Vol 18. Insights from Liquid Death’s VP of Marketing

Meet Greg Fass

Each week, we sit down with a marketing leader to learn more about their career, insights, and accomplishments. This week, that marketing leader is Greg Fass, VP of Marketing at Liquid Death.

Greg’s path to marketing started on a snowboard and took a detour through hip-hop blogs, PR agencies, and a startup that sold underwear by subscription. Today, he’s one of the minds behind Liquid Death’s earned media machine—launching ideas like Tony Hawk skateboards infused with blood and fake voodoo dolls of Steve-O.

Here are the need-to-knows about Greg:

• Greg was the second hire at MeUndies, where he helped build the brand voice and handled everything from social to customer service to licensing.

• He helped MeUndies secure national attention with campaigns like “Banned on Facebook.”

• At Liquid Death, Greg and the marketing team have led a four-year streak of viral hits, churning out one new campaign every month.

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From a surf competition to an agency

Greg was surrounded by advertising and marketing from the time he was a kid. His mom was an award-winning Executive Art Director at Adweek in New York, while his dad was on the account side as an EVP and Managing Partner at Grey. He was exposed to marketing early on, partially from his parents but mainly through his school. 

As a teen, Greg snowboarded competitively and attended a mountain school in Vermont.

“I’d train all day, tutor in the afternoon, and then throw myself off 80-foot jumps on the weekend,” he said. With sponsorships came brand exposure, but the mismatch between marketers and the subculture stood out. “A lot of them were out of touch. They didn’t get it.”

It wasn’t until a semester abroad in Australia that marketing started to feel interesting. “I took green marketing and internet marketing courses, and that’s when it first started to click that it could be a career,” Greg said. 

After graduation, unsure of his next move, Greg met someone at a surf competition who offered him a shot at a New York music management agency. “They needed help with PR and social for their roster of EDM and hip-hop artists,” he says. “So I built artist profiles from scratch and pitched their music to blogs. It was super grassroots, but it worked. And for the first time, marketing didn’t feel lame.”

Making noise with no budget

Greg didn’t plan on staying in music but it gave him a crash course in earned media. That skill set became essential when he joined MeUndies as their second employee.

“I picked up the phones. I ran customer service. I was answering emails, writing copy, doing brand voice, and pitching press,” he says. “It was 360-degree brand building, with no budget.”

Early on, Facebook rejected their ad creative for being too risqué. So to work around it, Greg and the team once drew stick figures in underwear and ran those as ads. “We also made a giant red ad that said, ‘Banned. MeUndies ads are too hot for Facebook.’ It linked to an actual product image (nothing NSFW, just someone in their underwear). I pitched it to TechCrunch and Adweek, and it blew up.”

That stunt didn’t just earn press, it got Facebook’s attention. MeUndies didn’t have a dedicated account rep prior to that stunt but they certainly had one afterwards. 

Another time, when a rookie NFL player was arrested for shoplifting a pair of underwear, Greg tweeted from the MeUndies account: “Tell him we’ll pay his fine—we hate shopping at department stores too.” Within days, ESPN’s NFL Countdown was covering the story.

“It was never just about getting attention,” Greg says. “It was about showing up in the culture in a way that felt real.”

Building at Liquid Death

During his time at MeUndies, Greg did it all—out-of-home, podcast ads, licensing deals, and growth marketing. “At a startup like that, over the course of the eight and a half years, it felt like I worked for four or five different companies. I must’ve had four different senior leaders who were directly managing me so I got to learn how Nike, Beats by Dre, and adidas did their brand marketing. I got so much exposure to different ways of thinking and I was just sopping up all the information.”

Greg was fielding all sorts of calls from recruiters but when Liquid Death came calling, it stood out.  “When I first talked to the founder, we immediately clicked,” he says. “He was a snowboarder, a skater, he was in punk bands growing up. He understood subcultures in a way most companies don’t and I really connected with the brand.”

