What Liquid Death Would Do With a Nursing Vacancy: 5 Consumer Brand Moves for Job Ads

Liquid Death sells water. Water. The most boring product on the shelf, the thing that comes out of your tap for free, and people buy the merch and wear it. Meanwhile a hospital has one of the most meaningful jobs in the world to offer, a job where you literally keep people alive, and the vacancy looks like a tax form. Department, hours, requirements, "competitive salary", apply here.

That gap keeps bugging me. Because if you think about it, it should be the other way around.

Quick note first: this is a thought experiment. I have no connection to Liquid Death, and everything I say about them comes from public interviews and articles linked at the bottom. I'm describing their approach, not copying their materials. The nursing ads further down are my own concepts, for a made-up hospital.

The paradox

Consumer brands with a boring product have no choice. Nobody needs another brand of water, so if you want people to pick yours, you have to give them a reason to care that has nothing to do with the water itself. That's the whole game.

Liquid Death's founder, Mike Cessario, came from advertising, and the idea as he's explained it in interviews is pretty simple. The funniest, most irreverent marketing was always for the unhealthy stuff. So they took the healthiest thing you can drink and marketed it like that. A tall can that looks like it belongs at a concert, heavy metal skulls, a name that sounds like a horror movie. According to Fortune, the plan was to build the marketing and the shareability into the product itself, so people would take pictures of the can and do the advertising for them.

Now look at recruitment. A nursing job isn't boring. It has stakes, it has stories, it has moments people remember for the rest of their lives. That's a way better product than water. And we market it with a list of duties and a stock photo of someone holding a clipboard.

So the question isn't "should a hospital be edgy like a water brand." Probably not, and I'll get to that. The question is what the moves underneath are, and which ones work for a job.

The 5 moves

1. A clear enemy. Liquid Death isn't really against other water brands. The name is a play on "murdering your thirst" and on "death to plastic", as Cessario told NBC News, and the aluminum can is part of that anti-plastic story. That gives the brand something to stand against that its fans also hate. You don't have to explain why you're different when you're clearly fighting something.

For a nursing job the enemy is almost never another hospital. It's the stuff nurses already hate about the job. The shift that's supposed to end at 7:30 and ends at 9. Charting until your eyes hurt. Being the only one on the floor who knows where anything is. If your hospital actually beats one of those, that's your enemy. If it doesn't, don't pick it, because nurses will find out in week one.

2. A name and a personality. Liquid Death doesn't sound like a water company, and it doesn't act like one either. In interviews Cessario keeps saying they don't take themselves seriously and that the brand is basically making fun of marketing. That personality shows up everywhere, the ads, the products, the way they talk to people.

Most job ads have no personality at all. They sound like HR wrote them, because HR did. So give the team a name and a voice. Not a fake "rockstar" title, a real identity. A night team on a cardiology floor has its own habits and jokes and coffee machine. Let the ad sound like them.

3. A pattern interrupt. Their can looks like a beer in a water aisle. That's the whole trick: in a row of clear plastic bottles with mountains on them, the thing that looks different wins the glance.

Scroll through healthcare job ads on Meta or LinkedIn and you'll see the same picture a hundred times. Smiling nurse, stethoscope, blue background. Don't do that. Look different in the feed first, earn the read second.

4. Make the audience the hero. This is the one I find most interesting. People don't just drink Liquid Death, they wear it. Modern Retail reported that the brand sold about $3 million in merch in 2021, and that more than half of the people buying water on their site added merch to the order. They had a fan membership with early access to drops, and they did stunts like 100 skateboards with Tony Hawk's blood mixed into the paint, which sold out in under 20 minutes (Metal Packager covered it too). The fans are in on the joke. The brand is something they show off.

For a job, the hero is the nurse, not the hospital. Nobody cares about your mission statement. They care about who they get to be in that job, and what they get to tell people at a birthday party when someone asks what they do.

5. One message per ad. You can describe Liquid Death in one line, and so can the people who drink it. Every piece points back to the same idea. They don't try to say everything at once.

Job ads are the opposite. Salary, benefits, culture, mission, the parking garage, the pension plan, all in one post. When you say ten things, people remember zero. One ad, one message. If you have five good messages, that's five ads.

Applied to a nursing vacancy

Here's the made-up brief. Riverside General (not a real hospital) needs ICU nurses for night shifts. It's hard to fill, the current ads look like everybody else's, and the people they want mostly already have a job. So these ads are for scrolling nurses, not for people searching a job board. If that difference is new to you, read Stop Writing Job Ads for Job Seekers first.

One rule before the concepts. Liquid Death can be as dark and weird as it wants because it's selling water. A hospital is dealing with people on the worst day of their lives, so no death jokes, no jokes about patients, ever. You take the moves, not the tone. The humor, if there is any, comes from the nurses' side of the job, the coffee, the 4 a.m. snack drawer, the stuff only nurses get.

And every claim in these ads has to be true. The brackets are where you fill in your hospital's real numbers, and the team details belong to a made-up hospital, so swap in your own. If you can't back a concept up, pick a different one.

The sauce: the full campaign

Principle: a clear enemy. The enemy is the shift that never ends.
One message: when your shift ends here, you go home.

Headline: Your shift ends at 7:30. We mean 7:30.
Hook (first line in the feed): You know the "quick handover" that takes 90 minutes? We got rid of it.

