Episode 164 - Liquid Death Biggest Ad Ever Reviewed by easyJet
If you’ve grown up in the United States, over-the-top car dealership ads and spending lots of money to get your brand seen during the SuperBowl are parts of advertising life. For the rest of the world, maybe not so much - but Liquid Death’s Biggest Ad Ever was not designed for the rest of the world!
In this latest episode, our guests Shaaf Tauqeer (Audience and March Manager at easyJet) and Simon Short (ex Huawei) evaluate the creative effectiveness of this bold and hilarious clip chosen by Contagious. We look at who its audience is meant to be - B2B clients or end consumers, or both? And we wonder what’s next and how the execution of the ad that’s being advertised (yes, very meta!) will work out. Watch the episode and see what you think.
Episode 164 - Liquid Death Biggest Ad Ever Reviewed by easyJet
Transcript
This is automatically generated, so it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 00:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. The creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a weekly show where I get some brands talk about other brands' ads. But before we get to this week's creative, let's meet this week's guests.
Shaaf Tauqeer 00:43
I’m Shaaf, Shaaf Tauqeer. I’m working at easyJet as an Audience and Martech manager. So basically covering the paid media side at easyJet.
Simon Short 00:50
So I'm Short. Digital Marketing Director, formerly of Huawei, Samsung and McDonald's.
Tom Ollerton 00:56
Fantastic! What a panel! Right... Let's see, this week's ad. I'd like you to score this ad out of five. On the count of three, hold up your fingers. One, two, three... Three and three. Liquid Death, there you have it. That made me smile. I tell you that much. Simon, what's going on here? Can you give us a bit of context?
Simon Short 02:16
Liquid Death, they're kind of known for this kind of stuff. They've got a real irreverence about their brand. They kind of get that humor is shareable, and this clearly, this was targeted around the Super Bowl. Traditionally, has always been super expensive ad spots that not all brands can necessarily afford to do. And they've come up with the conclusion that rather than spend the millions of dollars that would be required to get an ad in one of those spots to just go down the guerilla marketing route and actually do something completely different, which is quite smart. The actual auction itself went up until... I don’t know... sometime in February. I think Coinbase might have actually won the auction to have their ads actually put on the boxes, which... that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out. They're going to have some really good creative when those boxes actually do go in stores.
Tom Ollerton 03:00
What I'm curious to know is who do you think they're aiming this at? Is this talking to kind of crazy gamers who are 16 or I don’t know... Help me understand what you think the target audience is?
Shaaf Tauqeer 03:08
The thing is, I've seen another ad of Liquid Death, just remembering, I think it was with the children and it was like whether it's repulsive or whether it’s... I think it was on a TikTok, whether the ad is repulsive or is it like genius? So it's definitely that kind of promoting the hydration and there’s a, you know, pregnant lady drinking that can of water. So it's got their niche market to it because, I mean, to be honest with you, there is a divide in itself. Like people say, “Well, do you want a drink of water from a can or not?” That just doesn't like, you know, go together. But I think if there's definitely a market there, there’s a niche market to it. Maybe it could be a B2B sort of an opportunity there because end of the day it is in the back of the box, right? And then once you've opened and checked it out. So yeah, what's the difference between that and a cereal box ad? Like, if you want to post all those ads over there as well.
Simon Short 03:51
I mean, clearly they've got a lot of creative license. I think they've set themselves up in the first instance to try and steal a bit of the energy drinks market. They've got a similar kind of vibe to, you know, like Monsters of this world. But obviously their product is something that parents probably wouldn't mind their kids having. So I think it wouldn't surprise me if one of their core audience, sort of young teens, maybe even going slightly older type of market because it has got that edge to it. The stuff that they've put out online, they've done promotions with Steve-O from Jackass. They've done all kinds of things that put themselves into that world that actually just makes their brand a little bit, called a bit irreverent.
Tom Ollerton 03:51
Do you think that this is like the ultimate combination of a challenger brand with money and with creative license?
