LOS ANGELES—As it proved with the standout ad it debuted during this year’s Super Bowl that has since racked up more than 2.5 million views on YouTube, canned water brand Liquid Death does not shy away from edgy, if highly tongue-in-cheek, marketing gambits.
But now the puckish company has ventured where few—if any—mainstream outfits have dared to tread before: associating itself wholly and unequivocally with porn.
Yes, the newest Liquid Death ad, dubbed “Don’t F*** the Planet” and making its world debut today, was directed by AVN Hall of Famer Joanna Angel and stars three-time AVN MILF Performer of the Year Cherie DeVille as herself. In addition, the crew responsible for shooting the ad was made up entirely of professionals from the triple-X trenches, including lighting veteran Shaun Rivera, director/videographer Curious Judas, make-up artist Azzy, photographer Mad Creativity, and none other than beloved helmsman Mike Quasar—a Hall of Fame member himself—who also makes a brief cameo in the spot. (Full disclosure: this writer makes an even briefer glimpse of an appearance in it as well.)
The bold endeavor, Liquid Death co-founder and CEO Mike Cessario told AVN, was born out of the simple goal of getting the company’s core message—a call to eliminate the use of plastic bottles—in front of the widest audience possible.
“A big part of the Liquid Death brand is trying to bring death to plastic bottles,” Cessario explained. “It’s a huge, kind of global issue—every company from grocery store chains to restaurant chains to hotel chains are all trying to get rid of plastic bottles—and we thought, OK, on this mission, if you’re really going to get this message out, you need to get it out to as many people as possible, and not just the people who already care about the environment in New York and L.A. ... you want the masses to be aware of it. And when you look at the statistics, there are more people visiting porn sites than any other site on the internet. So we’re like, ‘Hey, if you really want to reach everyone, this is the way to do it.”
Seems almost too obvious, some might say. But of course, aligning yourself with pornography and/or stars of pornography can be more than a little treacherous an excursion, and one that requires ever-so-cautious advancement.
“It was like, how do we use an adult film star in a way where if we wanted to, broadcast television networks will let us run it as a commercial? That was kind of the bar,” Cessario said. “So we kind of found this fun way to do it but not make our retailers that carry us nervous, and make it where it’s not about being sexy. We’re not trying to do that. It’s just a really unexpected person and unexpected way to deliver this sustainability message.”
Coming from a decade-long background in advertising, Cessario submitted that, as his general marketing philosophy for Liquid Death, “I don’t ever want to make ‘ads,’ I want to make entertainment. The way we think about making ads is probably more similar to the way Saturday Night Live thinks about making those parody ads—it’s more about legit comedy and entertainment that is in service of the brand.”
That being said, there may very well be no one more qualified for this specific campaign, inside or out of the adult sphere, than Joanna Angel, with her singular—and AVN Award-winning, many times over—comedic prowess. Having worked on the side for some time now as a brand ambassador for Liquid Death, Angel as of April 1 embarked upon a major career shift by accepting a full-time position with the company carrying the official title of Lifestyle Marketing Rep.
Her involvement with the brand, she reveals, started off purely as a bona fide fan. “I saw the product backstage at concerts, and my fellow industry longtime dear friend, Jessie Lee, drank it religiously,” Angel imparted. “I absolutely loved the branding, and their hilarious and even oftentimes dangerous daily social media posts became something I looked forward to seeing every day. On top of that, it was legitimately refreshing water, and as a sparkling water connoisseur, it was the best one I’d ever tasted.
“I had a real admiration for them, and I very much felt like Liquid Death was to water what BurningAngel was to porn,” she professed, referring of course to the famously irreverent adult company she founded as a college student in 2002.
Then one year ago, when she was preparing to shoot her epic biopic Casey: A True Story—which would go on to collect a tank load of 2022 AVN Awards, including top prize the Grand Reel—Angel reached out to the company in an attempt to secure permission to use Liquid Death as set dressing in the movie’s bar scenes ... and ended up connecting with Cessario, who to her pleasant surprise gave her his blessing.
“I’ve attempted to collaborate with other brands over the years ... even so-called ‘edgy’ brands ... and these attempts have most often been unsuccessful,” she related. But not only did Cessario give her the green light, “he even put me in touch with someone to get a large amount of product to me in time for the movie.”
Almost as if it were straight out of a movie, Angel divulged, “On a whim, I said in my next email, ‘Hey by the way ... if you guys are hiring ... let me know. I really love the company and I’m looking for some new projects in life.” As they say, one thing led to another ...
“Joanna has been so awesome,” Cessario now effuses of the iconic adult veteran. “She’s a true hustler and I think everything she learned in her career thus far has helped her here. What we’re doing with Joanna’s role and other people that work for us like Joanna is kind of taking a page from the alcohol industry, like a lot of the spirits brands have brand ambassadors who tend to be the people who are friendly with all the bar managers and they get it into the bars and they’re just like the person that everybody likes and they’re down to help you with whatever it is you’re pushing, and I think Joanna fits that really well.”
As far as the conception of “Don’t F*** the Planet” is concerned, Angel says the pieces fell into place rather effortlessly. The idea for the ad having come from Cessario, she relayed, it seemed only natural to her that it be executed by people who actually make porn for a living.
“It was a suggestion I brought up in the first meeting about the project, when people on the call were discussing ‘which production crew to use,’” she said. “They were debating the teams they normally use. I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we use mine?’ Mike agreed right away that it was a great idea.”
The shoot itself, she maintains, “wasn’t all that different” from a standard X-rated one. “There were just a lot more people involved in the pre-production than I was used to, and a handful of extra people on set from the company. It was an absolute honor to show them how professionally and efficiently the porn industry works on set. Something that I don’t think a lot of ‘mainstream’ people get to see.”
She added, “Because I was the director for this shoot, using a porn crew I’ve worked with for years, in a porn location I use regularly, with Cherie DeVille as the star, it very much felt like we were working on a porn but didn’t shoot the porn part. I think we were all excited to take more time with the, um ... ‘plot.’”
For the record, Angel says she is not abandoning porn. “I am regularly shooting lots of content for my platforms—I just did a studio scene two weeks ago,” she assured. “With a full-time job, I don’t know how open my schedule will be, but I am not retiring. No way. Not me. I’ll be around for at least 700 more years.”
In the meantime, “Don’t F*** the Planet” drops today on Liquid Death’s YouTube and Instagram pages. Watch it below:
