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Inside Liquid Death's Wild Collabs With BARK and Goodwipes
LD loves finding other brands 'that want to have fun with us'
Is there no brand collaboration that Liquid Death can’t positively slay? Of late, the beverage company’s brand partnerships with subscription dog product vendor BARK and Goodwipes, which makes plant-based flushable wipes, are going so well that both have been extended, yielding fresh work.
Before we get to the work itself, Andy Pearson, Liquid Death VP of creative, explains why these unexpected unions have clicked with their intended audience.
“Liquid Death was founded on the idea of out-funning the most fun brands on earth, which are traditional things like beer, energy drinks, candy, etc. So, when we find other brands who are down to have some fun with us, it always feels like a natural fit,” he tells Muse. “In a lot of ways, by working with us, brands gain permission to do the stuff they might not feel free to do on their own. And we get to temporarily play in a space we don’t belong.”
Now, we delve into the work:
BARK x Liquid Death
On the heels of creating a line of toys that “keep dogs metal,” including a Chewy Chainsaw Super Chewer and a Psycho Bunny Plush, Liquid Death has reunited with BARK and its agency Tombras to unleash upon the world a shock collar that delivers a jolt every time a canine chops down on a specially-designed Liquid Death dog toy linked to the device.
But the dog isn’t wearing the shock collar. Instead, its owner takes all the jolts.
“Shock collars are a loaded subject for dog people but only when they’re used on dogs. Nobody seemed to have an opinion about using one on humans, so we flipped it,” says BARK VP of brand partnerships Dave Stangle, who actually agreed to be the guinea pig of sorts for the project, wearing the instrument of torture.
So, what made him step up when he could have asked someone, anyone else, to take one for the team?
“When you sign up to commit to the bit, you can’t fake it, and we didn’t fake it. Believe me, we didn’t fake it,” Stangle says. “The collar delivered a real shock every time it picked up a squeak. Halfway through the shoot, I felt pretty awake and quite alert. I started claiming, ‘I do my own stunts!’ Once the adrenaline wore off, I crashed and was in bed by 7 p.m.”
And there have been after effects, just so you don’t try this at home. “Since then, my body braces for phantom shocks every time I hear a dog squeak, which, in my line of work, is often. New occupational hazard unlocked,” he says, adding, “Can’t claim I’m not a company man, though.”
It should be noted for posterity that Pearson also has experience being zapped by a shock collar. “Ironically, I zapped myself with a dog collar for another idea years ago when I was at Crispin. Jeff Benjamin [global chief creative officer of Tombras] was there too, although he did not get zapped. I didn’t do it this time,” Pearson points out, “but I love Dave’s commitment to the bit.”
Beyond the reverse shock collar, the BARK x Liquid Death campaign extension also features—or featured, because they are all sold out—human-sized coffins in which diehard dog lovers can cuddle with and ultimately be buried with their pooches. Not something you’d find many, or perhaps any, other pet-related brand pushing.
“Liquid Death was a partner willing to push things with us,” Stanger says, noting, “Most pet brands compete on cute. This was a chance to make things nobody else in the category would make, while keeping the dogs as the focal point and the humans as the joke.”
Goodwipes x Liquid Death
While it might not seem like an obvious pairing, Goodwipes and Liquid Death do have a lot in common, according to Meredith Diehn, SVP marketing. “We’re both questioning the conventional conversation and pushing boundaries in commoditized categories,” she says. “They’re doing it with water; we’re doing it with wipes.”
Which is why a few months back, Goodwipes began selling limited-edition sCREAM Soda flushable butt wipes infused with real Liquid Death mountain water. “Our sCREAM Soda was already selling fantastically as a Walmart exclusive. So, it made sense to extend that flavor into goodwipes as another Walmart exclusive,” Pearson says.
You may recall that collab launched with a sweepstakes offering the lucky winner the services of a personal “Buttler.” The collab continues with the recent release of a spot that parodies skin care commercials. But rather than the focus being on the cheeks of one’s face, Goodwipes is out to pamper one’s butt cheeks—whether they are smooth or hairy as we see in the ad. We even see people sitting on… toilets! An unusual site in the sanitized world of advertising where we rarely view anyone seated on the throne.
“Wipes are a category that doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being exciting. There’s a lot of clinical language and euphemisms, so one of the biggest challenges is getting people to see the category differently,” Diehn says. “That’s where Liquid Death was such a natural partner. They’ve built a brand by making a very ordinary product impossible to ignore, and we’re doing something similar with wipes. Rather than just putting two logos on a pack, we wanted to create something that felt genuinely unexpected and could only come from these two brands.”
FYI: The team at Goodwipes actually made the first move to establish a partnership.
“We approached Liquid Death through partnerships agency SonderCo, and once we started talking, it was clear our values lined up,” Diehn explains. “We both believe consumers deserve better than dry, outdated experiences, and we’re on a mission to disrupt the status quo and do away with dry mouths, dry wiping and dry standards.”
Pearson adds: “Usually, we bring the ideas and work and then handle production. In this case, Goodwipes actually came to us with ideas we already thought were fun, and we built them together. We handled the production, too, as Death Machine.”
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