Greg joined as VP of Brand Marketing when the company was still just 40 people. Most sales were online. There were no massive budgets, just a clear mandate: make real entertainment, not advertising.

“My job was to organize the chaos and keep momentum going. Every month, we needed to drop something that could be the funniest thing in someone’s feed, not just the funniest ad” he says. “We built out an editorial calendar and have done one great piece of content every month.”

That included everything from horror films to Tony Hawk skateboards infused with real blood. “We haven’t missed a month in four years,” Greg said.

That included everything from horror films to Tony Hawk skateboards infused with real blood. “We haven’t missed a month in four years,” Greg said.

A standout campaign

One of Greg’s favorite campaigns came early in his Liquid Death tenure. Tony Hawk, an investor and ambassador, had just joined the brand so the team decided to parody celebrity endorsement culture with a twist.

“We collected Tony’s blood, mixed it into the paint, and made a limited-edition run of skateboards,” Greg says. “Then we made a launch video that treated it totally seriously, like a celebrity fragrance drop.”

It worked. The story went viral, the boards sold out within 30 minutes, and resellers were flipping boards for $10,000. “It was our first big, mainstream moment,” Greg says. “And it cemented the brand as one that could out-entertain the internet.”

But then an organic engagement opportunity came. A meme account posted a clip of the Tony Hawk blood skateboard video and Lil Nas X commented, “Nah, he tweakin” as a joke. Why? Because Lil Nas X did the same thing (i.e. put human blood into a product) with a pair of controversial “Satan Shoes.” 

“That one comment ended up taking on a life of its own,” Greg said. “Next thing you know, ‘Nah he tweakin’ becomes the single most commented thing on Instagram of all time. Every single post had thousands and thousands of people saying it. Lil Nas X Tony Hawk Liquid Death Blood Boards was a trending topic on Twitter for multiple days and the articles just kept coming out.”

From there, there’s a whole news cycle about what’s going on between Tony Hawk and Lil Nas X. Greg’s team got in touch with Lil Nas X’s team and they organized a meetup with Tony Hawk and posted content from it (which also went viral).

“It was about a full week of top-of-mind coverage, which is unheard of. It really put Liquid Death on the map in a way we hadn’t been before because the diversity of coverage was crazy. It wasn’t just celebrity news or advertising trade outlets, it was sports outlets, music publications, and mainstream news.”“We were really focused on landing a deep story that emotionally connects with the audience.”

Advice and takeaways

1) Be worth sharing—not just for a brand.

Greg and his team don’t aim to make “good branded content,” they aim to make good content, period. “We’re not just competing with other brands. We’re competing with memes, celebrity gossip, and viral TikToks,” he says. “If an idea can’t hold up against the rest of the internet, it’s not good enough.”

Before your next launch, pressure-test your concept like a comedian would test a joke. Is it actually funny—or just funny for a brand? Raise your bar, not just your budget. And consider this: if you weren’t being paid to share this campaign, would you still want to?

2) Let creative people make creative things.

Liquid Death’s creative team isn’t made up of marketers. It’s ex-Adult Swim writers, punk band frontmen, and stand-up comics. “I think when you get people like that into the room to make an ad, it's going to be way funnier than if you had ad people in the room because there isn't all this previous conditioning about what you should or shouldn't do.”

Consider the ways you can bring more creativity into your marketing strategy and your team. Build a space where creators can thrive and make sure leadership actually understands why the work matters. Otherwise, the best ideas can die before they’re born.

3) Keep showing up, but only with the good stuff.

Greg doesn’t believe in posting on social every day. He believes in posting when it’s actually worth it. “We’re quality over quantity,” he says. “If you keep filling the feed with mediocre stuff, your great work won’t stand out.”

Take a critical look at the content you’re putting out and the value it offers. Is it focused on building momentum or offering genuine value? If not, consider how you can change that. One killer campaign a month beats 30 forgettable posts.

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