Stealing the wrong half
Everybody’s about to take the wrong lesson from Liquid Death's MasterClass. Two lists to fix it 🤘
I've been watching Mike Cessario's MasterClass on Branding for Disruption. Here is my core takeaway:
Mike Cessario got the idea for Liquid Death standing at Warped Tour, watching bands drink water on stage out of Monster cans.
Not because the water was better in a Monster can, but because a guy in a hardcore punk band cannot be seen holding an Aquafina bottle in front of four thousand people violently thrashing to his music in a mosh pit, regardless of how bad Monster is for you and how much he really, really just wants some water.
So, he pours water into a can that looks like part.
The lightbulb goes off in Mike's mind: every other brand of water was selling you a yoga mat and a mountain stream, there needed to be one that melted your face off.
His MasterClass on branding for disruption is the best articulation I’ve heard of the thing I’ve been saying for years, which is that great brands aren’t created, they’re stolen.
He took what he genuinely loved, thrash metal, tattoos, the aesthetics of a scene he actually came from, and he dropped it into a category where the product is functionally identical across every SKU on the shelf.
Water is water. The only thing competing in that aisle is brand.
But... I'm betting most people will hear this and forget something.
The half everybody’s going to take
Pick something you love. Put it on your product. Be authentic.
Easy, right? Kinda.
That’s a real piece of the puzzle, and by itself it will produce a spectacular amount of confident garbage over the next year.
You’ll get a preschool management software with a Formula One theme because the founder likes Formula One or accounting software for ice cream parlors dressed up like a NASA control room.
Beautifully art-directed, deeply personal, completely disconnected from anything the person buying it is trying to feel at the moment they’re buying it.
Liquid Death is not “a guy who likes metal made water.”
Liquid Death is a guy who liked metal and noticed that his customer was already, physically, hiding a water bottle inside an energy drink can because drinking from a Dasani, Fiji, or Evian bottle made them feel like a dork.
The desired feeling was in the market before the brand was. He recognized it's obfuscation and gave that craved emotion somewhere to live without being bashful.
The other half, which is the one that makes it work
The only question that matters is not “what do I like.”
It’s “what makes them feel the way I want them to feel.”
Those are two different circles, and everything good happens in the overlap. And here’s the part that gets missed, because it’s less fun than the metal: you are not one thing, so “what I like” is never a single answer.
I would bet real money that there are entire rooms of Mike Cessario’s life with no mosh pit in them at all. The guy is married (hopefully not as chaotic as the punk rock scene), he's clearly into fitness and mental health (again, hopefully not reminiscent of a mosh pit).
My guess is he's got just as much of a penchant and deep appreciation for Japanese Zen gardens and a nice furniture as he does punk rock and skateboarding.
He didn’t randomly pick something he loves. He branded the piece of himself that matched the feeling the category was starving for.
Why this stops being a nice idea and starts being the whole game
With the advancement of product development, nothing about your features or the capacity of your product is a genuine gap anymore, unless you are a tech giant like Salesforce or someone comparable, (though that gap is quickly shortening as well).
Nobody can copy how it feels to be your customer.
That’s the last moat and it's not that hard to think about.
Create two lists.
Start with the feelings. Write down every emotion you want people to walk away with, and don’t settle for bullshit like “empowered” or “superhuman," those are words that survived a committee to appease a room full of marketing twits afraid to dive deep.
Think about actual feelings.
Do you want them to feel more joyful? More creative? More connected to their team? More energized? More at peace? Do you want them to feel supported, nurtured, cared for? Healthier? More badass? More technically competent? More structured? More expressive?
Write them all down, then narrow it to two or three.
Then, on another list, write down the things you love. Your favorite superhero. Your favorite movie. Your favorite restaurant. Your favorite period in history. Your favorite album. Your favorite place on the planet. Your favorite person. A book you love. A movie poster.
It doesn’t really matter what’s on it. The only thing that matters is that it can actually produce a visual motif.
Now connect the dots.
What’s on the list of things you love that also makes you feel the way you want other people to feel?
Remember, your taste is half the answer. The other half is connecting your muses to the emotional void in your market.
— Zach 😎
PS. Reply with the non-design thing you’d steal from if nobody could talk you out of it. I’ll tell you honestly whether I think it’s in the overlap or just something you like.
