• by Danielle Oster , Yesterday

In its latest attention-grabbing marketing stunt, Liquid Death gives prebiotic soda brands some shit about all that fiber.

The brand launched the “Toilet Taste Test” campaign to promote its line of “soda-flavored” sparkling water. In the campaign video, participants in what viewers are told is a “blind taste test with real people,” are asked to test the product against an unspecified prebiotic soda brand, tasked with chugging two cans.

The catch? After they chug option #1 (the brand’s flavored sparkling water), the moderator asks that they enter a nearby booth with a toilet to test the prebiotic soda, “just to be safe” — since two cans of the prebiotic soda contains six times the amount of fiber as a leading fiber-based laxative. (Obviously this also disqualifies it as a “blind” taste test.)

Responses are about what you’d expect: a mix of incredulity and poop jokes, including a comment following through on the obvious set-up of designating the prebiotic soda as the “number two” option in the taste test. Liquid Death adds in a series of fart noises “for dramatic effect” (as the disclaimer puts it).

Not revealing which prebiotic soda is involved in the “Toilet Taste Test” doesn’t just allow Liquid Death to avoid directly targeting a specific brand, but, since it’s standing in for prebiotic sodas in general, lets it apply the stench of the unwanted association to the entire category. Audiences are a lot less likely to parse the numbers than they are to have a visceral reaction related to all the “number two” business.

There’s a degree of irony to the ad coming after prebiotic soda brands for their fiber content. Poppi faced a lawsuit last year related to marketing claims around the “gut health” benefits of the prebiotic soda, which points to the amount of prebiotic fiber in the products being “too low to cause meaningful gut health benefits for the consumer from just one can.”

The campaign follows Liquid Death entering into a partnership with the Madison Square Garden (MSG) Family of Companies earlier this spring, providing significant brand presence for its sparkling water and iced tea products across the MSG portfolio. For Memorial Day, Liquid Death displayed its first ever activation on the Exosphere, the customizable exterior of MSG-owned Las Vegas venue Sphere, which it claims contains the “largest LED screen in the world.”