One company sells water in a can that looks like beer, and another sells green powder on subscription. Liquid Death reported $263 million in retail sales in 2023 and raised funding at a $1.4 billion valuation in March 2024, while AG1 says its revenue reached about $600 million in 2024, roughly four times its 2021 level. Both operate in categories where the product itself is not the difference, and both grew through the creator-led distribution that a modern TikTok marketing strategy now puts within reach of smaller brands. At INNELS we went through cases like these, and the pattern is uncomfortable for most Amazon sellers: the brands that win marketplace search decided what they meant long before they optimised a single listing.
Most sellers start with the listing and hope the brand shows up later. Liquid Death and AG1 did it in the opposite order, and that order is the part anyone can copy. The budget is not the lesson, the sequence is.”— Mark Daniel Zalomajev, Founder, INNELS
Water is water, and nobody switched to Liquid Death because of the taste, so the can became the product decision. Founder Mike Cessario tested the brand before there was any water to sell, shooting a commercial for about $1,500 and using its early traction to raise a seed round led by Science, the studio behind Dollar Shave Club. AG1 did the same thing more quietly: it never really sold greens powder, it sold the feeling of having your health handled, even dropping the name Athletic Greens to widen its audience. We see this as the first lesson for marketplace sellers, because what buying your product says about the customer is a product decision that has to be settled before packaging, main images or A+ content.
When the product cannot be told apart, the packaging and the visual identity have to carry the decision. We treat the main image and the pack as the first expression of what the brand means, not as decoration added at the end.”— Yuliia Hurenko, Graphic Designer, INNELS
Podcasts, creators, events and giveaways did more for these brands than any ingredient list. AG1 built its growth on host-read podcast ads with voices such as Tim Ferriss and Andrew Huberman, while Liquid Death turned marketing into entertainment through stunts like skateboard decks painted with Tony Hawk’s blood. Gymshark followed the same route in the UK, sending free gear to the YouTube lifters its founder admired, and reported £647 million in revenue for the year to July 2025. A formula can be copied in a month, but a community around it cannot, which is why we treat TikTok influencer marketing as infrastructure rather than a one-off campaign.
The formula can be copied in a month. A community built around the brand cannot, and that is where the real defensibility sits. We would rather help a client own a channel of attention than win a single launch.”— Andrejs Klimovskis, Founder, INNELS
Subscription and habit products can afford to buy a customer expensively, because that customer comes back without being bought again. AG1 is the extreme case, a single product sold mainly on monthly subscription, which is what made its heavy podcast and creator spend workable. Prime Hydration shows the reverse: built on creator fame, it was reported to be on track for more than $1.2 billion in sales in 2023, yet its UK company’s filed accounts showed turnover falling from £112.2 million in 2023 to £32.8 million in 2024. Reach without repeat purchase is a launch, not a business, and on Amazon the closest lever we have is Subscribe & Save for replenishable products.
Acquisition cost only looks expensive when you measure it against one order. If the product is replenishable and the customer reorders, the maths on advertising changes completely. That is why we look at repeat behaviour before we decide how hard to push spend.”— Mario Reambonanza, PPC Manager, INNELS
Tens of thousands of units given away is not a loss line, it is advertising with a better conversion rate than advertising. AG1’s standard offer adds a free welcome kit of travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3+K2 to the first order, and Liquid Death leaned heavily on sampling at shows and events in its early years. Peer-reviewed research supports the logic: a 2018 study in Decision Support Systems found that receiving a free sample sharply increased the likelihood of purchase, with the strongest effect among moderately experienced shoppers rather than freebie hunters. For us the practical takeaway is that who receives the product matters as much as how much is given away, which is why promoting products on TikTok through seeding starts with choosing the right creators.
Try selling water on Amazon through search: nobody types water, they type a brand name, and that search volume was created somewhere else. Liquid Death only launched on Amazon around February 2023 and, according to Jungle Scout data, quickly became the best seller in mineral drinking water, because the marketplace was collecting demand built off-platform. This is the halo effect we plan for our clients, where reach happens on TikTok and with creators and Amazon sees it as higher branded search, better conversion and cheaper Amazon advertising,. Fospha’s 2025 Halo Report, based on its own client data, attributes 42% of brands’ Amazon sales to non-Amazon media. One EU caveat matters: Amazon Attribution works on the UK, German, French, Italian and Spanish stores, but the Brand Referral Bonus is still limited to the US store.
Branded search is the clearest sign that marketing outside Amazon is working. When people arrive already looking for the brand, conversion improves and those clicks cost less to win. We report branded and non-branded performance separately so that signal is not hidden in a blended number.”— Niks Saknitis, PPC Manager, INNELS
We are not saying copy these brands with a 5 thousand euro budget, we are saying copy the order of decisions. Start by writing what the brand means in one sentence, then carry that into packaging, main images and A+ content. Next, seed product with a few dozen micro-creators in one country and one niche who already speak to your buyer, and license the strongest videos for TikTok Spark Ads or TikTok Shop marketing where the shop is available. Then catch the demand on Amazon with brand-term campaigns, a Brand Store that matches what people saw on TikTok and Subscribe & Save for replenishable products. Finally, track branded search in Brand Analytics week by week against your posting calendar, because if it does not move, the problem is usually the identity rather than the budget.
Liquid Death took its playbook from beer and energy drinks, AG1 from talk radio and Gymshark from YouTube culture, and none of them looked to their own category for ideas. The marketplace rewards brands whose demand was created somewhere else, which is why we plan Amazon advertising, TikTok and creator work as one system rather than separate channels. If you want to see how that sequence would look for your brand across European marketplaces, talk to the INNELS team.
%20(1).png)
.png)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)