Marketing Ate Innovation; or, #DeathToMarketing

“If you have a valuable brand, it means that people have a reason to care about you beyond the small functional difference.” — Mike Cessario, CEO of Liquid Death “If you just believe…” — Tinkerbell, Peter Pan

Drew’s Honeybees is in wellness. It’s a strange space. Marketing is often more important than products. Company leaders are surprisingly open about this. They have a point. In wellness, marketing often informs what customers think more than the product itself. This, to put it lightly, is perilous. Marketing is known for a love of money. Marketing is not known for a love of truth, kindness, innovation, courage, character, or any human virtue. If marketing is primary, marketers can implant ideas that are not true. They repeat nonsense with phantasmagoric flourish. If marketers can sell you a story that ain’t so, they will. It’s easier than actually doing something meaningful. If we, as a people, want meaningful, good, actual innovation let’s prepare ourselves–#DeathToMarketing

There is a cost beyond purchases unlikely to do what marketers say. Flights from truth do not end at consumer goods. When we lose the thread of truth it bleeds into public life. Figures from the wellness industry are now upending the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the proudest, most fruitful scientific establishments in the history of the world. You probably think that’s an exaggeration. If so, name a more fruitful scientific institution in, again, the history of the world. Goons from the wellness industry are upending that. We will be poorer and sticker because of it.

In Peter Pan, Tinkerbell breathlessly encourages the Lost Boys that “if they just believe” something it is true. Though some realities are internal, shared realities exist independent of any of us. Shared realities are independent of if we just believe. Too often wellness leverages our desire to believe heartening things for someone else’s profit. I call this dynamic Tinkerbellism.

There is a reason why Tinkerbellism dominates. It is much easier to sell Tinkerbellism than meaningfully innovate. We made the best lip balm tube on the planet, coming fall 2025. It’s functionally equivalent. It contains no plastics or harmful plasticizers—PFAS, bisphenols, or phthalates. It’s eminently recyclable and mighty handsome. But it's no rocket ship. It says a lot about innovation in consumer goods that no one had already made a better lip balm tube. It took someone who bumbles about answering to “the dumb beekeeper.”

Tinkerbellism is easy. It’s cheap. Good innovation is hard. Good innovation is costly. This differential difficulty and cost leads to lotsa Tinkerbellism. If the customer identifies substantial and good innovation and dismisses nonsense and unfounded claims, companies will have little to do but innovate in substantial and good things.

Liquid Death has become a billion-dollar commercial Goliath selling water in a plastic-lined aluminum can. But is water in an aluminum can innovation? Is it progress? Better municipal water management providing and distributing clean water to everyone at a teensy fraction of the cost of canned water would be social and ecological progress. Less pollution would be progress too. As to whether water in a plastic-lined aluminum can is innovation or progress, we can go to Liquid Death’s CEO, Mike Cessario, “if you have a valuable brand, it means that people have a reason to care about you beyond the small functional difference [emphasis mine].” Liquid Death’s CEO gave up how insubstantial–small, is his words–his game is.

A zero-plastic aluminum lip balm tube is a beneficial innovation. There is no low cost, efficient public lip balm supply. Though, in the spirit of truth, you know what is better than buying a lip balm? Not buying a lip balm. Question what consumption is in your life on and upon this earth. Don’t fret. Ya can’t get enough of what you don’t really want anyway. Look to meaning. Having the courage to do your own.

Know this- the Liquid Death #Deathtoplastic can contain a plastic lining. We’re so lost in viral marketing that we overlook the lie within each product. To not use plastic, Drew’s Honeybees and our ironclad partners made a varnish of tree resins. Should the good people in their wisdom ever bestow us with the billions bestowed upon Liquid Death, we’ll deliver a lot more than pit diapers. We’ll deliver a healthier world. And that ain’t no joke.

I’ve got nothing against jokes, just don’t be only jokes. With clout, reach and profit, do some good. And ya know what makes a joke funnier? Contrast. If Liquid Death actually did substantial and good things their pit diaper would be much funnier.

Liquid Death sells the “murder your thirst” story planning that consumers will think purchases make them cool and tough. The very act of buying into this story seems to be a data point against coolness and toughness. Wanna be cool? Have the indomitability of mind to decide for yourself what is cool. Good heavens, give marketers no say in such a sacred space. We’re not to be trusted.

If companies care to innovate, simply reframe the problem. While you’re at it, reframe it meaningfully. Go for good. Look beyond “small functional differences.” As a people, we don’t lack for wild marketing malarkey. As a people, our effect on our environment and our own health is a problem.

Move from “small functional differences” to “what will be us of, this planet, and those who follow.” It’s a market. It’s all made up anyway. Make it up for good. There’s a redounding human freedom here if you’ve the pluck, will, character and courage. What products to develop? What values guide us? For whom? Answer as if you’re lying on your deathbed. What answers will you be proud of on that cusp? Seriously, I envision this to cut through the bullshit and find the enduring good. The Stoic philosophers were right, memento mori–remember you will die. It makes this moment, this choice, this possibility more meaningful.

Is selling water in an aluminum can “metal?” Not as I understand it. I’m an allergic beekeeper. I snarl back at bears while backed by bees–Candy Man-style. I commune with Sleep. I decided I was gonna make a lip balm tube that was better for the earth and you with no influence/expertise/partners/clout/education/money. I’m tougher than those men. I am more thoughtful than those men. I am more unflinching than those men. If metal is devil-may-care before the destroyer, I live it. It’s why I see the acceptance of “small functional difference” as wimpy and very non-metal. I want better for us, the creatures, and generations to follow. ‘Cuz I’m cool and tough, you see?

If we care for innovation, make marketing nonsense less profitable. If companies can sell you nonsensical ideas they will prioritize Tinkerbellism over innovation. Promising health, wealth, beauty, or great sex is easier than delivering small but better outcomes according to the evidence. If someone makes a grand claim and is unable or unwilling to back their claim, that’s marketing. Ignore it. If you think we are capable of more–#DeathToMarketing This world is too beautiful, too full of promise, too brimming with life for marketing to be primary.

How to #MurderMarketing? Assume marketing is bunk until proven by credible means. Realize and accept that someone saying something does not make it true. Realize and accept that eagerly accepting someone’s fancy fiction as your truth is sad. Unless you’re the sort of person who dutifully reorients your worldview when someone tells you.