Corpse Paint & Contour: e.l.f. x Liquid Death's Beautifully Unhinged Collab
How a water brand and a budget beauty giant pulled off one of the most subversive and unexpectedly genius campaigns in recent beauty marketing history.
When I saw e.l.f. Cosmetics was teaming up with Liquid Death for a corpse paint-inspired makeup vault collection in Spring 2024, my brain short-circuited. It sounded fake. Campy. Like a TikTok parody of what a Gen Z marketing team might pitch after one too many energy drinks. And then the campaign dropped, complete with a black metal demon named Glothar, a dramatic family reunion, and a limited-edition coffin full of eyeliner and setting spray, and I realized: they actually pulled it off.
This wasn’t just another brand collab. It was a rare moment where a mainstream beauty company fully committed to a weird, niche aesthetic and didn’t water it down in the process.
An Unlikely (and Kind of Perfect) Partnership
e.l.f. and Liquid Death have nothing in common on paper, which is exactly why this worked. One is known for affordable primers and viral TikTok mascara. The other sells canned water like it’s brewed in hell and packaged in a tall boy. What they do share is a love for disruption. Both have made names for themselves by rejecting beauty-industry and beverage-industry norms, respectively, and this campaign was their shared love letter to chaos.
It also tapped into something a lot of brands miss: people are bored of beige. The "clean girl" aesthetic has been rinsed of all personality, and corpse paint is, if nothing else, loud. It’s messy. It’s unapologetic. And it’s deeply symbolic.
So, What Is Corpse Paint, Really?
Corpse paint isn’t just edgy makeup. It’s a visual language born from the Norwegian black metal scene of the 80’s and 90’s as a way for musicians to make themselves look inhuman, undead, and outside the realm of social order. The exaggerated black and white face paint was meant to reject mainstream polish and embrace raw, theatrical darkness. It was about discomfort, spectacle, and anti-glamour.
And that’s what makes this campaign so sharp. Instead of softening corpse paint into something palatable, e.l.f. and Liquid Death leaned into the weird. They made it funny, spooky, and somehow still buyable. It was straight-up genre play, and a surprisingly respectful nod to a subculture that rarely sees itself reflected in glossy, commercial beauty campaigns.
The black metal world uses corpse paint as armor, a way to shed the individual and become something mythic, monstrous, symbolic. In this campaign, it became theatrical glam with a death wish. It kept the satire, but it also held on to the power.
The Campaign: Toys R Us Meets Norwegian Hellfire
The 55-second ad spot was styled like a deranged 90’s toy commercial. Two girls in a bedroom get visited by Glothar, who erupts from a magazine like a demon Barbie Dreamhouse accessory and proceeds to do their makeup in full black metal style. The mom walks in and recognizes him as her long-lost ex. It’s ridiculous, yet it’s brilliant.
The visuals were designed to go viral. High-contrast, high-drama, and absurd in the best way. Everything was timed to perfection, from the fake scream-voice narration to the overly saturated colors and old-school VHS-style video filter. It wasn’t just a campaign; it was a bit. A high-budget sketch made for internet culture.
And people ate it up. The vault, which came in a matte black coffin, complete with “Eye Die” eyeliner, “Kiss of Death” lipstick, and “Dead Set” setting spray, sold out in under 45 minutes.
Click here to watch the commercial. What are your thoughts?
Marketing Strategy: Smart, Satirical, and Social-First
What makes this campaign so successful isn’t just the visuals, it’s the rollout. This was marketing as performance art. e.l.f. and Liquid Death didn’t try to fit into anyone’s algorithm; they became the content.
They knew their audiences: e.l.f.’s Gen Z girlies who love irony and identity play. Liquid Death’s alternative-leaning, meme-savvy consumers who’d 100% buy a goth makeup kit just to say they did. It was engineered for social saturation: influencer unboxings, TikTok recreations, meme pages; all of it built-in and baked-in from launch.
They also didn't over-explain the joke. There was no long mission statement. No pseudo-inspirational backstory. Just vibes. The absurdity was the point.
This is how modern branding wins: by building a narrative, committing to the bit, and trusting your audience to be in on the joke without needing a syllabus.
Why It Worked: Niche Is the New Mass
This campaign is proof that going niche doesn’t mean going small. In fact, it’s the opposite. By going deep into an alternative aesthetic, e.l.f. and Liquid Death tapped into a whole new wave of consumers who are tired of trend-chasing and crave something more subversive.
The best part? It didn’t feel forced. The goth elements were cartoonish but not mocking. The nod to black metal was extreme but not disrespectful. And the marketing didn’t treat alt culture as some quirky costume, it treated it like a stage.
Coffin Couture: Final Thoughts
The e.l.f. x Liquid Death Corpse Paint campaign succeeded because it did what so many brands are too scared to do: take a risk and get weird. In a landscape oversaturated with safe, samey aesthetics, this was a rare moment where a beauty launch felt fun again. Not aspirational -- theatrical. Not relatable -- unhinged.
It gave goth girls, metalheads, Halloween lovers, and bored beauty fans something to scream about. And honestly? That’s the kind of chaos the industry needs more of.
Death became her, and she looked sickening.
