<\/p>\n
An all-too-literal guillotine league. Chainsawed sandwiches. A moshpit diaper.<\/p>\n
Those aren\u2019t just random words jumbled together to test your reading comprehension\u2014they\u2019re the outcome of recent brand collaborations with Liquid Death.<\/p>\n
The canned-beverage brand has been inking more than sports partnerships in the last year, striking deals with a bevvy of other big names, including Yahoo Sports (the aforementioned guillotine league), Sheetz (chainsawed sandwiches), and Depends (moshpit diaper), all of which are shown off in splashy social posts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope to be one of the better things in your feed,\u201d Dan Murphy, SVP of marketing for Liquid Death, told Marketing Brew.<\/p>\n
While collaborations are nothing new, the strange humor that\u2019s a feature of Liquid Death\u2019s brand mashups certainly <\/em>stands out. To understand what goes into partnering with Liquid Death, Marketing Brew caught up with Murphy to get a sense of the process.<\/p>\n \u201cThey see us a bit like a Saturday Night Live<\/em> stage,\u201d according to Murphy, who said that he has some 73 brands interested in partnering currently in his inbox. \u201cWe\u2019re going to go into the Liquid Death world,\u201d Murphy said of the reasoning he sees, \u201cand we\u2019re going to get exposed to this new audience.\u201d<\/p>\n For interested brands, Liquid Death has a big stage to offer. Since its founding in 2018, the brand has built a dedicated fanbase on social media, with 7 million followers on TikTok and 7.3 million followers on Instagram. Murphy says the brand regularly earns more than a billion media impressions each month, all while keeping costs relatively low.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very much an influencer,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cWe ended [2024 with] over 30 billion [earned media impressions], and that was on a spend of\u2014I\u2019m talking every production dollar, every talent fee, because we work with celebrities too\u2014that was under $2 million.\u201d<\/p>\n While the details of each brand partnership deal vary, Liquid Death\u2019s typical arrangement when partnering with a brand is to contribute whatever creative that its five-person, in-house team lands on. The company generally asks that its brand partner cover \u201chard costs\u201d of production, as well as the marketing budget and media resources that could include anything from influencer spend or light paid spend behind the campaign, Murphy said.<\/p>\n When considering partners, the most important factor is if the brand looking to link up is \u201caligned with our creative sensibilities,\u201d Murphy said.<\/p>\n Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That likeminded spirit was what attracted Sheetz, a convenience store brand that operates its own irreverent social presence, to promote its recent partnership with Liquid Death, Ryan Sheetz, executive vice president of marketing and supply chain at Sheetz, told Marketing Brew.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a lot in common, right? Both very bold brands, both very high energy brands, but both brands who really like to have a lot of fun,\u201d Sheetz said.<\/p>\n For one day in late July, the brands offered Sheetz customers a new, if unconventional, way to slice their sandwiches: with a chainsaw. And no, it wasn\u2019t just a lark just for social media; some 150 patrons in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, got to see their sandwiches chainsawed in half.<\/p>\n The whole endeavor required an unconventional setup.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took a lot of preparation and planning to make sure our store teams were well set up and we had all the proper safety and organizational measures in place,\u201d Sheetz said. \u201cWe had a brand-new kind of food-safe blade that was put on the chainsaw, and we used food-grade lubricant instead of petroleum-based oil. I learned a lot about chainsaws that I never thought I would need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeremy Ekes, VP client strategy and services at January Digital, said Liquid Death\u2019s built a reputation for unique partnerships where marketers are willing to take a leap, making its particular creative sensibility stand out in a landscape where co-branding is all the rage.<\/p>\n \u201cGenerally, there\u2019s probably few and far between in the industry,\u201d Ekes said. \u201cProbably a handful of brands you can think of that have the right to own that space, Liquid Death being one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Those kinds of out-of-the-box partnerships and unexpected creative aren\u2019t solely for entertainment. Through all of its partnerships, Liquid Death is aiming to continue to boost its brand awareness\u2014while educating consumers about what the brand offers, especially as its product lineup expands.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are talking more about product benefits than we have ever before,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cI think we found we had this great awareness number, and especially being a young company, but at least a third of those people still thought we were a beer or maybe an energy drink, so we had to work a little harder to make sure that message comes through.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nLinking up<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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