you know, was it like a. The

Jason · 22:00gambling, I think there's some reason it's banned overseas. We can't, can't be the numbers game or trademark it because there's some kind of gambling scheme, but you know, we tried to do it ourselves, but, and, and our underlying purpose was education to make people, you know, smarter with their numbers, which is what we're here for.

Marty · 22:15Yeah. And I think that's, uh, yeah. And, and thinking about maybe the podcast, I've answered my own question on it, is a way where we're doing that. Uniquely different. So, but, uh, again, I just want, I just want people to think about their businesses and think about you don't have to be in the sexiest industry to actually create something quite, you know, incredible out there in the way you're, you're positioning it is industry dependent, but I think we need to challenge ourselves on that because otherwise things just get stale and things are generic.

Marty · 22:47Even though the businesses, you know, businesses do okay, but you go, it's just worth consideration and play with the idea and see what you come up with because again, it might be one idea

Marty · 23:00that blows your business up at a whole different level than against your competition. And that's, uh, that's certainly in this situation, what Liquid Death is doing.

Marty · 23:09And it's, uh, it's fascinating to see.

Jason · 23:11Nah, awesome Marty. Well, thank you for bringing us this episode about Liquid Death. For those that have made it this far, this was not an advertisement for Liquid Death. Marty just loves bringing exciting things to us, and I think it was all about uncracking that can at the start of the ep.

Jason · 23:23Um, if you are new to listening to us, or you haven't clicked the follow or subscribe buttons if you're on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe. If you're on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts, make sure you also subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Thank you for joining us. Until next time, don't

Marty · 23:37be a sheep when you can be a purple cow.

Marty · 23:39I'm just gonna have a drink. Game over.

Jason · 23:44This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The conversations are of a general nature and do not qualify as financial or tax advice. We recommend before you make any financial decisions, you consult a licensed professional. Individuals on the podcast may hold positions

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