Pepsi's blunder is an all-timer, but Liquid Death stuck the landing.
At the height of the Cola Wars in the mid-90's, Pepsi committed one of the most notorious PR and marketing fiascos of all-time.
An eye-catching spot promised brand fans that, if they saved up 7 million Pepsi Points, they could win a Harrier fighter jet.
However, no one at Pepsi or their ad agency ever expected anyone to try to claim that prize. And when Washington business school student John Leonard did, they faced a multi-year legal battle and a storm of negative publicity.
Now, almost three decades later, another beverage company has spoofed that infamous campaign—with a twist.
Canned water brand Liquid Death actually bought a jet for one lucky fan to win, and executed a wildly successful promotion to support the contest.
So in this episode, we're talking to Liquid Death VP of Creative Andy Pearson about the logistics of making that happen. We discuss Liquid Death's unique approach to marketing, his creative influences, and why they would even want to try to recreate the publicity stunt that lost Pepsi the Cola Wars.
And with Jeff Beer from Fast Company, we explore the background and takeaway lessons of the Pepsi Harrier Jet fiasco.
Transcript:
Dusty Weis
It was the mid-1990s and the Cola Wars were reaching their frenzied, sticky zenith. Coke and Pepsi each poured hundreds of millions of dollars into advertising per year.
And Pepsi, fresh off a surge in market share following a series of 1980s marketing blunders by Coca-Cola, was about to commit one of the most notorious PR fiascos in branding history.
Clip from Commercial
Now, the more Pepsi you drink, the more great stuff you're going to get.
Dusty Weis
The Drink Pepsi Get Stuff campaign was, at first, a roaring success. Fans of the brand could send in Pepsi points from the labels of Pepsi products and cash them out for t-shirts, sunglasses, even leather jackets.
But the most eye-catching piece of promotion for the campaign, indeed the very hook of the TV commercial was the tongue-in-cheek announcement that for seven million Pepsi points, Pepsi would send you a McDonnell Douglas AV8B Harrier 2 vertical takeoff jet fighter.
Like so many of us 90s kids, Andy Pearson watched the campaign backfire on Pepsi as a 20-year-old business student from Seattle collected the Pepsi points he needed to claim the jet and then took very public action when Pepsi welched on their promise.
Andy Pearson
This, you know, famous advertising faux pas, this unforced error of sorts. What if we set out to just do that thing outright? Because that seems very difficult to do.
Dusty Weis
Now, almost 30 years later, Andy is the VP of Creative at canned water brand Liquid Death. And because sometimes you've just got to go big, they've gone ahead and done what Pepsi never could and actually given away a jet to one lucky customer.
In this episode, Andy and I explore the logistics of making that happen. I ask him why the heck Liquid Death would even want to try to recreate the publicity stunt that lost Pepsi the Cola Wars.
And with Jeff Beer from Fast Company, we explore the cultural phenomenon of the Pepsi Harrier Jet fiasco.
I'm Dusty Weis. From Podcamp Media, this is Lead Balloon, a podcast about epic tales from the worlds of PR, marketing and branding told by the well-meaning communications professionals who live them.
Dusty Weis
Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you're following us and tell a friend if you dig the show.
Our guest today is Andy Pearson, the VP of Creative at Liquid Death with 20 years of experience as an advertiser, mainly in the agency space. Prior to his time at Liquid Death, his work has touched other brands like Microsoft, The Gap, Hulu, one of my personal favorites, Guitar Hero, and many others.
So Andy Pearson, thank you so much for joining us here on Lead Balloon.
Andy Pearson
Thank you for having me.
It's not quite 20 years. That makes me sound very old. So I just want to fact check that right off the bat. It's not quite that long.
Dusty Weis
Go ahead, drop your facts on me. That's fine. That's good. But no, I feel like you and I are of about the same age. I was born in 85. You were born right around in there too. So like, this is very pertinent to us on a very, very personal level, because we were coming of age when soft drink brands started giving away jets. And I don't know about you, but it made an impression on me.
But let's talk about Liquid Death for a second. It's one of the fastest growing brands in the world right now. Its creative, its media footprint, one of the wildest, and I say this with love, one of the most deranged.
The company was founded in 2018 and a big reason for this meteoric rise is you do crazy crap that people love.
Why are you the way that you are?
Andy Pearson
Why is Liquid Death the way we are?
You know, I think our founder and myself and you know several other people come from backgrounds in advertising and I think we see that there's a lot wrong with the industry and a lot of the… I would say, you know advertising and marketing is a very extractive industry, right?
It's usually going to people and asking them to part with their money and not offering a sort of a two way communication. Add on top of that, you know, obviously I spent years in agencies. I think by doing that, you come into contact with a lot of great, wonderful, creative people. And you also come in contact with a lot of practices and processes that just are mind-numbingly stupid and, really frustrating.
And so I think part of what we're doing is to try to maybe correct that and then also use it sort of against itself. think we're using marketing cliches and marketing problems against itself to kind of self parody because… to get deep for a second, I think as the internet and media and everything fracture over time, we have less of these cultural touchstones of, you know, listening to the same music, consuming the same movies or television or whatever it is.
But I think one of the ubiquitous things that we all are forced to experience together is advertising, right? It's the one inescapable force. So in that way, it is this one thing that everyone has some pretty genuine experience with and probably dislike for.
And so I think that's part of the secret to success is how can we make satire of this thing that we are inherently doing ourselves. A lot of the things that we wanted to do inherently, were kind of over our careers, we were trying to do within the structure. And the stuff that always appealed to me was the stuff that it's like, yeah, but let's f*** with the formula. Let's destroy the formula from within. That stuff feels way more interesting.
And so I think, I think Liquid Death has just been a chance to do that because we finally have the keys to the Corvette, so to speak. And so we're, we're just driving the thing around.
Dusty Weis
I like that. I like to tell people that our philosophy at Podcamp Media is we're going to go have adventures and then we're going to tell great stories about them. And it sounds like this is something that vibes kind of strongly with what you guys do. That much said, your philosophy being what it is, you're not shy about calling out that contrast with other brands when they are inauthentic or stuff shirted or something like that. Is that what made it so appealing to try to recreate or even one-up the infamous Pepsi Jet giveaway?
Andy Pearson
I think for us, we saw somebody who probably could have done right or could have done better. It was this famous advertising faux pas, this unforced error of sorts. The thing seemed really difficult to do in the first place. And so I think the appeal of it was partially like, what if this thing that somebody else set out to minimize and push under the rug, what if we set out to just do that thing outright? Because that seems the opposite of what someone else was trying to do. And then, and then additionally, that seems very difficult to do.
We’re stubborn here where we will try to do something that is that no one else will think to do or no one else will think can be done. And I think this presented a really fun opportunity to test that, to see if we really could do that or not.
Dusty Weis
Sort of a we've done the impossible and that makes us mighty approach.
Andy Pearson
Our founder, myself, even our SVP of marketing, we actually all worked at this agency years ago called Crispin Porter Bogusky. And, Crispin was really on the forefront of… changed the advertising game at the time by doing groundbreaking work for Burger King and Mini and created the Truth Campaign, the anti-smoking Truth Campaign.
I could go on and on, they did groundbreaking work. And I was there for five years. That's kind of where I cut my teeth.
And in that time there, I didn't have a single idea, nor that I knew of anyone that had presented an idea where someone said like, this is impossible. We can't do it.
A lot of the work we were doing was like, let's be the first to do this. Let's, let's do this thing that people assume is impossible or would never do. Let's do it because it's difficult. That makes it inherently interesting. We were very lucky to work at a place that had that mentality. And I think that got really ingrained in us from a very early stage.
Dusty Weis
Speaking of very early stages, I like to say that marketing is a lot like music in that I feel like marketers develop their own unique style based on marketing that they've consumed over the years, places that they've worked. And so certainly that agency is one example of that. Safe to say that as a 90s kid growing up flipping through Nickelodeon and whatnot, seeing that Pepsi Jet giveaway is sort of a foundational influence for you and what is your first memory of that campaign?
