Liquid Death Made 'Norm Porn' Videos About All Your Forbidden Quarantine Fantasies

Remember the ridiculously intimate way we used to live? Packed into sweaty crowds at a concert. Touching everyone’s hands to say hello. Sharing a microphone at karaoke!

The life of three months ago seems like a distant memory. But now Liquid Death, the canned water brand, brings it all flooding back with an amusing, faux-titillating campaign called “Hardcore Norm Porn,” which fetishizes the way we all used to live—in four videos posted to hardcorenormporn.com, made to look like an Pornhub knockoff.

Whether you crave huge crowds, eating out at restaurants, unprotected workplace socializing or a little college action, these videos cover just about all your forbidden quarantine fantasies.

Here’s a video promoting the site:

The clever part, of course, is that this is all stock footage. And indeed, that’s how the idea came about. Liquid Death, working with agency Humanaut, was looking for fun ways to produce new work within the limitations of not being able to shoot anything.

“The core insight is that everyone has been feeling the drag of quarantine and social distancing rules,” Liquid Death co-founder and CEO Mike Cessario tells Muse. “We are all missing those totally normal things that have been completely gone for months, a few of which—like concerts—will not be back anytime soon.”

Cessario worked at Humanaut as an associate creative director/copywriter back in 2014. He stayed in touch with David Littlejohn, the agency’s founder and chief creative officer—and they’d been looking for a cool project to work on together.

“The entire commercial is made with stock footage,” Cessario says. “And all the long-form Norm Porn videos on the website are made with stock as well. The commercial and Norm Porn videos were edited by my wife Karli, who is honestly one of the best comedy editors I have ever worked with. She has edited almost all of the Liquid Death videos to date.”

Many brands have focused on producing earnest and somber messaging since Covid began, but for us, the more lighthearted work is a welcome reprieve. Just this week, we enjoyed this amusing spot for Chicago hot-dog stand The Wiener’s Circle, which is offering “curbside abuse” with its pickup orders.

And earlier during Covid, one of our favorite projects was a comical one, too—when the guy at agency Redpepper built an A.I. clone to attend Zoom meetings for him.

Liquid Death also produced one of our favorite musical projects recently, creating a heavy-metal album with lyrics taken directly from the company’s hate mail.