Liquid Death just upped the ante on its collab strategy
If the 1990 classic movie Ghost is any indication, the dead love a good tune. We all remember when the recently deceased Sam (Patrick Swayze) had his infamous pottery session with his very alive partner Molly (Demi Moore).
Now, Liquid Death and Spotify are aiming to use music in a similar way, by giving a few hundred of the recently deceased the opportunity to hear their favorite music for all of eternity. The two brands have collaborated on what they claim to be the first-ever Bluetooth-enabled speaker urn.
The tasteful white urn has a top outfitted with a Bluetooth speaker. Spotify is also introducing the “Eternal Playlist Generator” in the U.S., where you can answer a few questions and prompts to generate a personalized mix for your ashes to enjoy for all of eternity. Liquid Death is producing a few hundred of the urns, which will sell on its site for $495.
Liquid Death’s senior vice-president of marketing Dan Murphy says that the idea came out of informal conversations between the brands. Murphy had worked with Spotify’s senior director of global brand and marketing, Lauren Solomon, and there were other connections between brand leaders.
“It just started as, ‘Our brands should work together sometime!’” says Murphy. “Soon we were doing our Liquid Death thing, which is always the same: If you take another brand or celebrity into the Liquid Death universe, what is the one right answer? And so of course, it was the Eternal Urn powered by a Spotify custom playlist that’s going to fuel it.”
The quirky collab strategy
Liquid Death has made a habit of creating quirky collabs with unlikely partners, but has stepped up its game over the past year. What started with a Martha Stewart candle has evolved into making a faux leather adult diaper for dive bars with Depends (The Pit Diaper), a coffin-shaped “Death Trap” snowboard with Burton, and Corpse Paint makeup with e.l.f. Cosmetics. Most sell out in minutes. The Corpse Paint ad, for example, hit 12 billion impressions in two weeks, and the limited-edition collab sold out in less than 45 minutes.
Murphy says the collabs have evolved significantly over the last two years, to include global brands like Amazon and Spotify. “We’ve established our place in culture and creativity such that maybe two or three years ago, it might’ve been deemed a little too risky to work with us, or maybe we weren’t big enough or interesting enough, but now we’re kind of doing it in our sleep.“
A month before Ozzy Osbourne died, he collaborated with Liquid Death on a collection of cans containing his DNA. For “Infinitely Recyclable Ozzy,” he drank 10 cans of the brand’s iced tea, leaving “trace DNA from his saliva” on the now-precious metal, which originally sold for $450 each. Weeks later, one sold on eBay for $4,655.
Murphy says that the brand’s collaboration strategy has been to create a brand halo for Liquid Death by using these unexpected collabs to reach new audiences.
“We find a lot of brands are interested in our unique audience and our creativity,” says Murphy. “We film and produce and direct these things in-house, so they get that value, and then we’ll find brands that will allow me to extend my marketing budget, jump in on their audience, level up the PR with major household names, that bring what they do best to the table.”
The company’s last valuation was $1.4 billion in 2024, and in early 2026 it launched into the energy drink category. The company started with spring water, expanded to flavored sparkling water in 2021, juice-spiked iced teas in 2022, soda-flavored sparkling water this year, and now—much like Liquid I.V.—sees opportunity in energy drinks.
“We might not do as many collabs next year, so I think it’ll be even just a fewer, bigger, better strategy,” says Murphy. “As we move into a fourth category of healthy, better-for-you energy, it’s that next level of complexity of customer and occasion and strategy. So it’ll take a little bit more focus on the core product. We’ve never taken our eye off that ball, but I think as a consequence, we’ll just look to a few fewer and always bigger and better. That’s what we’re trying for.”
The Pantheon
Bigger and better is getting tougher to reach after a few years of bigger and slightly unhinged collab ideas. Here’s my Top 5 Pantheon of Liquid Death Collabs:
5. Deathtrap snowboard x Burton
No camber, no sidecut, absolutely should not be taken down a hill. Only 50 of these casket-shaped snowboards were made, and it’s a lock that all 50 are hanging on someone’s wall for wine and burrata night.
4. Death Watch x Nixon
Classy and timeless, and for the one-time low price of… your eternal soul. The Death Watch started in 2021, and is still ticking, selling its fourth iteration in 2024.
3. Pit Diaper x Depends
Sometimes the Liquide Death creative team comes up with an idea and then approaches a brand to collaborate with on it. This faux leather dive bar diaper holder is one such example.
2. Corpse Paint x e.l.f. Cosmetics
One of the most unintuitive collabs ever made, but its numbers speak for itself. Absolute gangbusters for both brands.
- Eternal Playlist Urn x Spotify
The weirdest, most useless, yet kind of amazing product we didn’t know we needed. Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Damn you, Bluetooth speaker Urn, damn you.