Andy Pearson
I know I was exposed to it whether at the time or later years. Certainly I was one of the first kids I knew like on the internet snooping around and doing stuff. So I've always kind of found weird wormholes on things. And then of course, you know, it came back later more recently with the Netflix documentary.
But it was also around the same time I remember… I had a sixth grade teacher who was like teaching us about… it was supposed to be a language arts class. And then she had this one section that she did have classes about like the evils of advertising.
And like we were learning about taxes and evils of advertising and like all kinds of crazy stuff that no one should have been learning in English class. I had just moved down to like outside Atlanta, Georgia. I had grown up in the North of my whole life and I moved down to the South and I was like, what are we doing here?
And I remember she's like showing us ads of like Chivas ads or liquor ads or something with like, where skulls are airbrushed into the ice cubes apparently. She's really-
Dusty Weis
Right, right, right. The subliminal messaging. We're corrupting the minds of our users,
Andy Pearson
And I think as a sixth grader, I was like, this is cool. Yeah. I was getting the kind of wrong message out of that.
Because it was so obviously insane to me, even at the tender age of 11 or whatever, 11 and 12.
I kind of realized, like, wow, this medium has a power. And people read stuff into it. And people dissect it. And it's just a fascinating human psychology.
That's one of my first memories, really, of the power of advertising. And then you have this great example of someone who biffed it pretty hard, I guess.
And so I think between those two, it just feels like an interesting thing for us to try.
Jeff Beer
I think Liquid Death's decision to give away a jet is hilarious and borderline genius for a couple of reasons.
One, that it's consistent with Liquid Death's overall approach. If you look at the stunts, both through collaborations, whether it's Corpse Paint with Elf Beauty, Elf Cosmetics.
Or… I think it went for like 60 grand at auction… the Yeti Casket Cooler, like these big stunts that the brand just kind of knows how to mess and play with commercial culture.
And also genius because I feel like they took the wind out of any sales that Pepsi might have to reboot it or correct their mistake next year in 2026 on like the 30th anniversary.
Liquid death swoops in.
Dusty Weis
Just sort of put that final nail in that Pepsi coffin there.
And we're talking to Jeff Beer, senior staff editor covering marketing, advertising, and brands for Fast Company. He's also the author of an article, “Three Lessons for Marketers from Netflix's Pepsi, Where's My Jet?”
Great documentary that came out a couple years ago that if you're interested, definitely worth checking out here.
But essentially, to sort of recap the history of the thing a little bit, the spot in question, this infamous example of brand overreach and then a brand paying the price for their overreach.
This spot launched in March of 1996. You could get a t-shirt, a leather jacket, really cool aviator sunglasses, and then for 7 million points, the Harrier Jet.
Now you got the points by collecting the labels from bottles or boxes, but this eagle-eyed 21-year-old business student from Washington, John Leonard, read the fine print and saw that you could actually buy Pepsi points for 10 points to the dollar.
Archival Footage
I did the quick math, go, know, 7 million, you know, 10 cents a piece, $700,000.
Leonard got the $700,000 from five well-off investors, sent Pepsi 15 labels and a check, and waited for his jet.
Pepsi's response, the ad, was just a joke.
Tens of millions of Americans and people around the world saw the spot, got the joke and laughed. Mr. Leonard saw the spot, hired business advisors and lawyers, and decided to take legal action.
But Pepsi went to court first, asking that Leonard's claim be declared frivolous. Now Leonard has filed his own suit, demanding the jet. The question now for the Pepsi generation, is John Leonard among the best and the brightest, or is he just a nuisance?
I think he should get the jet.
If he drank that much Pepsi, then he probably should.
Maybe he is goofy, but I mean, they are making those claims and if they can't back them up, then they shouldn't be putting them on air.
In case anyone else is thinking of ordering a jet, Pepsi has now raised the number of points needed from 7 million to 700 million.
Dusty Weis
The whole thing was clearly headed for a courtroom, Jeff, but Pepsi actually sued Leonard first to secure a favorable venue for themselves.
