Liquid Death Plays Head Games for the Super Bowl

Weird teaser reveals only weirdness

Ah, Liquid Death—you’re so kooky and cryptic ahead of your second consecutive Super Bowl appearance.

Last year, in its national Big Game debut, the oft-bonkers canned-water brand took drinking on the job to non-alcoholic heights with a subtler-than-usual spot that proved popular.

Today, LD teased its upcoming entry with this clip featuring lounge music and cartoonish human heads:

Are they papier-mâché? Does it matter?

The brand’s making a Super Bowl return largely because, “Last year’s spot was a massive awareness play for us that paid off even better than we had hoped,” VP of creative Andy Pearson tells Muse.

“Anecdotally and through the data, we saw that a huge portion of the country suddenly knew Liquid Death. Because we were able to craft it around a real business objective, we were able to make it highly effective. The concept wasn’t trying to be ‘ha-ha’ funny as much as stopping you in your tracks. It landed the way we needed it to.”

Naturally, he wouldn’t divulge details of what we might see in LD’s :30 during the Feb. 8 telecast on NBC. Perhaps, though, we can glean insights into Pearson’s approach from mulling his fave SB commercials of all time. (Though probably not.)

“Tabasco’s ‘Mosquito’ is such a simple spot,” he says. “Peak ’90s vibes and hilarious in the way it was directed. Snickers’ ‘Your Not You When You’re Hungry’ with Betty White is fantastic on so many levels—strategy, clarity, use of celebrity and execution. I showed that to my kids the other day because they were being hangry.”

But wait, there’s more…

“Monster.com’s ‘When I Grow Up’ was unlike anything that had been done. And of course Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ sort of changed the whole world overnight.”

In a pop-culture sense, that’s true. Liquid Death and the other advertisers shelling out $8 million and more on SB60 should be so lucky.