Mike Cessario built his billion-dollar company with plenty of free and low-cost advertising. Now, he's betting on one of the world's most expensive advertising venues: the Super Bowl.

Cessario, 42, is the founder and CEO of Liquid Death, a cheekily-named canned beverage brand that originated with a fake Facebook page in 2018. The Los Angeles-based company has since become known for its viral marketing stunts, often done in conjunction with big-name brands like Yeti and Martha Stewart — which helped it build a cult-like following and $1.4 billion valuation, following a March 2024 funding round.

The company dipped a toe into the Super Bowl commercial waters in 2022, with a regional spot featuring hard-partying children drinking the brand's water. A national Super Bowl commercial is a financially hefty next step: Cessario declined to share how much Liquid Death is spending, but a 30-second spot during the big game on Sunday is expected to cost more than $7 million, on average, according to Emarketer.

"It's the one time of year that people actually pay attention to the commercials," Cessario says, calling it "actually one of the great value buys in media." The game is typically the most-watched television event of the year, reaching a record 123 million viewers in 2024.

"Outside of the Super Bowl, the amount of spend a brand would need to reach 100 million unique people and have most of them pay attention to your commercial would likely cost many times more than a Super Bowl ad," says Cessario.

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Of course, that attention isn't guaranteed: Plenty of commercials fall flat, or just aren't particularly memorable, which makes the price tag a major gamble.

"Mediocrity is the biggest sign of failure — to use the most expensive advertising real estate [for] a spot that could have been just a regular ad, aired at any time," University of Michigan marketing professor Marcus Collins told Axios last year.

There's also no guarantee that any business' multimillion-dollar Super Bowl commercial will pay dividends, whether through increased sales or brand awareness. They do tend to pay off more often than not, some research shows: In 2021 and 2022, for example, Super Bowl advertisers saw returns of $4.60 for every dollar spent on their ads, according to market research firm Kantar.

Cessario says he's confident that Liquid Death's upcoming commercial will be memorable. The company has consistently built its brand awareness with comedic, edgy marketing that pokes fun at the fact that most water brands are relatively boring. That approach helped Liquid Death bring in $333 million in 2024 retail sales, up from $263 million a year earlier, according to a company spokesperson.

Regardless, spending so much money on a single commercial certainly isn't a decision that Cessario made on a whim, he says.

The company carefully weighs the potential "risks and rewards" before making this type of decision, says Cessario. "If we determine that the reward or upside is not worth the risk, we don't do it."

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