Leonard counter-sued them for fraud and breach of contract. And while Pepsi eventually won the court case and subsequent appeals on the ground that quote, “no reasonable person” could have believed the company was selling Harrier jets. I would argue that Pepsi lost the moment that they tried to back out of this deal because this story was a news phenomenon.
How do you quantify the bad press that this generated?
Jeff Beer
It's a really good question.
I find it hard to kind of go back pre-internet and pre social media pre-internet when it comes to this kind of thing…
I'm sure it was huge because obviously it was covered by all the newspapers. You can go back and see New York Times archives, LA times archives.
But I actually went back and looked, I wanted to see if the brand damage that I would imagine it cause actually happened. And it seems that, you know, between 96 and 97, relative market share in the U.S. in terms of case sales… like cases of soda sales… between Coke and Pepsi were pretty flat.
Like, Coke was always more, but I think they maybe went up by a percent over the course of this disaster. It wasn't a huge thing. I do think it still offers some really valuable lessons, obviously in the most extreme form, that marketers could definitely need reminders of and need to need to not repeat today.
Dusty Weis
Well, let's parse those lessons then because, and again, you wrote an article that parsed some of the big takeaways from the Netflix documentary that came out a few years back, “Pepsi, Where's My Jet?”
What would you say are some of the big takeaways that really surprised you from that?
Jeff Beer
Well, there were three in the article. The first one was trust your creatives.
Back in the day, Pepsi worked with an ad agency called BBDO. And if you watch the documentary, you see they have one of the BBDO creative directors in the doc talking about the process. And he actually shows… I found this part fascinating because you really get a look…
Dusty Weis
I was shocked. I was shocked, jaw on the floor.
Jeff Beer
When he showed the drawings, like the concept drawings.
So their original idea was to get a very normal looking kid, even, I won’t say ugly kid, but like there's a kid who was on the Sandlot, kind of the goofy chubby kid from the Sandlot.
They wanted that kind of kid. That's what the drawing depicts. Because it just makes it that much more like anybody could win. It elevates the normal to the extraordinary.
And then at the same time, cause the whole thing's a joke. The jet was always a joke.
They wanted to put at the bottom of the screen, like, if you collect 700 million points, which is impossible.
Dusty Weis
700 million, which comes out to $70 million at 10 cents a point, which is twice as expensive as a Harrier jet actually is. And all of sudden the whole thing just comes apart if you're actually trying to get the jet.
Jeff Beer
Yes, absolutely. It just inherently makes it impossible. It solves, there's no problem if, if, the brand trusts its creatives at this point.
Dusty Weis
The agency creatives were spot on on this. But then the executives walk in.
Jeff Beer
Exactly. There's a cliche or a stereotype in marketing advertising where, you know, if you show a client three ideas, they're going to pick the worst one.
And it's not always, it's not, it's not fair to a lot of creative marketers out there, but this story kind of really shows where some of these stereotypes are born because the clients look at it and they first they nix the normal looking kid and kind of get a little Tom Cruise look alike.
Then they don't like the way 700 million looks on the screen. Like that's the reason they changed the number to 7 million.
Dusty Weis
The quote that made my jaw hit the floor, only because I've heard it from a creative executive in the past was, “It's just too busy.” I've heard that. I've been in that room.
Jeff Beer
It's expensive. That's an expensive move. Yeah. So if you're going to have creative agency partners, there has to be a level of trust. There has to be a trust. You went with them for a reason.
Maybe for Pepsi, the reason was they did what you said, but the reason should be that they're bringing something different to the table. And these guys clearly had a vision and the brand messed it up and the brand’s direct involvement caused this entire problem.
That's lesson number one.
Lesson number two. Let's just say all of that already happened. Okay. Lesson number two is do what you say you're going to do. If you say something, you got to do it.
Today it's like, I feel like over the last decade, this rule has sort of translated into, you know, for years, brands would post kind of funny, whether it's merch or product variations on April Fool's Day. Like imagine we made, you know, ranch popsicles or whatever it is, something, something wacky.
That has morphed into you can't just make a joke of it. You should actually make the thing.
That's what gets people excited. If they could actually buy the joke, that's where the wins come in.
