Someone happily paid over a pound for a can of water last week, because it had a skull on it and said Murder Your Thirst. That skull is now worth 1.4 billion dollars.
Liquid Death sells mountain water. The exact same thing that falls out of the sky for free. And they have turned it into one of the fastest growing drinks brands on the planet, roughly 333 million dollars a year, in 133,000 shops.
The whole thing started when the founder watched people at a punk gig pour water into empty energy drink cans, just so they looked cooler holding them. He realised nobody was selling the boring product to that crowd. So he canned water like a heavy metal beer and sold it as an attitude.
Here is the part most brands miss. The water is not really the product. The entertainment is.
They painted a skateboard with the founders’ blood and sold it. They ran a campaign to literally sell your soul. They are the official water at over 120 festivals.
The lesson is not “be edgy”. It is that a boring product in a boring category is not a problem to hide. It is the biggest opening you have, because nobody else in the aisle is trying.