DEATH WISH COFFEE CO.
Fueled by death
Death Wish Coffee Co. built a cult following out of Saratoga Springs, New York by doing one thing without apology: roasting the World's Strongest Coffee. Founded in 2012 by Mike Brown, the brand put a skull and crossbones on the mug, won a Super Bowl 50 spot through Intuit's Small Business Big Game competition, and turned dark humor into a national coffee franchise.
Put the world's strongest coffee in a can
Ruckus first signed on in 2020 to rebuild the Death Wish e-commerce platform, full design oversight and development carried from design through launch over a 16 to 20 week build. Then came the bigger swing: the brand's ready-to-drink latte, the World's Strongest Latte, 300 milligrams of caffeine in an 8-ounce can, needed a launch.
The brief had three parts: introduce the first Death Wish ready-to-drink latte to retail and DTC audiences, translate the brand's dark, irreverent voice into film without losing the joke, and arm every channel for launch, video, display, social, and out-of-home.
A latte so good
Ruckus scripted four spots on one campaign line, aimed at everyone who needs help surviving their day. Each follows a person at the end of their rope and a can that changes everything: a latte so good you'll forget you hate working out, forget you hate your job, stop blaming your teammates, forget you hate kid's parties.
Kid's Party, written, directed, and produced by Ruckus, drops one immaculate, unbothered couple into a park birthday party in full meltdown, flying cake, silly string, a defeated clown, their secret in a can. The studio cast, shot, and finished the film, delivering :60 and :30 broadcast-ready cuts for TV, streaming, and pre-roll.
The film's voice carried straight into a full display suite, each unit opening with the campaign line and handing the punchline to the reader with an "I need help:" prompt built from the small miseries the latte solves, from the daily 3:00 p.m. nap to Janet from compliance.
Cooler doors, corner stores, feeds
The rollout put the latte exactly where tired people reach for something stronger: cooler doors, bodega windows, and transit media, with markets selected from the brand's own Shopify session data to hit cities where interest was strong and room to grow was real. On social, the #LatteSoGood giveaway asked the community one question: what does the World's Strongest Latte help you accomplish?
One build became a partnership
The World's Strongest Latte reached store shelves in 2021 backed by a launch toolkit that ran from film to cooler door. And the engagement kept compounding: a platform build grew into a launch campaign, a produced film, and a 12-month support extension that kept Ruckus on the platform after go-live.