Going back to Liquid Death, that's exactly what they do. You say you're going to do something. You got to follow it up.
Dusty Weis
Now there's a million reasons for Pepsi to not actually give the kid a $35 million dollar piece of military hardware here, but there were other avenues that they could have pursued besides just suing him.
Jeff Beer
A hundred percent! That is maybe the worst reaction to do. I mean, I wrote back when the doc came out, mean, people just want to be seen and heard.
Imagine this 20 year old kid got like, Pepsi for life or even two years and a ride in a jet that was close to… like you said, you, you flew with the Blue Angels.
I mean, imagine, you know, they get him in with the Blue Angels. He goes on a ride, gets a joy ride and then gets all the Pepsi gear and a special card that says he gets a free case every week for the rest of his life. I mean, that is way cheaper and a huge brand win. I guarantee John Leonard would probably drift off into the sunset drinking a Pepsi.
I think all brands should do this anyway, in terms of if you're trying to build an audience, if you're trying to build an emotional connection with consumers, you have to be able to give them something.
Sometimes that's not literally, sometimes that's you're entertaining them for 30 seconds. Or in this case, you're not suing a guy who is clearly a big customer, clearly was paying attention to your advertising.
They broke all three of those rules and it came back to bite them.
Almost 30 years later, again, with an entire documentary on Netflix.
Dusty Weis
Now, you noted that there was not necessarily an immediate impact beyond just like a 1% drop off in market share to Pepsi.
But is it possible to make the case that this was the first domino to fall? I mean, Pepsi has seen a precipitous decline in market share over the last 30 years.
Is it reductionist to say that the jet spot lost the cola wars for Pepsi or at least sent them in that direction? Put them into a tailspin from which they've never recovered?
Jeff Beer
A tailspin. Nice. It was right there. You had to take it.
Well, my short answer is no, I don't think so. I think, people's memories are way shorter than that.
I think that actually that Spice Girls campaign that came out the next year was a huge hit. Then you get into the 2000s with, you know, sugar and people not wanting it. All of the sudden people are shifting away from soda.
So both Coke and Pepsi are struggling… now they have, you know, flavored sparkling waters and juices, and they're just getting into all this stuff.
So all to say, it's a much more complex business.
It sucked for the brand, then, and last year back in 22, when the doc came out.
Ultimately it probably didn't really have that big of an impact. I'm actually surprised, speaking of impact, it surprised me that the brand didn't take the doc series as an opportunity. Obviously you say nothing if you have nothing to say and just sort of hope it goes away, but whatever.
But I think honestly, the brand could have, especially in this day and age, really leaned into the self-deprecating, really leaned into it and actually made it a positive brand moment.
You look at something like what Coke did when season three of Stranger Things completely invoked the New Coke disaster that Coca-Cola had back in ‘85, I believe.
And Coke ran with it. They agreed that Stranger Things could use their trademarks and everything. They had a re-release of some kind. So they actually made a positive out of the negative.
And I think Pepsi kind of maybe missed an opportunity there.
Dusty Weis
I would even posit that the reason that they didn't take that opportunity… because the documentary was popular… The reason they didn't take that opportunity is because even all these years later, I think they're still smarting from it.
I think that the boardroom still feels like there's some salt in that wound and they just didn't want to touch it.
But regardless of whether or not it lost them the Cola Wars, and I do think that there is a cohort, mainly kids who were sixth graders on the playground at school who remember it like I do, that it did have an impact for…
It does feel as well like a broader turning point for branding and marketing. What would you say is its bigger place in the context of brand and marketing history?
Jeff Beer
That's a good question. In terms of the broader history of advertising, I think, yeah, it's a warning.
If something like that happened today, it would last for a very long time, between like social and Reddit. And I mean, people could just really make it impact the brand a lot quicker and a lot worse. And I think its place in advertising history is just like this massive warning, a red flag that says, do not do this.
Dusty Weis
So fast forward 30 years here, you just walked into a pitch meeting with the leadership at Liquid Death and said, hey, you know that publicity stunt that destroyed Pepsi as a brand? We should do that, but actually follow through.
How was that pitch received?
