Is your CX a slam dunk?
His Airness. Mike. MJ. All names that represent the GOAT himself: Michael Jordan. When he rocked the now infamous Air Jordans in the 1985 Slam Dunk Contest, he changed the shoe game forever. His sneakers had been banned from the NBA, and subsequently became the world’s next obsession. How he turned wearing shoes into an entire empire and one of the best customer experiences of all time, is something else all together.
Someone else who’s turned the mundane into a one-of-a-kind experience is today’s guest, Andy Pearson. He’s the Vice President of Creative at Liquid Death, and he and his team have changed how the world drinks water. From selling your soul to tattooing your face…their CX might make a customer say, in the words made famous from Micheal Jordan’s hit film Space Jam…”I believe I can fly.” Today, we’ll find out how.
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“Our customer experience is the brand. From the moment you interact with us, you’re in the ecosystem.” - Andy Pearson
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) Michael Jordan: the king of CX
* (7:00) Liquid Death explained to those who haven’t sold their souls
* (10:13) How hating marketing builds exceptional CX
* (12:37) Making CX your brand
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives
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Links
This podcast was produced by the team at Caspian Studios. Learn more at Caspianstudios.com
Ian: thousands of fans and blue and orange jerseys flooded into Madison square garden became known as basketball Mecca for a reason. It brought out the biggest crowds and the best performances from the world's greatest players, young budding star, who is quickly taking the NBA by storm, was in town to face Patrick Ewing and the Knicks the fans were in for tree.
And the only thing louder than their cheers that night were their perms. Some consider that night's game to be one of the most memorable in NBA history, but not because of what happened on the court. Well, in a way it was on the court. What we will remember most from that. Is the sneakers surrounded by nine other pairs of boring white sneakers, the Chicago bulls rookies strutted onto the court.
He looked a little different than the other players, and it wasn't just that legendary smile. The rookie phenom dawned a pair of vibrant sneakers with black and red colors. Before his debut, a little known shoe company saw his potential and offered him Aiden. And it five-year sponsorship deal worth $500,000 a year.
Rookie soar through the air glided across the court with grace power and speed wowed the crowd with this combination of skill and athleticism. Couldn't take your eyes off
but soon after the game, however, the young star was in for routine. You received a letter from the NBA commissioner. It was a direct org, either stop wearing the shoes or face a $5,000 penalty. Every game, the bright red shoe with the sushi check mark on the side was in violation of league rules. The NBA had mandated that all shoes must be at least 51% white without another option.
The shoe company agreed to make the rookie a new shoe that followed the rules. But they weren't giving up on the bold red and black sneakers quite yet. Their marketing team quietly got to work. Perhaps they could use that banned product to their advantage. Several months later, basketball fans gathered into a crowded Indiana arena.
This time wearing jerseys of all colors, blazers, Sixers, Hawks, jazz, and bowls to name a few millions more tuned in around the country via they're telling me he was the 1985 slam dunk contest. Basketball legends took turns showing off their acrobatic moves. Crowds cheered as the human highlight film, Dominique Wilkins soar through the air that rookie was up next.
You walked onto the court wearing those band shoes. The cheers were definitely less than a second later. He appeared to defy gravity kids across the country, watched the young rookie fly in those shoes. During the commercials, they saw an ad of him wearing them. On September 15th, Nike created the commercials.
Voiceover explained that the MBA ban the sneakers could not stop you from wearing them. Fortunately, the NBA league, this scandalous new shoe was announced as the Nike air Jordan one named after the gravity defying rookie, Michael Jordan, of course. So strap on your favorite pair of kicks. Because today we are talking about the importance of brand on your customer experience and he gotta be like, Mike,
Mackey: welcome to often imitated a podcast about remarkable.
From the past and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences. Today, this episode is all about branding as customer experience, a Nike created an entire customer experience around Michael Jordan's lifestyle and how CX leaders today can use marketing to inform their CX. In this episode, we'll hear from Andy Pearson, vice president of creative at liquid depth about how he and his team created a brand that doubles as customer experiences, but first a word from our sponsor.
Often imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle advertising, NCX connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition to retention and everything in between here.
More executive perspectives on CX transformation@oracle.com slash CX.
Ian: Nike didn't have to hold their breath for too long people of all ages and backgrounds, flocked to get a pair of air Jordans fins wanted the thrill of wearing a shoe. So taboo that the league had to shut it down. Rookie Michael Jordan could fly across the basketball coordinator. Jordan's who's to say they couldn't do air Jordans made customers feel like they were part of history as Michael's life evolved.
So did the shoes, everything from his favorite cigar to his passion for motorcycles were infused into subsequent additions of air Jordans since the Duncan. Nike has created 35 more versions of the sneaker they sell out in minutes.
In the first year alone, Nike earned $126 million from air Jordans. Now the brand is worth over 3 billion with Michael Jordan earning over $1.3 billion from the deal. If you ask a sneakerhead, they will tell you that owning air Jordans is more than owning a night. It's about feeling a part of something greater.
Everyone wanted to feel a part of Michael Jordan story, his excellence, and with the shoe you could do just. I could Jordan's world of triumph is both his brand and the experience has fan felt through owning his shoes. Air Jordans proved that braining and customer experience do not need to be mutually exclusive.
How you market a product can also inform the customer experience. And so today we wanted to bring on someone who is an expert at branding and how it relates to customer experience. Andy Pearson, VP of creative at liquid Def. Andy knows this firsthand liquid deaths, strong community building tactics and unusual marketing are hard to miss.
Let's hear a little more about what.
Andy: Liquid death is a canned water brand. So unlike any other bottled water, um, we actually put ours in infinitely recyclable cans, so that what we're really about is making health and sustainability, you know, 50 times more fun than it actually normally gets presented in real. And, um, we also have a very different take on everything we do.
So if you look at the can itself, it really looks, oh, it's really inspired by craft beer can design. Um, so when you're drinking it, when you have in your hand, and it actually feels like you're drinking a beer and it looks like you're drinking a beer, but actually one cool thing about it is our sparkling water.
Carbonated at about five grams per liter of carbonation, um, which is a lower percentage than a standard sparkling drink. Um, those are usually like six to eight grams per liter. So it actually drinks at a lower carbonation level and feels like you're drinking a beer. So all the way down to the product level, we've kind of thinking through how you experienced liquid death
Ian: after the slam dunk contest in 1980.
Teenagers everywhere. Walked into pickup games in their air, Jordans, feeling confident and similarly liquid death wants their customers to feel that same feeling of confidence when they're just drinking water at a social event.
Andy: We like to say that our consumer is anyone who drinks water and has a sense of humor.
Right? Water is essential to life. Everyone has to drink it. And we would obviously, you know, prefer that it's liquid death and. We see all kinds of stories, where people are either replacing energy drinks with liquid death or replacing alcoholic drinks with liquid death. The can, again, the cans designed to look and drink and feel like a beer in your hand.
So we have a huge following in the, in the silver community. We get stories all the time about people who, you know, who have sort of found something that they can latch onto when they drink liquid death. Because like we designed it. Originally, you know, it was really designed as like almost a way to be able to go to parties or go to bars and not be able to, um, not have to feel lame when you order a water.
Right? No one wants to sit in a bar and like have a glass of water or a plastic bottle of water, but also you don't want to be sitting. Um, and maybe you want to take a break from your drink. So, um, liquid death, Creating this almost in some ways, almost a new use case where it opens up opportunities where people can drink more water and they feel, uh, more free to, to tranq water, more liberally.
And which again is healthier for them.
Ian: When the NBA ban the air Jordans from gameplay, Nike knew they had to pivot instead of accepting defeat. Thank you leaned into the forbidden and that attitude enhanced the customer expects. Liquid death is doing something similar. Liquid desk saw an opportunity to flip water marketing on its head and lean into the forbidden.
Andy: People love liquid death because we're like them. We hate marketing. You know, the brand is meant to feel like you're funny, cool friends started their own company. Right? If you look at the way. The Sony or Smartwater or any of the other brands are marketed to they're there from these huge corporations that are made by people with great MBAs and, and like market water.
Exactly how it should be marketed as a very pure thing. And you get celebrities and you, you talk about how, you know, the benefits of the water and liquid death as we came in, it's just, it's the total opposite of that. It's it feels like it's made by. People who you like and would like to hang out with.
And, you know, we know that all human beings on earth hate to be marketed to. So the whole brand is essentially built on that premise that it's sort of it's really anti-marketing. We, we don't want to do marketing. We want to do always talk about entertainment over marketing. We'd rather we'd much rather make entertainment and put it out there and have people enjoy it.
Then having the sense that they're being marketed. I think one interesting thing is that as you see culture kind of fracture, we have all these different media channels, right? We all have our own Spotify playlist and can listen to artists that your friend has never, ever heard of, or watch a show on a, on a streaming platform.
Um, your favorite show, maybe something that your best friend has never heard of in their entire life, and don't even know how to find it online or watch it online. But the one thing, the one cultural touchstone left that all human beings simultaneously experience is like, is being marketed to, and being advertised to.
Right. And so a lot of, a lot of this stuff that we do is it's intended to poke marketing in the eye and have people love us for that. When
Ian: people love your marketing, you know, you've got something special when people tattoo your brand to their head. You know, you've got something bonkers, liquid death has managed the impossible, transporting their customers into a totally different world, creating loyalty, comparable to air Jordans.
Andy: Our customer experience is the brand, you know, from the moment you interact with us, you are you're in the ecosystem. Right? And I think the best example. Of that is the can itself. I think you get the entire liquid death experience the first time you pick up a can. And I can't tell you how many stories of people that don't get it, and then they drink it for the first time and they just, it instantly all makes sense.
Um, a lot of people, you know, just on the low. I assume it's a beer or hard seltzer or something like that. And then the first time they actually drink it there, they kind of go, huh, it's it's just water. And then this light bulb goes off in their head and they're, we're kind of off to the races at that point.