Visual: A wall clock in a hospital break room showing 7:31.
The coat rack under it is empty. No people, no stethoscope.
Feels like a photo a nurse took on her phone, not a photo shoot.

Copy:
Night ICU, Riverside General. 12-hour shifts that are actually 12 hours.
Last quarter, [X]% of our night shifts ended on time.
How: [what you actually do to end shifts on time, like a fixed handover slot].
Pay: [hourly range + night differential].

CTA: See the schedule for a real month
(link opens an actual anonymized month of the rota, then a short form)

Measure: cost per finished application, and how many people open the schedule.

Principle: a name and a personality, plus looking different in the feed.
One message: you're not filling a slot, you're joining a crew.

Headline: The Night Crew is looking for one more.
Hook: 9 nurses. 1 charge nurse. 1 coffee machine we'd fight you for.

Visual: Designed like a gig poster taped to a wall, not like a job ad.
Big hand-drawn type: THE NIGHT CREW, ICU, FLOOR 4. "Line-up" underneath
with first names only (with permission) and their years on the team.
Black and yellow. No stock photos, no stethoscopes.

Copy:
We're the ICU night team at Riverside General.
We have a group chat that's mostly memes, a snack drawer with rules,
and a charge nurse who's been here [X] years and still brings soup.
We need one more ICU nurse who likes nights and likes people.
What it pays: [hourly range + night differential].
Everyone who joins gets the crew hoodie in week one. You can't buy it. You earn it by showing up.

CTA: Grab a coffee with the crew (15 minutes, video or in person)

Measure: how many people book the coffee, and how many of those apply after.

Principle: make the nurse the hero.
One message: this is the job where you're the person someone remembers.

Headline: At 3 a.m., you're the one who knows what to do.
Hook: Most people will never know what you did on Tuesday night. One family will never forget.

Visual: A 20-second vertical video. A real night nurse (not an actor)
talks to the camera in the empty hallway, one story in her own words.
Plain captions. No music swell, no slow motion.
[a real quote from one of your night nurses, used with permission]

Copy:
We don't need to tell you nursing matters. You know.
What we can tell you: on our night ICU you get [your real nurse-to-patient ratio],
a senior on the floor every shift, and the time to actually be that person.
Pay: [hourly range + night differential].

CTA: Check if you fit in 60 seconds (3 questions, no CV needed)

Measure: hook rate on the video, then cost per finished application.

You can see each concept leans on one or two moves, not all five. That's on purpose. Run all three, same budget, and let the nurses tell you which one hits.

The worksheet

This is the part you can steal for any hard-to-fill job. Nurse, forklift driver, tax advisor, it doesn't matter. Fill in the last column with the hiring manager and two people who do the job now. If you can't fill a row with something true, skip that move.

JOB: [title people actually search for]
WHO WE'RE TALKING TO: [are they searching or scrolling?]

ENEMY: [the thing they hate] → our proof: [a fact, a number or a moment]
NAME / PERSONALITY: [team name] sounds like: [3 words]
PATTERN INTERRUPT: everybody else shows [x], so we show [y]
THE HERO: in this job you get to be [ ], and you can show it by [ ]
ONE MESSAGE: [one sentence]

HEADLINE: [one message, under 10 words]
HOOK: [first line, the thing that stops the scroll]
VISUAL: [what's in the image or the first 3 seconds of video]
SALARY: [in the first lines, always]
SMALL FIRST STEP: [see the schedule / coffee with the team / check if you fit]

TRUTH CHECK: would a current employee read this and nod? yes / no

That last line matters more than the rest. Consumer brands can exaggerate a bit and people get the joke. A job ad that oversells gets you a hire who quits in month two, and a review that sticks around for years.

If you want to sharpen the copy itself, run the result through The Cliché Tax to kill the generic phrases, and turn the duties into a day in the job so the hero part feels real. Then score it with the Job Ad Scorecard.

Frequently asked questions

Is this a Liquid Death campaign or a collaboration?

No. It's a thought experiment. I have no connection to Liquid Death, and the nursing concepts are my own ideas for a made-up hospital. I'm only describing their public marketing approach, based on the articles linked below.

Isn't edgy humor risky for a hospital?

Yes, and that's why I wouldn't copy the tone. The moves underneath, an enemy, a personality, looking different, the audience as the hero and one message, work fine with a warm or serious tone too. Just never joke about patients.

Do these moves work for jobs that aren't in healthcare?

They work for any job where you're fighting for attention, so pretty much any hard-to-fill role. The worksheet is built for that. The enemy and the hero change per job, the moves stay the same.

What if we don't have a hoodie budget or a video team?

You don't need one. A phone photo of a real break room beats a polished stock shoot in the feed anyway. The expensive part is getting the real facts and stories out of your team, and that's mostly a few conversations.

Sources

• Fortune: "How a 41-year-old former ad man birthed a $1.4 billion beverage unicorn by putting water in a can" (March 15, 2024)
• NBC News: "How water in a can became a billion-dollar business" (March 16, 2024)
• Modern Retail: "'Cult following': How Liquid Death sold $3M worth of merch last year" (January 24, 2022)
• Metal Packager: canned water brand puts Tony Hawk's blood on skateboards (August 27, 2021)