Andy Pearson
That pitch didn't happen. That pitch was in a room where we were all just joking and talking about things that are interesting that pop up. We have a good architecture for the way that works.
And so in one of these big meetings where we do that, I think someone brought up the documentary, and we kind of all laughed about it.
And then with us, very quickly, something that starts as a joke turns very serious within about three minutes. Very quickly, someone's like, well, doot-doot-doot, here's a Harrier jet that we can buy right now for this.
And so once that door's opened, we just kept running through it.
We don't do any pitches. It's all just us bringing some clay together, talking over it, and then very quickly deciding that, “Hey, this is the right idea. So let's go for it.”
So there's not that sort of formal process.
Dusty Weis
The creative that accompanied this was absolutely incredible. The video that you put out announcing it, the website, all of it so very on-brand, all of it hilarious.
But I do just want to take a moment to appreciate the epic production value that went into this campaign.
Liquid Death Commercial
Liquid Death is giving away an actual jet and anyone who's 18 or older like me can win it. Yeah, it's 100 % a real jet.
You might remember a kid back in the 90s who thought he won a jet from a giant soda company, but then the soda company said it was all a joke, so he took to the court and he lost.
But Liquid Death is not joking at all. In fact, they're even throwing in six months of free hangar space.
They're calling this thing the dehydrate because with the top speed of about 470 miles per hour, it'll relieve you of your bodily fluids and make you empty your stomach.
That's why they're also throwing in a year's supply of Liquid Death to help you rehydrate. You just have to walk into a physical store to buy Liquid Death and text a qualified receipt.
And get this, every can is an entry. So who wants to puke and pee their pants? I know I do.
The more Liquid Death you buy, the more chances you have to own an actual... What the fu-
Dusty Weis
So first of all, the branding as Dehydrator, having been in the back of a jet, could I say it's a little too on the nose, but so delightfully on-brand for Liquid Death? Was that part of the spitball session?
Andy Pearson
Yeah, a lot of times… we'll sometimes have ideas and then we're like, well, we have to tie this to the product we make.
And in this case, we're like, well, maybe it dehydrates you so badly because you're going to puke and pee yourself that you'll have to drink more Liquid Death.
So that's where the year supply of liquid death came in as well.
Dusty Weis
Can confirm, but also didn't pee myself. Need to make that clear, but you actually, sweat a lot. Like it's like a workout.
As hilarious and tongue in cheek is that is it's also obvious to anyone who watched the spot that you put a ton of thought into the logistics of this thing, because the last thing that you want to do is say you're going to do it and then trip over it in front of the entire public. You don't live that down in 2024, 2025.
How did you make sure that you could absolutely 100% pull it off?
Andy Pearson
Yeah, no, thank you for noticing that. Because it is, it's a big risk to kind of step out and say, hey, we're gonna do this thing that someone very publicly could not do. And so every step we knew it had to be airtight and had to be able to deliver on what we said we were gonna do or we were gonna face public repercussions.
People like to use the term “risky” on the work that we do. I wholeheartedly disagree. But I do think that this thing, you know… it was definitely the biggest leap of faith that we kind of… not a leap of faith, but you know, we were dropping rocks all the way down to make sure we weren't going to hit bottom on that one.
Dusty Weis
Even all the way down to like, we're going to include six months of hanger rental with the thing, because I would imagine that you guys were sitting around pressure testing these ideas and somebody says, well, what if we go to deliver them the jet and they just don't have anywhere to put it?
Like all of the sudden there's an opportunity for you to come across as the bad guy there. And you thought through every single one of those possibilities.
Andy Pearson
Yeah, exactly that. And then also it's like, hey, we want to do this in good faith. And so here's a way to prove that we mean business on this.
Dusty Weis
Does your legal team hate you now?
Andy Pearson
I think this is one of the earlier things that they got involved on.
No, it was just, it was a lot of logistics in a way that we have not pulled off and kudos to the team for doing that. I luckily get to be the person that makes a lot of the funny videos, but there was a ton of people behind the scenes that really worked hard on this one to bring it to life.
