Let’s get one thing straight: Liquid Death’s marketing team are certified geniuses. I’m not even kidding. The whole "Certified Smarter Water" campaign they ran with Amazon was a masterstroke of cultural satire. The idea of having Alexa read textbooks to cans of water, based on some viral pseudoscience, to sell it to college kids? It’s brilliant. It’s a giant middle finger to the earnest, yoga-mat-and-green-juice wellness culture that’s been suffocating us for years.
The ad copy was perfect. "I drank my buddy’s piss to get into my fraternity. But now, I can just drink water and get into med school." That’s poetry. It’s a perfect distillation of the brand: irreverent, self-aware, and aimed squarely at people who are exhausted by corporate sincerity. I can just picture it: a cavernous, cold Amazon warehouse, the only sound the monotonous drone of an Alexa unit reading a book on the psychology of cults to a silent, sweating pallet of aluminum cans. It’s so absurd it loops back around to being profound.
This is what Liquid Death does best. They take a commodity—canned water—and turn it into a statement. They’re not selling hydration; they’re selling an identity. They’re the punk rock band of the beverage aisle, and for a while, they were the only ones playing that tune. It was a joke we were all in on, and it worked. But it seems the band is getting ready to sell out and play the corporate festival circuit.
When Punks Steal Riffs
So, after proving they have some of the sharpest marketing minds in the game, what’s their next big move? A stunningly original, game-changing product launch? Nope. They’re trying to make coffee. And not just any coffee. They’re allegedly planning to call it "Deathuccino."
Let that sink in.
This whole thing is just lazy. No, lazy isn't the right word—it's arrogant. It’s the kind of move a lumbering, out-of-touch mega-corp makes when its board demands "synergy" and "brand extension." It’s a blatant, shameless attempt to step onto turf that’s already been claimed, cultivated, and defended for years by another brand: Death Wish Coffee.
You can't build a brand on being the edgy, smart-assed outsider and then pull a move this fundamentally unoriginal. Death Wish Coffee literally built its entire identity, from the ground up, on being the "death"-themed coffee brand. Their whole schtick is being the world's strongest, most intense coffee experience. They own that corner of the market. What did Liquid Death's executive brain trust think was going to happen? Did they really believe the company that has "DEATH" in its name, plastered over a skull and crossbones, would just roll over and say, "Sure, come on in, the water's fine"?
It’s like two bands that both happen to use a skull in their logo. For years, one played thrash metal and the other played sea shanties. Different crowds, no problem. But now the sea shanty band wants to headline the metal festival using the thrash band's signature guitar riff. That ain't innovation, it's a Xerox machine. And now, offcourse, the lawyers are involved. Death Wish has filed a federal trademark lawsuit to keep Liquid Death out of their graveyard (Death Wish Coffee Files Trademark Suit Over Liquid Death Coffee), and honestly, can you blame them?
The Limits of a Good Joke
Here’s the part that really gets me. Liquid Death’s entire appeal is based on authenticity. It’s a performance, sure, but it’s a convincing one. They mock the soulless, derivative nature of modern marketing, and we love them for it. Their "Smarter Water" campaign was a parody of products that promise to make you a better, smarter person. The joke is that it’s just water. You’re buying the can, the attitude, the community.
But this coffee move feels like the mask is slipping.
By trying to launch a "Deathuccino," they’re becoming the very thing they used to mock: a brand that sees a successful niche and tries to clumsily co-opt it instead of creating something new. The joke stops being funny when the jester tries to steal the king's crown. It reveals that underneath the clever creative and nihilistic branding, there might just be a standard-issue, growth-obsessed company that’s running out of ideas.
And that’s the real shame here. They had something special. They proved you could build a massive brand on humor and a shared sense of exhaustion with the status quo. But what happens when that brand gets so big it becomes the status quo? What does a rebel do when they run out of things to rebel against and just start trying to take over the principal's office? I guess they start looking at quarterly earnings reports and decide that stealing a competitor’s entire brand identity is a sound business decision. It’s just… disappointing.
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe in this economy, originality is a luxury nobody can afford anymore, and the future of all commerce is just brands suing other brands with similar names until only one is left standing. What a world.
The Punks Put On Suits
At the end of the day, this isn't just a legal spat over a word. It's about the soul of a brand. Liquid Death built an empire on being the cleverest guy in the room, the one who saw through all the corporate BS. But with this "Deathuccino" gambit, they've shown they’re perfectly willing to engage in the most basic, uninspired form of corporate BS there is: brand theft. They went from writing brilliant satire to becoming the punchline.
Tags: liquid death