Liquid Death, which generated roughly $340 million in income throughout 2025 and is privately valued at $1.4 billion, is a tremendous younger minor model. The work is sharp.
CEO and founder Mike Cessario is a genuinely attention-grabbing marketer.
None of that’s the level. The level is the proportion. The Coca-Cola Company will do someplace north of $50 billion in income this 12 months. It is, on like-for-like measures of North American beverage gross sales alone, round 45 occasions the dimensions of Liquid Death and roughly 140 occasions its measurement globally. But you wouldn’t realize it from the share of voice the 2 manufacturers command inside our personal business.
This shouldn’t be Liquid Death’s fault. It is ours.
We have constructed an business obsession with noisy, disruptive Davids. All the whereas by no means stopping to marvel on the uncommon Goliaths that maintain smashing it.
We confuse the dopamine of a viral marketing campaign for the self-discipline of a compounding enterprise. Obsess about solo stunt promoting on the expense of constant, strategic advertising technique throughout all the pieces that features however under no circumstances is restricted to communications. We reward the founder in cargo shorts and ignore the chief in a Brooks Brothers who simply raised steering for the fourth consecutive quarter.
We mistake the amount of the advertising for the standard of the advertising. We stopped trying on the model that, greater than another shopper enterprise on the planet, demonstrates what advertising truly needs to be when finished at scale with relentless consistency.
Coca-Cola is so good at advertising everybody forgot to note.
It delivers 2.2 billion servings a day, operates 32 billion-dollar manufacturers, and has raised its dividend yearly since Lyndon Johnson was president—all whereas refusing to be attention-grabbing within the methods our business asks manufacturers to be attention-grabbing.
There is not any manifesto or function assertion or AI-first reorganisation, simply shopper analysis, pricing self-discipline, distribution rigor, mass attain promoting, the identical masterbrand on the middle of each execution, and a media funds defended quarter after quarter no matter macroeconomic headwinds.
This is what brand-building appears like when it’s taken significantly throughout a technology quite than a marketing campaign cycle.
It is retro to venerate the boring. Coca-Cola is the advertising masterclass we must always have been learning all alongside. Boring is thrilling. All hail Atlanta.