Dusty Weis
So you dropped that out into the wild and what is the reaction from the public?
Andy Pearson
A lot of people couldn't believe it. We got a ton of press on it. We got news.
Actually, my most exciting one was I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR. They do the little cold openings. And they randomly mention it. They're like, “Beverage company Liquid Death is giving away a jet.” I was like, “Holy shit!”
That one just kind of caught me off guard, because it happened a couple of days after we dropped it.
Yeah, I mean, we got a massive reaction. And then on top of that, we had a lot of people that really got excited about it and went after it and were really trying to win the thing, which makes sense, you know?
Dusty Weis
Yeah, I mean, I wanted it.
We certainly, we didn't see a lot of TV commercials about this, but that's not typically the space in which you play anyways. So how did social, how did other alternative means, influencers… I mean, you guys dragged a little bit of that…
Not a little bit, a lot of bit of that into promoting this at every step here. How did you build that part of the campaign out?
Andy Pearson
Yeah, so we had our kind of launch video, which got millions of views, a lot of natural spread on that.
As we always do, we have our great PR team that helps us out. Then, yeah, we worked with some influencers. We sent Airrack out there and his crew to take a ride in it and some of them passed out as they're doing it so they got to film that and share that.
Airrack Video Footage
The only rule is whoever can withstand the most G-forces before blacking out wins.
Once we got to around five G's Doha was the first person to black out.
So it ended up just being me and Beans in the final showdown.
I should probably tell you Liquid Death is actually giving this jet away. All you have to do is buy Liquid Death from a physical store and text them the receipt. Every can is an entry.
Andy Pearson
Then we had also our great sales team did a bunch of work in store and our distributors and there's all kinds of really fun in store displays where they were like cardboard jets that were hanging from the ceiling in stores and all kinds of stuff.
So it was kind of full court press. And obviously a big piece of this was driving people into the stores and getting the retailers on board.
And of course for them, it's like, “Hey, we're to give away a jet and have people come in your store and buy it.” So a lot of people are really excited about it.
Dusty Weis
Yeah, and again, from what I saw, the reception was overwhelmingly positive, overwhelmingly just excitement. But at the end of the day, as marketers, even when we're just going out and doing fun stuff that we think is awesome, we’ve still got to have KPIs. We've still got to track results. We've still got to deliver for the company.
And L-39 Albatross jets ain't cheap!
I know those retail for somewhere just south of a half million dollars. We're talking about hanger rentals, jet fuel, pilot’s fees, probably a crap load of insurance. All-in, I would imagine that you guys were in for millions of dollars on this.
So did you hit the KPIs? How much attention would you say you generated?
Andy Pearson
Yeah. I won't go into distinct numbers on this, but certainly we were extremely pleased by the response we got. Like we said, activating people, getting them in stores, purchasing. We were very happy.
And point of clarification, we did not promise a driver. I believe we said, “Pilot not included.”
Dusty Weis
Yes, yes, certainly.
But also the jet has to get from A to B and B to A and somebody's got to fly it while your influencers are up in it.
Andy Pearson
Yeah, we had a great pilot who took us up.
Dusty Weis
Pretty sweet gig, if you could get it.
Zac from North Carolina was announced as the winner. What can you tell us about him that we're allowed to talk about? Most importantly, how pumped was he and what the heck is he planning to with that jet?
Andy Pearson
Well, I'll just say, yeah, Zac was the winner. Again, to kind of respect his wishes, we're not going to be able to talk more. I can't really say much more about that.
But we were, we were stoked that he won. He seems like a great dude and we're happy for him.
Dusty Weis
Did you get to make that phone call to tell him that he had won?
Andy Pearson
No, I was off doing other stuff. I believe our legal team reached out and got to do it.
It's funny, after the contest ended, it took us a little while to announce the winner. And so you saw a lot of people online that are like, “Where's the winner? This was all fake. They got us.”
There was a lot of that. It was like, no, it's really hard to offer someone to give away a jet. It's not like an easy thing to do.
Dusty Weis
It's a lot of paperwork there!
Andy Pearson
Yeah, we felt bad that it took so long because I know people started to question it.
