The weird and wacky marketing strategies that help Liquid Death, Taco Bell, and GoDaddy stand out

It’s never been a more complicated time to be a marketer, but connecting with consumers in a meaningful way is as important as ever.

For brands like Liquid Death, GoDaddy, and Taco Bell, that sometimes means embracing another product or experience entirely—think: an adult diaper for concerts, celebrity-created goggle glasses, or a live experience for taco fans.

Of course, not every risk pays off. But when a weird idea works, it can really work, as marketers from the three brands shared during a panel discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW.

“The power of an idea that can transcend channels and reach and connect with consumers is really important,” said Taylor Montgomery, chief marketing officer in North America at Taco Bell. 

When Taco Bell dreamed up its first Live Mas Live event in 2024, Taylor recalled how the team didn’t know if anyone would watch or like an event modeled after the Apple tech launches—but for tacos. Live Mas Live was just cool and weird enough to work, however, so Taco Bell held its second such event earlier this month in Brooklyn, ensuring a vast majority of invitees were diehard fans, he added.

“It is a way to invite consumers in to have a relationship with the brand and for us to be just really real and raw and vulnerable and authentic,” Montgomery told the audience. “We try to stay really anchored on what’s in it for the fans.”

The comedic connection

Comedy can be a good entry for finding a new audience and converting them to fans. Liquid Death has done several collaborations with not-obvious collaborating brands, and even launched items that have very little direct relevance to the brand’s lineup of beverages. 

Late last year, Liquid Death collaborated with Depend on a limited-edition, metal-inspired $75 “Pit Diaper” so that music fans wouldn’t have to brave the bathrooms at a concert—and it sold out within hours, said Dan Murphy, senior vice president of marketing.

It’s also found success with past collaborations on new products with brands like Yeti, E.l.f. Beauty, and Van Leeuwen Ice Cream.

The goal, Murphy said, is to combine Liquid Death with an unexpected brand to reach a new audience and have fun. Often, the result is a parody of marketing or humorous content that “doesn’t smell like an ad” and creates engagement with consumers and the media, he added.

“The metrics you should look for are saves and shares,” Murphy said. “If somebody’s going to go back and watch that again, if somebody’s sharing that with a friend, there’s that viral coefficient that is telling you you’re doing it right.”

Revising the playbook

GoDaddy took a similar approach with a Super Bowl ad this year that followed actor Walton Goggins using the company’s artificial intelligence-powered tools to launch a small business: Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses. As with Liquid Death’s diaper, consumers can actually buy the sunglasses and the ad marked the company’s return to the biggest advertising day of the year after an eight-year hiatus.

“Our take was if we’re going to show back up at the Super Bowl, we’ve got to do something wacky and weird enough that people get pulled into the story, but the story has to be true, has to be authentic, and ultimately it’s got to be about the evolution of the products that we’re selling,” said Fara Howard, chief marketing officer at GoDaddy. 

For people who may recall the controversy-laden ads that made GoDaddy a household name in the first place, this year’s ad illustrated the transformation journey the brand has been undergoing for several years. 

“Being bold, taking risks has been what put us on the map to begin with,” Howard said. “Using that playbook, but in really different ways, has been our strategy.”

Finding what works

Of course, not every weird idea resonates with consumers. Murphy said that’s why Liquid Death opts for a “small bets approach” that helps it de-risk because it instead churns out a lot of content that often costs about $30,000.

Brands with much larger budgets often miss the mark by mistaking their idea for more than it is.

“It’s very easy internally to think your content is great when it’s really not, when it’s just an ad,” Murphy said. “People don’t like ads.”

Liquid Death’s goal is to be “the funniest thing in your feed” on a given day, Murphy said, and the marketing team workshops ideas with comedians using a Hollywood-style writer’s room approach—which means keeping the non-funny operational people out of the room.

Likewise, Howard said it’s important to know whose feedback isn’t a necessary part of the creative process.

“All you’re going to do is make a saltine cracker,” she said. “If you ask everyone, do you like it, do you like it, do you like it, do you like it? And you take their feedback. All you’re going to do is water down the work.”

Finally, it’s important not to get stuck looking backwards but to forge on when an idea doesn’t work, Montgomery said. Despite a lot of hype around Taco Bell’s launch of a Cheez-It Crunchwrap Supreme, it didn’t deliver what consumers wanted, but he said the company found success with other ideas.

“There are always going to be setbacks; listen to the consumer, but just keep swinging,” Montgomery advised marketers in the audience. “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.”