How Liquid Death Turns Weird Ads Into Real Revenue

*Map your media spend with our full-funnel audit template:* https://clickhubspot.com/nw4u Most marketers optimize for a metric that quietly guarantees they'll fail. Benoit Vatere runs media for Liquid Death, and he says if that number is your north star, you're already in trouble. Kipp sits down with the Chief Media Officer and Chief Digital Commerce Officer at Liquid Death to break down the actual system behind one of the most talked-about brands in marketing. Not the skull, not the origin story, not the viral stunts. The media machine underneath it: how spend gets mapped across the funnel, how incrementality gets measured in weeks instead of years, why social is the wrong place to buy awareness, and why chasing conversions on day one is the fastest way to stall a brand out. If you buy media, approve media budgets, or have ever been asked "what was our ROAS" by someone who doesn't buy media, this one is for you. Ep 441 Mentions Benoit Vatere ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/benoitvatere Liquid Death ⁠https://liquiddeath.com Loop: Outlearn. Outmarket. Outgrow ⁠https://www.hubspot.com/loop-marketing-book Mike Cessario ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikecessario Landman ⁠https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/landman 📌 WHAT WE COVER: → The metric most marketers live by that all but guarantees failure → Why a 3x return on ad spend can be completely fake → The new-to-brand test for spotting real incrementality fast → How to run a geo holdout test (New York vs LA) without a two-year model → Why you should only chase 20%+ wins and ignore 5% gains entirely → Predictability vs magnitude: the two-by-two most marketers get backwards → Why social is not an awareness channel, period → Which channels actually build awareness (CTV, radio, podcasts) and why → Click-through rate, CPM, and the metric that matters more than both → The "golden core" trap that kills early stage brands → Why one ad unit can't do your whole funnel, and who to blame for that idea → Different creative for every funnel stage, and how Liquid Death picked comedy → Why the funnel has not collapsed → Retail media: the channel most CPG brands underinvest in → Where to give up control, and where you should never give it up → Why letting an algorithm choose your creative breaks your full funnel 🎙️ Host: Kipp Bodnar, CMO at HubSpot 🎤 Guest: Benoit Vatere, Chief Media Officer and Chief Digital Commerce Officer at Liquid Death ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - The metric that's destined to make you fail 00:50 - The Liquid Death story nobody tells 01:40 - From ad tech founder to Chief Media Officer 03:30 - Distribution is undefeated 04:30 - Step one: audit every dollar by funnel stage 04:47 - The Metric That Leads to Failure. 05:50 - Why ROAS lies to you 06:50 - Incrementality and the new-to-brand test 08:30 - Creative equations and why easy metrics are expensive 09:40 - The New York vs LA holdout test, explained simply 12:10 - CTR, CPM, and cost per product page view 14:30 - Only swing for home runs, never singles 15:30 - Predictability vs magnitude 17:20 - How to actually choose a channel 18:20 - Why social is not for awareness 19:00 - CTV, radio and podcasts for awareness, Meta for consideration 19:40 - Amazon, Walmart, Target: where the conversion actually happens 21:00 - A different creative for every stage of the funnel 22:30 - Why Liquid Death picked comedy as its lane 23:40 - Retargeting, and messaging people who bought once 25:10 - Campaign thinking vs system thinking 25:50 - No, the funnel has not collapsed 26:00 - It's tedious, not glamorous 26:40 - The golden core: why chasing conversion kills early brands 28:50 - The oil well problem 30:20 - What he'd tell himself on day one: retail media 31:20 - Where to let go of control 33:00 - Never let Meta pick your creative 📺 Subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain for weekly conversations on how marketing actually works, hosted by HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan. #marketing #liquiddeath #mediabuying #performancemarketing #roas #incrementality #cpg #retailmedia #b2bmarketing #growthmarketing #brandmarketing #paidmedia #marketingstrategy #dtc #marketingpodcast Host Links: 📲Kipp Bodnar, https://twitter.com/kippbodnar 📲Kieran Flanagan, https://twitter.com/searchbrat ‘Marketing Against The Grain’ is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Produced by Darren Clarke. About the Show Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot’s CMO and Kieran Flanagan Hubspot's SVP of Marketing, lead you down the rabbit hole of marketing trends, growth tactics and innovation. On the way you’ll pick up undiscovered strategies to give you that slight edge for success. These are not your typical twitter thread regurgitated marketing tactics that everyone is doing. These are new methods, with unfiltered examination of successful fresh ideas.