But we went as fast as we could to announce the winner and find him.
Dusty Weis
Not that I'm going to tell you how to do your job, but for future reference, sometime in your life, be the person that makes that phone call.
Because I got to make the call once to tell someone that they had won $5,000. And it's like top five moments in my marketing career, followed up, of course, by the horrific realities of getting that paperwork done.
But for the moment, like talking to this guy who was out on his tractor in his farm field telling him he won $5,000, it's like, I felt like Vanna freakin’ White, man. It was great.
Andy Pearson
Yeah, that's awesome.
Dusty Weis
What about you personally? Like, is there some satisfaction for you, Andy, in being able to do something epic that has for so long been viewed as an act of brand suicide for a beverage company? And you guys pulled it off!
Andy Pearson
I mean, we all pulled it off. It was very much a group effort. I just got to luckily be the person to make the videos and do all the other stuff.
I think the real people who deserve credit are, like I said, the folks that had to figure out how to source a jet and all the legal behind it and all that stuff. Those are the ones that really pulled it off.
I just showed up and made it look like a kid puked in the backseat of a jet or something.
Dusty Weis
When you look back at it, and the entire experience of the last 12 months-ish that it's taken to get this thing off the ground… pun, unintended… Is there anything that you feel like you've taken away from the experience or learned that's going to make you a better marketer going forward?
Andy Pearson
No, I mean, I think… to answer your question, no.
That's rude.
No, I mean, I think one of the things that got me excited about this is as I've set up top, we're often doing satire and we're doing parody.
And in a way, this was again, kind of doing both.
It was a genuine giveaway, but it was also kind of, poking at industry stuff.
And I think this partially showed us that we can expand the palette of stuff that we work with.
And I think that's kind of been the Liquid Death story over the last couple of years, where every time we do something, we learned something more and we can apply that to the next thing.
We have other brand partners or celebrity partners that want to come in and do stuff and people that we have access to that we never would have if you rewinded back three and a half years ago when I started, or even two years ago.
I think that's the exciting thing to me is that messing with a giveaway and using that as a vehicle for comedy is kind of a new, exciting territory. And I think, you know, there'll probably be other stuff that we do in that similar space and then there's all kinds of other spaces that open up.
So that's sort of the thing to me that's always exciting is, we're trying to conquer all these new spaces and this just showed us another place we can go with it.
Dusty Weis
Speaking of what's next, what are you guys cooking up for your next big promotion? What should we be watching out for?
Andy Pearson
Uh, who knows? I say that only slightly glibly, but I think the fun that we're having is that we're very methodical about what we do, but we leave the door open for a lot of improv.
And so I think we have a ton of exciting stuff on tap for this year. But then we also just see what's going to happen and what's going to walk in. And there's plenty more down the road. I just, unfortunately, either can't talk about it or don't know what it is yet.
Dusty Weis
That's fair enough. That's good answer. And if it winds up being something epic, we'll definitely plan to get you back on the horn again to discuss it here.
But I've got to say from my seat as an observer from the outside, just a terrific campaign, incredibly well executed and the cherry on top being the fact that you made history in a way that someone else couldn't.
And so I hope that throughout all of this, you and your team have actually had the opportunity to take a deep breath, pat yourselves on the back and say, “way to go.”
Because it's just, it's good stuff. But Andy Pearson, the VP of Creative at Liquid Death, thank you so much for making time and chatting with us here on Lead Balloon.
Andy Pearson
Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Dusty Weis
Thanks to Jeff Beer from Fast Company for joining us as well.
And thank you for tuning in. Here on Lead Balloon, we tell the stories of strategic communicators doing the impossible and everything that they learn in the process. So we hope to see you back here in this feed again sometime soon. Follow us in your favorite podcast app.
Lead Balloon is produced by Podcamp Media, where we provide branded podcast production solutions for businesses. Our podcast studios are located in the heart of beautiful downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We work with brands all over North America to help them launch and build podcasts that work. Check out our website, podcampmedia.com.
Music for this episode by Tiger Gang, and dialogue editing by Matt Covarrubias.
And until the next time, folks, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.