Shaaf Tauqeer 04:34
The ad is almost like a bit obnoxious, right? But definitely there's that market to their target audience. I think if you talk about the ABCs they put on Gen Z kind of appeal to it is slightly that dark humor kind of, you know, if you even look at the social media pages are just literally doing a quick sort of scan through and it just seems like there's that annoyance. And then the fact that with that they have that murdering the terse kind of that humor, which kind of come across quite well through there, but I think that's the type of audience they're trying to target and it is definitely, I would say, some niche. But then there's a gen Z sort of a kind of, that fits in there, right?
Simon Short 05:11
I don't think this is necessarily the best ad that I've seen from these guys. It's not maybe as funny as some of the other ones that they put out there, and I think it definitely taps into a cultural moment as well, for which I'm not necessarily party to. I'm not an American that's grown up on the Super Bowl and sort of auto dealership ads and on local cable networks and stuff, that doesn't necessarily ring for me. And so maybe I don't find it quite as funny as some people in the States might, but I get what they're trying to do. And I think that for those audiences, it probably does ring for them.
Tom Ollerton 05:46
We see this sometimes on the show where it's advertising talking to itself, we're ad people, right? This is our day job. So they're going, “Hey, advertisers, wouldn't it be cool to advertise on the side of our pack.” Right? That's, that's weird to us that a brand would hand over its brand to another brand, right? There's a rug pull there that we understand, but why does like any 17-year-old care about like a media innovation, which is what this is, or a packaging innovation? Is there another play here? Because your average American kid is not concerned about media innovation, as far as I'm aware.
Shaaf Tauqeer 06:21
No, I think not. And this one, I think, I generally think it’s more like a maybe the B2B and maybe also just limited to the US market. I mean, it's not to say the brand is not global, but it's just like within that market it's quite big. But then it's very sort of if you see the Americanized sort of, you know, the just over the top, slightly obnoxious and like, trying to create that, the shock value to like, “Oh, well... What is this ad?” And just trying to generate the shock attention and it works in a way that as I said, it either irritates people or attracts people. So I think within that then you have who would want to sort of go out there as an ally. I probably wouldn't put my ad on the back of a can of water, rather focus that elsewhere on the digital channels, for example. I mean of course there's like a values to the brand and whatnot, but it is kind of the more and more I'm thinking about it, the more is like that a very sort of a limited niche, I don't know, something like a barbecue grill on the back of that, that kind of go hand in hand sort of thing.
Tom Ollerton 07:18
I'm curious, is there something else going on here that we're not seeing?
Simon Short 07:21
Yeah, I think... I think the the key is going to be in the, in the execution of this. I think if they end up with a really boring, not particularly inventive Coinbase ad on their side of their boxes, the whole thing will fall flat when they execute it. And so the consumer element of it, the public will see, because I don't think these ad particularly would have been particularly consumer facing. When these things start hitting stores and people go, “What's this ad all about?” You know, if it was for a snake oil or for an RV dealership or something, and you start seeing that pop up in your local supermarket, those are the kind of things that people would maybe take a photo of and send it around and go, “Have you seen this? This is a bit weird.” So any kind of boring standard ad that you would see in any other execution that they might do, it will fall flat. But if it's funny, if they keep that humor going and they can kind of make it something that people will take a photo of, share it online, get some kind of further buzz and momentum from it, then I think the whole thing will work for both Liquid Death and for Coinbase when it actually goes live.
Tom Ollerton 08:29
So what will you be taking away from this? What is the thing that you feel you've learned from watching this ad and having this discussion?
Simon Short 08:35
The media that you're buying is not necessarily the end product is probably the key here. Creative has to work very, very hard in order to make that sort of thing stand on its own two feet. Really, really interesting, creative, hard to execute.
Tom Ollerton 08:46
Thumbs up or thumbs down on. Would you sign off this concept in its current guise or do you think it needs work? One, two, three...
Shaaf Tauqeer 08:56
No, for me.
Tom Ollerton 08:57
Simon, Shaaf, thank you so much for joining us.
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