For this podcast we had a guest host, regular contributor to the magazine, author and co-founder of Genius Steals, Faris Yakob, take control. His guest was VP of Creative at Liquid Death, Andy Pearson. They discuss Liquid Death’s creative process and how not getting bogged down in details helps creatively, as long as everyone agrees that what they’re doing is a good idea and can be brought to life.
Andy talks about how the creative process often lasts all the way into the edit room, and how it’s important to allow every piece of that process to develop in real time — to get the best creative product. Faris questioned Andy on the writing process, with Andy saying how he sees parallels with sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). Andy then mentioned the mutually beneficial relationship they have with celebrities like Tony Hawk (in one stunt they put Tony’s blood into limited edition skateboards), and how Liquid Death products made their way onto TV show productions and movie sets — meaning it was less of an uphill battle to work with actors, for example, as many knew the brand well from the get-go.
The conversation then moved onto their punishing production schedule and managing creative energy, with Andy saying ‘ensure the creative process feels easy and fun — don’t make it hard on yourselves. Don’t red line all the time — find ways to sit under that.’ Faris asked Andy about how Liquid Death see themselves as a brand or business, to which Andy spoke about how a lot of what they do feels like an ‘elaborate art piece’, where they really make the things they put out there as products — like their collaboration with snowboard brand Burton, where they made ‘Deathtrap’, a snowboard so extreme you would literally die if you rode it (as their lawyers were keen to point out). The boards cost a few hundred dollars and sold out within 25 minutes of going on sale.
They also talked about their collaboration with disruptive golf apparel brand Bad Birdie, where they created the ‘Uro club‘, a hollow golf club which you could use to relieve yourself on the golf course if you got caught short — obviously from drinking too much Liquid Death. Again, this club, at the time of writing, is available to purchase, but has also sold out.
He also talked about working with The Deep (a character played by Chace Crawford on satirical superhero TV show, The Boys) and how when creating scripts it was important that they took the world of The Boys seriously — that Liquid Death exists there, as much as The Deep exist in ours.
‘One of the things we try and do is toe the line between “Is this thing real or not?” and “Oh my god, it is real”‘, Andy said. ‘We’re just a humour brand at our core’, he added, and ‘we cut counter to culture and marketing — ultimately we want to be an entertainment company’. Speaking further about entertainment, Andy then touched on The Adventures of Murder Man, an animation show they’re creating with Liquid Death’s mascot as its main character. He was keen to point out that this wasn’t to be an advert, but a proper show that they were keen would be picked up.
Editor’s note: this podcast is 46 minutes long and, as you can probably tell from this piece, packed full of interesting discussion about Liquid Death’s creative process. We do hope you enjoy it. And huge thanks to our podcast guest host, Faris Yakob.
