Winning a Liquid Death Jet... No Way or Nostalgic? EP15

Episode 15 Transcript

hi everybody. My name is Jason Donnelly. This is the marketing combat podcast. And if you look to my left or right, depending on where this is possibly above me or below me, you'll find a beautiful man with a cowboy hat with a beard that many, many men will fight for and many women wish they had true either way. Chris, what are we talking about today?

We're talking about the Liquid Death campaign that just launched, basically riffing on the 90s Pepsi Jet giveaway advertising campaign. They are giving away a jet, if you haven't seen. So Liquid Death launched this thing where they will give you a jet if you basically collect all their cans. Similar to the Pepsi giveaway campaign, it launched a couple of weeks ago to much fanfare, much applause from the industry, from people alike. And today we're debating if it's good or bad. I'm actually going to switch things.

Stop here, Jason, and go with what you think is gonna happen. I want you to argue for why you think this is a great advertising campaign, and I'll be on the other side why I think it's not a great campaign. I'm gonna start. I don't think it's a great campaign. For some of the reasons I already mentioned, it's very much like this thing that I hate right now is this riffing on existing cultural things, memeing, if you will, things that aren't really bringing anything new and creative to the table. They're just basically taking an

existing property and putting their own little spin on it. Similar to what Disney does with all the things that they've bought in over the last few years, Marvel, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, all of these things that have come out that are just properties that have been bought and IP that have been bought and then they do a riff on it and it's not as good as the original. It's not as interesting. And I think this is the same.

Liquid Death, you you've fallen a bit. I used to think that you guys were probably the gods of advertising right now, the gods of creativity, because you guys were coming with such innovative and interesting new ideas. And I think you've lost the plot a little bit, especially with this one, because it is just, hey, let's give away a jet like Pepsi did back in the 90s or tried to do. And we know that was controversial because there was a lot of like that didn't happen. And there was a whole documentary about it, which is very interesting, by the way. Pepsi, where's my jet? Go see that documentary.

This is why I don't think it's a good advertising campaign. And I don't think a lot of kids care about this. I think the only people that care about this is 1990s people like you and me and Jason. But any of the younger consumers, they don't know that this happened in the 90s. They don't have any, they don't care. And they don't have a love for jets. In the 90s, we actually had a love for jets because of Tom Cruise and Top Gun and the desert storm and all the things that were happening around that. War machines today, that's not cool anymore. The culture's not there.

So it's only me and Jason and others in our age group that actually like this type of stuff. Nobody else knows about it. Nobody else understands it. I don't think their younger generation even gives a shit about winning a jet. So that's me. I think it's a bad campaign. Jason, you take it away. You tell me why it's an awesome campaign. Let me tell you a billion different reasons why it's an awesome campaign. One, nostalgia. Every single, every single Gen Xer who sees this ad wants a jet. Every older millennial.

who sees this ad wants a jet. Every kid, I don't care if Tom Cruise is 70 years old, if he's still doing these maverick Top Gun movies, I'm gonna watch him and I'm gonna want a jet. Third, or seven, C, whatever the number is I'm at now, if you don't want the jet, that's okay, they'll give you just a bucket of $250 ,000 cash.

just to play with. And if you get the jet, they'll also give you six months of hanger access so that you don't even have to stress about it if you want to try to sell it. So they're getting the nostalgia, they're getting the jet if you want a jet, they're getting the money if you want money. And if you're already gonna buy Liquid Death, if you're already gonna go buy it, just take a picture of the receipt and you got an entrance.

You can have 400 entries. I feel like I'm almost selling Liquid Death right now. Go buy 400 single cans of Liquid Death, take a picture of it, and send it to Liquid Death. Are bubbles happening? Anyway, yeah, I think it's a great ad for all the reasons I just said. I think it's gonna do killer, and I am probably gonna go get a Liquid Death after this episode and take a picture of it just so I can win it and shove my jet in Chris's face. See how that goes on a much different way?

I hope you win the Jets. Here's the thing. Let's talk about this. What human insight, what interesting piece of information is in that that makes you go, that's cool. That's interesting. Tell me. Pepsi. Pepsi didn't do it. They failed. And there was a movie made about it because people were so interested in the topic that they're like, let's put a movie together and show people how Pepsi failed. Liquid Death's just like, hey, we got a jet.

Let's do it. Let's do it for real. And instead of being owned by like a Pepsi or Coke or whatever, Liquid Death is its own thing. It's a $1 .4 billion company. And they're like, yeah, let's do the thing that the bigwigs failed. Like they're killing it. So that's the inside. Like let's put our thumb in Pepsi's face. How does that help the consumer? They can win a jet, Chris. What are you going to do with the jet? I'm not going to take the jet. I'm going to take the bucket of money.

because you can get in what the hell, who cares? The money is like, okay, so what's interesting about that? Like collecting cans, of course. But like give me, give you an example of a giveaway. Like do remember the McDonald's Monopoly game? I miss the Monopoly, I love that game. Exactly.

Go with that for a minute here. You love the McDonald's Monopoly game because it had a purpose and it had collecting properties on the fry boxes, on the drinks, whatever you were buying. And it actually allowed you to play a game. It allowed you to enjoy a fantasy of winning, enjoy a fantasy of playing Monopoly with you, your friends against McDonald's. That was interesting, right? That was about not just winning some money, but actually like entertainment,

participating in a global thing where it's like people will like, I've got this, I'll trade you this. Do you have those? I need three of those. That was interesting. That was about family. That was about, know, a board game is about family. A McDonald's is about family. This is not about anything. This is zero. This is a zero. This is a nothing burger. There's nothing involved in here that has anything to do with liquid death, has nothing to do with the culture that liquid death has. It has nothing to do with actual nostalgia because none of their consumer group actually

knows about this shit, it's only you and me and a handful of others. That's why I think it's a bad ad. It misses the mark completely. I'll stand on that. And I think a better giveaway is like a McDonald's monopoly.

Let us know in the comments if you want to jet and we will see you guys in the next one. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the marketing combat podcast. I've been Chris Kubbernus. This has been I'm Tom Cruise. He's Tom Cruise.