• by Danielle Oster , October 28, 2024

Liquid Death’s latest campaign takes the unexpected approach of greeting consumers with messages of their impending misfortune.

Ads with fate-foretelling strips of paper housed inside fortune cookies are being passed out to diners at select restaurants in Los Angeles and New York City starting Oct. 25, in a campaign that will run for about a month.

This being Liquid Death, though, the campaign didn’t involve simply slapping a logo and tagline on typical prewritten messages like “Generosity will repay itself sooner than you imagine.”

Instead, Liquid Death teamed up with OpenFortune -- a specialist in this niche advertising space which has worked with brands including Duolingo and Verizon, and claims to partner with some 47,000 restaurants -- on “misfortune cookies” featuring messages more in line with the brand’s irreverent tone. “.

One example of a misfortune message: “You will live a long, happy life. No wait. Sorry. That was actually for the person across from you. Things are not looking good for you.” Such messages are featured on paper slips that are “death black” in color (contrasting with the typical white paper slips, in line with Liquid Death branding), with the brand’s logo and a QR code that lets consumers opt in to weekly "Horrorscopes" from the brand.

“By placing their rebellious, tongue-in-cheek messaging inside our fortune cookies, Liquid Death can surprise customers at the dinner table in a way that’s as unexpected as it is memorable,” OpenFortune president Carlo Palomino said in a statement. “It’s a bold, disruptive approach that aligns perfectly with their brand while giving consumers something to talk about long after their meal."

Liquid Death also appears to have made good on its promise to award a distinctively over-the-top prize in a giveaway launched earlier this year.  Back in May, the brand kicked off a summer promotional sweepstakes promising to give away a real jet -- inspired by the 2022 Netflix documentary “Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?,” which told the story of a lawsuit against  Pepsi for not following through on its promise to award a sweepstakes winner with a jet plane in 1995. 

On Friday, October 25, Liquid Death announced the winner of the sweepstakes on social channels including Instagram, awarding the jet, dubbed the “Dehydrator”  to “Zac from North Carolina.”

“We're very excited to become the first beverage company in history to give away a fighter jet,” Liquid Death vice president, creative Andy Pearson said in a statement, jabbing at Pepsi’s refusal to follow through on its jet giveaway nearly two decades ago. “And it couldn't have been won by a better person,” he added. “ Zac is a huge Liquid Death fan.”