And they, they really become fans from that. But the experience of drinking the can, if you look at it again, you know, it's designed to look like a beer. So automatically when you have in your hand, It's fun. It feels a little naughty, right? We get, we get people that all the time tell us stories. And we post about it where they got pulled over by the cops, because they were drinking it at a red light and a cop looks over and sees what looks like a tallboy beer.
And that they're chugging in the front seat or kids that get sent that their parents send them to school with it in their lunch box. And then they get called into the principal's office because no one believes. Not a beer. Um, so right off the bat that can itself is really interactive and really fun.
And I mean, like, look, I worked for liquid death and I'd take it to my kid's soccer practice. And like, even then I crack one open and. Man, the other parents are going to think. I'm just sitting here drinking at 10:00 AM in a park by myself. Um, so even me, I like kind of get that every time you're out drinking in public.
Ian: When you hold an air, Jordan, you can feel history because they're designed with Michael's legacy in mind. Some sneakerheads say that you're walking in the shoes of the greatest basketball player of all time, you become part of the most iconic success story. Liquid death also understands the importance of making your customers feel like part of the story.
Andy: If you look at the, can we have this copy, this whole story on the can that, that, um, that once you see it, it, it is really fun and it gets you in it. So actually let me read the, let me read the sparkling candle fast. Um, so it says this infinitely recyclable can have stone stone-cold sparkling water. It came straight from the Alps to murder your.
When a group of teenagers set off into the mountains for a weekend of drinking regular water in plastic bottles, they became hunted by an aluminum can of mountain water. That was dead set on murdering their thirst and recycling their soul. Once cracked open, no thirst is safe from liquid death. After ritually dismembering, its thirst victims.
This brutal can of water use a separate body parts of the dead thirst to build itself a flesh suit, which is used as a disguise to get a job. The liquid death never took the job. It just murdered a bunch more thirst instead. Um, so you kind of, you read this caption and you're like, what is this brand? And then you keep reading down and then you see, oh, death, the plastic, we donate 10% of profits from every canned sold to help kill plastic pollution.
So again, you kind of are like introduced to the brands you drink. The water for the first time and realized, oh, it's just water. Great. And it, and, and they've actually done research, um, water out of a can. It, it feels colder naturally. Cause the can't, uh, aluminum holds the, um, holds the coldness in more. So it actually feels in taste.
It feels more hydrating. It actually tastes better. So you have that, that experience. And then at the end you have this empty aluminum can and you go, oh, I need to go recycle this. Right. And then. Go off and you pitch it in a recycling bin or whatever, but you have again, have this aha moment of, if this was a plastic bottle, I would have probably just like dumped it in the trash.
Um, and so you kind of have this whole journey in a five minute period from the first time you see the, can you pick up the, can you read the, can you drink it? And then you're done with it and you get rid of it and it takes you through sort of the whole user journey. Um, and so it's really beautifully designed to, to, to do all that.
And I think the brand itself is really, I always like to think of the brand as being interactive, right? So like I said, you go outside, you, you crack open a tallboy if liquid death, you might get stares from people outside. So you're, you're already kind of playing in this space. Um, we also do a lot of, we do a lot of murder.
Um, and we really design our are a lot of our merge tomes be more like band merge than anything else. And so we get a lot of like heavy metal artists to just do really gory grotesque metal, like metal designs, and it just says liquid death on it. And, and so the funny thing about that, You get all these people walking around in this gnarly black metal t-shirt that says liquid death on it.
And it's literally a water company. So for, so when you're wearing it, you're out there, people think you're sort of like this societal reject or degenerate or something, and literally you're repping a sustainable water company. Um, so it's almost like this kind of inside joke that you get to be in. That other people aren't ain't on.
Right? So then it already, anytime you, you, you put that shirt on, it starts to feel like this sort of interactive experience, um, that you don't get by putting on a Aquafina shirt. If you had happened to have one, for some reason, in your, in your wardrobe
Ian: at CX leaders, we cannot underestimate the power that branding has on the customer.
How you market your product informs how your customers feel when they're experiencing it. Air Jordans, don't continue to sell out every year, just because they're well-made to fans owning a pair of signifies, the ability to accomplish. Well, liquid death is a great water customers. Aren't just obsessed with them because of that.
They're obsessed with if the brand, how they think, how they act, how they market, the design, the artwork, everything. It takes the experience of drinking water from boring to cool. Plus it just tastes better for my kid. And of course you add in the fact that they have such a strong sustainability mission, liquid desk customers believe that mission was well.
The best customer experience is not about making the customer feel good about. It's about making the customer feel good about themselves. And there's nothing that makes your body feel better than water speaking, that it was 90 degrees today at the studio. So I'm going to go crack some liquid death myself.
See you later.
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle to make every interaction matter with Oracle advertising in CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition to retention and everything in between.
Here more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/CX. This is your host, hIan Faison CEO of Caspian studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of often imitated. If you like what you're hearing, please tell one friend. This podcast was narrated by me Ian Faison written by Emma DeMuth and produced and edited by Mackey Wilson And Jon Libbey, you can learn more about our team at Caspianstudios.com