Back when I was working in bars, I had a Seinfeldian idea: water in cans.
The idea was based on nothing more than a very simple observation: we serve every kind of drink in a can, but why not H20?
Unlike Cosmo Kramer, I lacked the chutzpah to see the idea through. But I never stopped believing it had legs – kind of like a coffee table book about coffee tables.
Little did I know that La Croix had been making waves in America with its lightly infused sparkling cans ever since National Beverage Corp took the reins in 2002. Alexa Chung and Katy Perry were chugging them at Coachella. Kim Kardashian was getting cases delivered to her LA mansion. The octogenarian CEO of National Beverage Corp, Nick Caporella, is a billionaire today, thanks to the success of the brand.
But when “ruthless tallboy” cans of Liquid Death started hitting American fridges around four years ago, La Croix and other Big Beverage brands like Topo Chico were faced with a serious competitor.
If you haven’t been following the endless parade of think pieces on the meteoric rise of the LA-born water brand (like the one you’re about to read), prepare to get wet.
Liquid Death was co-founded by former Netflix Creative Director Mike Cessario in 2017 as a healthy alternative to the sugar-packed bevs flooding the American drinks market; his background in advertising and punk rock informed the brand’s brutal aesthetic. (“Murder Your Thirst” and “Death to Plastic” are its main slogans.)
The one-two punch of a sustainability ethos and “entertainment-first” marketing instantly struck a chord with Gen Z and millennials. “Marketing is our superpower,” Liquid Death’s chief strategy officer Marisa Bertha tells Broadsheet. “Red Bull and Monster spend billions on marketing, I can assure you we do not. They use extreme sports as their entertainment vessel. For us, it’s comedy.”
Liquid Death’s comedy vessel onboarded a bunch of big-name celebs for a slew of batshit campaigns. There was the Travis Barker enema kit. Domestic goddess Martha Stewart was hacking off human hands to make “candles”.
The internet has gone batshit in response. Today, Liquid Death is the third most-followed beverage brand on Instagram and Tiktok, trailing just behind Red Bull and Monster. It was valued at $1.4 billion in a financing round earlier this year, making it one of the fastest-growing companies in the world.
Now, Liquid Death has its sights set on Australia. The brand touched down in April with distribution in 7-Eleven stores nationwide. Now that Woolworths has joined the party, you can walk 10 minutes in any direction and have a reasonable chance of attaining Liquid Death. Severed Lime and Mango Chainsaw are the flavoured varieties, but you can also get unflavoured – still or sparkling. No Dead Billionaire iced tea yet.
But will America’s favourite canned water crush it here as well?
If the Aussie seltzer explosion tells us anything, it’s that we’re forever chasing America’s tail when it comes to drink trends. That’s evident in the growing number of indie canned water brands entering the Aussie market. Strangelove has been a leader in the category for years now. But have you heard of Wallaby, Rippl, Calm and Stormy or the shameless Liquid Death imitator, Thirst Trap?
Most of these brands are banking on the same value proposition as Liquid Death: that aluminium cans are better for the environment than plastic bottles. This isn’t untrue. Aluminium is one of the most recyclable materials on earth, with roughly 75 per cent of the world’s total production still in use today.
But unlike its local competitors, Liquid Death currently imports its water from overseas – the Austrian alps, to be precise. (The freight factor has threatened to derail the company’s growth, and soon it’ll abandon the Austrian stuff and move all production to the States.)
Combined with the fact that Australia sends more than 95 per cent of its aluminium scrap overseas for recycling, the sustainability case for the can format doesn’t quite hold water.
Regardless, the green sell has been a factor in the success of Liquid Death in the states, and will surely work in the brand’s favour here. Australia’s youth – much like America’s – care deeply about environmental issues. Likewise, they’re concerned about their health. Whether Aussies care as much about water kilometres as we do about kilojoules remains to be seen.
“When you look at a healthy lifestyle being so important to millennial and Gen Z consumers, that’s a global trend. That’s not just Australia or the United States. We’ve been able to build upon those macro consumer trends. They are amplifiers for Liquid Death,” says Bertha.
Another amplifier in the US market is surely the country’s national water crisis. When a reported 60 million Americans refuse to drink water from the tap due to mistrust and environmental disadvantage, it’s no wonder the packaged alternative has become a billion-dollar business.
“I would say more than the infinitely recyclable can, what was driving us to launch premium-source water was the big, giant addressable market,” says Bertha. “Water has 100 percent household penetration.”
Meanwhile, Australia has some of the world’s best tap water. My assumption was that Aussie households were impenetrable. But little did I know that the odd bottle of water I buy here and there ladders up to a pretty shocking statistic: Australia is the largest consumer of bottled water globally (504 litres and $386 per capita in 2021) behind Singapore. Maybe there is a case for the can after all.
The bigger question remains as to why Liquid Death would see fit to send its products halfway around the world to a country full of bubblers and bottle-suckers. Why not somewhere closer to home? Bertha says the answer is simple: Aussies have been calling out for them. She says Australia is Liquid Death’s fourth-highest source of total web traffic. We’re fifth on Tiktok and third in international merchandise sales.
“These indicators were strong signals for us. We’re a digital first brand, we’re heavy on social media. We felt there were strong synergies with our type of humour, and it’s working.”
If you ask me, Liquid Death could win Down Under purely on the strength of Mango Chainsaw and Severed Lime, which were reportedly 7-Eleven’s top-selling products at one point in 2024. I’m usually not into faux fruit flavours, but there’s something about these I really enjoy. The agave nectar isn’t cloyingly sweet, and the lower carbonation (about the same as beer) means they don’t sting like a Mount Franklin sparkling. That trifecta makes it all too easy to smash the half-litre serve.
But the monster serving size is no coincidence. “Our mission was never to be the category creator of canned water,” says Bertha. “Our mission was to build a healthy beverage platform with the vessel as a billboard. We knew we could never fight dollar for dollar with the big beverage brands. So we had to use everything at our disposal, including the vessel.”
I think the can itself gives Liquid Death a huge edge. It’s a conversation starter. The company delivered two free cases to the Broadsheet Sydney office for sampling, but they may as well have crash landed from outer space. The question of “what the hell are you drinking?” came up with colleagues every time. Those same colleagues were hesitant to try it for themselves – but most of them enjoyed it when they did.
Bertha says this outsider intrigue is something she’s experienced in her own life, and is something of a double-edged sword. As it was in the States, education will be the real challenge in cracking the Australian market.
“When you look at the can, yes it’s a billboard. But do you think it’s an energy drink? Do you think it’s a craft beer? If people don’t know what liquid is in the can, that’s tough,” says Bertha.
“It’s not a seltzer, it’s not a beer and it’s not an energy drink. It’s sparkling water.”
