Canned water brand Liquid Death teamed up with Houston Rockets’ Jalen Green for a typically macabre marketing stunt based around playing basketball with a severed head and a Hoop Head branded ball giveaway.
The brand linked with shooting guard Green, who is also a Liquid Death investor, for a gratuitously gnarly campaign spearheaded by a hero spot and supported by a limited edition giveaway and sales window for its branded ‘Hoop Head Basketballs’ for the (dark) princely cost of $125.
The lead video, titled ‘Jalen Green x Liquid Death Severed Head Basketball’ dropped on 28 March and invited viewers to ‘Murder your thirst’ and ‘Dunk its head’ and sought to drive them online to buy their own Hoop Head at https://liquiddeath.com/hoophead
The online spot was backed by social support across the brand’s own channels and by a PR push.
The campaign was conceived and developed by the brand’s in-house creative team, while product design was led by Will Carsola who created Cartoon Network’s prime time Adult Swim show’s ‘Mr Pickles’.
“Basketball is just another corner of culture that we thought would be fun to pop up in with our own style of entertainment,” said Liquid Death Creative VP Andy Pearson. “We’ve been huge fans of Jalen [Green] for a long time. We hooked him up with some Liquid Death, and it turned out he was a fan of ours, too. Jalen really represents the next generation of basketball stars and fans. They hate traditional marketing as much as we do so it felt like we could join forces to create something that pokes at the traditional brand-athlete relationship.”
“We knew we wanted to make a unique piece of memorabilia,” Pearson added. “Basketballs felt like an obvious place to start, and basketballs are round like heads. The whole concept felt like one of those hairbrained toy ideas from the ’90s. So, we went back and watched a lot of retro toy commercials, Gatorade commercials, Wheaties commercials. It was the stuff a lot of us grew up on.”
Apparently, according to Pearson, during the ad shoot the kids were initially creeped out by the fake heads, but then got really into it.
“It was hard to get them to stop playing with them between takes because they were having so much fun throwing a severed head around,” recalled Pearson. “That said, there was one kid who really didn’t like it. Their mom threatened to take away iPad time if they didn’t touch the head.”
The team at Liquid Death which worked on the project included Co-Founder/CEO Mike Cessario, SVP of Marketing Dan Murphy, SVP of Digital Retail Hamid Saify, VP of Creative Andy Pearson, VP of Marketing Greg Fass, VP of Design Franke Dresmé, VP of Cultwear Misha Brunelli, Creative Director Will Carsola, Associate Creative Director Stu Golley, Senior Brand Manager Tia Sherwood, Senior Nihilist Brendan Kelly, Apparel Production & Sourcing Manager Sean Snirk, Director Daniel Stessen, Executive Producer Johnny Eastlund, Senior Producer Tatianna Rodriguez, Production Coordinators Emily Draznik and Tanner Blount, Director of Photography Mårten Tedin, Still Photographer Arturo Almos, Gaffer Josh Arriazola, Key Grip Cesar Quintanilla, Wardrobe Stylist Stefania Maso, SFX MUAs Manny Lemus, Casey Jay Wong and Dahlia Carmichael, plus Location Manager Chris Lacher.
Comment
There is only one answer to the question ‘Which brand wants to play hoops with a severed head?’ and that, of course, is Liquid Death!
This dark, nonsensical, weird and wonderful campaign sees Liquid Death continue its distinctly un-PC approach to marketing. The inventive and comically gruesome campaign adds to the brand’s macabre marketing legend which also has included a Big Game bet called ‘Witchcraft’ and its limited edition ‘Prime Skateboards Painted With Tony Hawk’s Blood’.
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.