For marketers who don’t have the deep pockets or steely nerve to buy a commercial during Super Bowl 58, Liquid Death has a proposition: put your ad on 500,000 of the brand’s packages and get nearly double the reach of the football matchup.
The renegade brand, trying to “dethrone the Big Game as advertising’s biggest stage,” is launching an auction today on eBay, turning its cardboard packaging into a piece of media. The space, up until now, has been used solely to promote its own sparkling, still water and iced tea lines.
Here’s how the math works, according to Liquid Death: “More than 200 million people shop at our top retailers every week, which essentially makes our boxes an extremely high-visibility billboard opportunity for an advertiser,” Andy Pearson, vice president of creative, said.
Super Bowl 57 attracted some 115 million viewers, a number that could swell this year given the overall bump in NFL ratings and the Taylor Swift effect.
Still, with bidding that starts at $500 with no reserve, the Liquid Death offer could end up being a major bargain.
The winner can’t advertise “anything illegal,” per Pearson, or “anything that would create a problem in a store—otherwise, it’s pretty much free rein.” The packages will be on shelves from October through the holidays.
The brand, which dropped a purposely goofy video to announce the stunt, bought its own Super Bowl ad in 2023. The spot, which aired in 23 markets, caused a stir and made Adweek’s recent “20 Groundbreaking Campaigns that Redefined Super Bowl Advertising” list.
In considering a 2024 return to the game, execs decided “ultimately the cost was too astronomical—it just didn’t make sense for us,” Pearson said. “When we thought about it, we realized that there’s something bigger than the game happening every single week in our top retailers nationwide.”
The auction will last seven days, but, Pearson said, “if someone wants to go ahead and lock it in, there’s a Buy It Now price of $1,500,000.”