How Does Liquid Death Brand Themselves On Social Media?
By Caroline DenholmIntroduction
Liquid Death is a canned water company that first broke onto the scene in 2019. The brand began to gain popularity when the general public noticed that the 16 oz “tallboy” looked like the can of an alcoholic drink at first glance. The brand emphasizes that its water is made with electrolytes, and is perfect for those who are active. As a brand that has disrupted the beverage industry with its unique marketing approach, it's essential to assess how effectively Liquid Death connects with its audience, drives engagement, and aligns with its brand identity.
INSTAGRAM:
Liquid Death’s Instagram handle is @LiquidDeath and has 2.8 million followers. Their content is mainly reels to promote new flavors of the drink, funny cartoonish advertisements, and various other random posts that align with their main brand of “death.” For example, one of their most popular posts is a commercial that has a zombie eating someone on the floor. The other girl goes “She must have partied pretty hard last night, she needs electrolytes!” They then give the zombie their new “death dust” hydration packet, and suddenly the zombie is back to being a normal girl. This reel has 20K likes on it, which is a fairly substantial amount.
They also post once a day or every other day. Their Instagram seems to be gaining a good amount of traction, so they must continue to keep up with it and continue to post engaging content.
X/Twitter
X is Liquid Death’s least popular social media account, with only 47.6K followers.
They do not generate many of their posts, as most of their feed is retweets of satisfied customers. While this provides the consumer with examples of the product being consumed, it does not give the curious customers browsing their social media much new content for them to form their own opinions.
Their most recent post was one posted on February 24th, 2024. It was a quote tweet of two podcast hosts talking about the can being “girthy".” The Liquid Death account responded by saying “Please do not insert our cans into anything other than your recycling bin.” This gained 21 retweets, 83 likes, 7 replies, and 8,385 views.
Another popular post of theirs was another quote tweet of Ice Spice and Taylor Swift at the Superbowl. It said “And if you take the letters from ICE SPICE, TAYLOR SWIFT, USHER, and the LAST NAMES of all 22 starting players on the Chiefs and 49ers, you can spell: LIQUID DEATH WILL TURN THE HUMAN RACE INTO FLESH BATTERIES TO POWER ITS GIANT MARKETING ROBOTS.” This post gained 35 retweets and 359 likes and is a perfect example of brands utilizing events in popular culture to promote their brand.
While their X account is not as popular as their other socials, they should keep it, because it generates publicity one way or the other.
Liquid Death’s Facebook account has 285K followers and 263K likes. Their bio is the same as on their other socials, reading “Don’t be scared. It’s just water & iced tea. #murderyourthirst #deathtoplastic.
Liquid Death seems to copy and post their posts when they post on different platforms.
On Facebook, they post advertisements for new flavors of their drink, along with “horrorscopes” for different astrological signs.
One of their most popular posts reads “We are not at all being forced at blaster-point by the Motherworld’s army to bring you this message.
Rebel Moon now streaming on Netflix.” and has 5.6K reactions.
Their most recent post is a paid advertisement for Coinbase. However, they have not posted since February 20th.
While most of their posts are advertisements, I do not think it is necessarily a bad thing. Since most avid users of Facebook are older, they might be more likely to purchase the product if they are constantly seeing ads for it on the site they trust the most.
Liquid Death should keep its Facebook account active to make sure they are appealing to all demographics.
TIKTOK
TikTok is the brand’s most popular social media site, with 4.9 million followers. They are verified, and have the same bio as the rest of their social media platforms. Their content is mostly just advertisements for the different flavors of the drink.
However, their most popular video is of a son and a father buying two cans of Liquid Death at a gas station. The dad says “You can’t have no beer” to which the son and the cashier reply “It’s just water” in unison. This video has 22.5 million views and 1.7 million likes. Their collaboration with Travis Barker is also very popular, with 236.3K likes and 4.7 million views.
Their most recent is a video of a man dressed as a can of Liquid Death in a club.
The account also has 19.7 million likes in total.
This TikTok account should be kept, as it is drawing the most attention to the brand.
However, if they would like to continue their success on the account, they should be posting more than once or twice a month, as they are now.
SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS
The brand stays consistent across all its platforms, with all of its bios being the same across TikTok, Facebook, X, and Instagram.
WEAKNESSES
They do not post as often as they should and do not interact much on their platforms.
OPPORTUNITIES
Interacting with customers/fans more on TikTok and Instagram by making videos where they are replying to comments.
They could also do giveaways when they release new flavors of the drink, whether it be the actual Liquid Death drink, or other things such as hats, t-shirts, pens, etc.
THREATS
Other water-electrolyte companies who are less popular on social media, but have the potential to catch up to where Liquid Death is.
