Why great brands need unbreakable internal rules (Harley and Liquid Death)
For brand storytelling to work, a brand’s world needs strict internal rules and logic. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl shows how Rainier Beer keeps everything on Mount Rainier, how Harley always speaks as the rebel outlaw, and how Liquid Death built an impure world for a pure product around murdering your thirst. He explains why mixing archetypes makes a brand fall apart, and why Bob’s Red Mill’s decision to remove Bob from its packaging broke the rules of its world. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on worldbuilding, Stop Brand Building, Start Worldbuilding.
Watch the full episode
Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl argues that worldbuilding, like the rest of a brand identity, needs rules and guidelines. Rainier Beer’s rule is that everything happens on Mount Rainier, home to the Wild Rainiers, a wizard who rules the mountain, and a barbarian who fights the yeti. Anything that doesn’t fit gets left out, and some rules emerge over time and get absorbed into the brand’s canon.
Harley always speaks from the rebel outlaw archetype, because it isn’t really about bikes but about fighting the status quo and finding freedom on the weekend. Liquid Death isn’t about water at all; it’s about murdering your thirst with cartoonish violence and heavy metal attitude, an impure world for a pure product.
Calvin warns against clients who want to be an outlaw but also caring, since mixing archetypes breaks a brand’s internal logic. He points to Bob’s Red Mill’s recent rebrand, which removed the illustration of founder Bob from its packaging and left it looking like a generic consumer good.
Highlights
Brand worlds need strict internal rules and logic.
Everything in Rainier Beer’s world happens on Mount Rainier.
Harley promises that you can be a biker, even with a desk job.
Liquid Death created an impure world for a pure product.
Mixing archetypes makes people lose track of who you are.
Key insights
Rules tell you what belongs
Clear logic makes it instantly obvious what fits in a brand’s world and what doesn’t, which attracts the people who identify with it.
Sell the identity, not the product
Harley’s bikes and Liquid Death’s water are just the product. The world each brand builds around them is what people buy into.
Being against something gives a brand edge
Classic Harley ads are always opposed to something, and that oppositional stance is part of the world.
Breaking the rules erodes meaning
Removing a beloved founder illustration can strip a brand of the meaning fans attached to it.
Detailed analysis
The clip makes worldbuilding operational. Rules turn an evocative idea into a filter for every decision, from campaign copy to product extensions. A Liquid Death artisan spring water would be a perfectly reasonable product, but it would break the world, and fans would reject it.
Calvin’s warning about mixed archetypes is drawn from client work. When a brand tries to be an outlaw and a caretaker at once, it loses the consistency that made it recognizable. A viewer’s joke about the outlaw caretaker as bad ex-boyfriend vibes captures how confusing that mix can feel.
Conclusion
Define your brand’s rules and logic, then never break them. The strongest brand worlds stay instantly recognizable because they know exactly what doesn’t belong.
Transcript
So in order for all that storytelling to work, for a brand to work in this kind of space, you have to build really, really strict internal rules and logic for your world. Just like the rest of your identity, this worldbuilding requires some rules, some guidelines, and things like that. I just mentioned Rainier. Rainier Beer has the rule that everything happens on Mount Rainier. There are the Wild Rainiers, which are the little bottles with legs that run around. There’s Candalf the Gold, the wizard who rules over the mountain. There’s the barbarian who fights the yeti on the mountain. The world is always absorbed with that. Anything that’s against that doesn’t get included.
So you define those rules, and sometimes these rules are something your brand discovers over time, because that’s what happens with emergent storytelling, and it gets absorbed into the canon of a brand. So for example, Harley. With their internal rules and logic, Harley always speaks from the mindset of that rebel or outlaw archetype. And that’s because Harley’s not about bikes. The bikes are just the product at the end of it. Harley is really about fighting against the status quo, fighting against your 9-to-5 job, finding freedom on the weekend when you can. That is what Harley’s about. You might have a desk job, but you can be a biker. That’s what Harley promises you. And when you tell someone they can be a biker, their mind lights up in this way where they imagine this whole other alter ego that they can’t have in their normal life. So that’s the powerful part of Harley.
Oh, I’ve got an example here. This is great. These are classic old ads from Harley. Some of the writing that they’ve done is just really good. This one, [unclear], and the tagline for this whole campaign is just “Live by it.” And then this one is great messaging: do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that, blah blah blah. That’s just the writing. It’s always opposed to something. And I just love that mindset. You always have to be up against something, and that’s part of their world.
The other one that I want to talk about, because we drink too much of this around the office, is Liquid Death. Liquid Death is another one that has established the most absurd rules for their brand. This is a page from our friends over at Lincoln Design. They’re just outside of Portland, and they’re an illustration-heavy design agency, I would say, but they do work for Liquid Death. And Liquid Death isn’t about water. It has almost nothing to do with water. Liquid Death is about murdering your thirst and everything that comes along with that. Every detail needs to communicate this idea that your thirst is an opponent. It must be murdered, and it must communicate this cartoonish amount of violence and heavy metal attitude, and it must always abide by those rules.
If all of a sudden Liquid Death put out a product that was trying to be some beautiful artisan spring water, and it’s so pure and natural—no, it would not work. Everyone would hate it. Liquid Death has created an impure world for a pure product, and that’s great. Because, like all these things, the benefit of doing these rules and this logic is you instantly know what belongs in this world and what doesn’t, and therefore you instantly attract people who really identify with this world.
Dang, I love this. Oh, I pulled this up too. This is Designing Virtual Worlds, the Richard Bartle book. Any cover that looks like this, you know, is going to be a dry read, but a very informative one.
All right, so that’s another important thing. Remember, you have to define your own rules and logic and then never break them. We run into this with clients all the time, especially when we’re talking about archetypes for clients. They say, “Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to be an outlaw, but sometimes I need to be nice and caring and stuff like that. So maybe I need to be a sage or a caretaker archetype.” And as soon as you mix those, it defies everything that your brand stands for, breaks all the internal rules and logic, and your brand starts to fall apart, and people don’t know who you are anymore. So if you’re Liquid Death, it’s always about violence: cartoonish violence and murdering thirst. That’s it.
Sarah says, “You mix those, you become an abusive ex-boyfriend.” Oh, yeah. The outlaw caretaker. That’s the bad ex-boyfriend vibes.
All right. Can anyone else think of any other brands, like you’ve got Harley, you’ve got Liquid Death, where consumer good products are really good at this stuff? I just saw Bob’s Red Mill did a rebrand, and everyone that knows Bob’s Red Mill is upset because they removed the illustration of Bob, the original owner and founder, from the packaging. Everyone’s upset because that’s breaking the rules of the world that they established. Bob’s Red Mill makes grains, flour, stuff you buy at the store. And just by removing that thing, they’ve broken every rule. Now it just looks like a generic consumer good, and they were so good and meaningful before that. I’m curious to see how the new rebrand does. It just came out, but we’ll see.