- Colby Minifie steps into character as Ashley Barrett, the power-hungry Vice President from Prime Video's The Boys, to front Liquid Death's Sparkling Energy campaign, which the brand cheekily frames as "product placement for public health" and "the first product endorsed by the executive branch."
- This is not the first time The Boys universe has shown up in a Liquid Death ad, the brand's crossover with the show first began in 2021, with previous campaigns centered on The Deep, the show's hapless aquatic superhero.
- The campaign drop is timed to the final season of The Boys, with the series finale set to air May 20, giving the activation a natural promotional runway across social media as fans prepare for the show's ending.
- Liquid Death's Sparkling Energy drink features 100mg of caffeine, zero sugar, and five calories, facts delivered in-character by Barrett herself during the ad's chaotic fictional press conference.
Colby Minifie is selling energy drinks, in character. The actress, best known for playing Vought International’s ruthless corporate climber-turned-Vice President Ashley Barrett on Prime Video’s The Boys, has teamed up with Liquid Death to front the brand’s new Sparkling Energy campaign, and she’s doing it fully in character.
In the ad, Barrett frames Liquid Death Sparkling Energy as a government-endorsed public health initiative, with the brand joking it is “the first product to be endorsed by the executive branch.” It’s pure chaos, and very much on-brand for both the show and Liquid Death.
This partnership extends a collab history that stretches back to 2021, with prior campaigns built around The Deep. Now the spotlight shifts to Barrett, who Liquid Death VP of Creative Andy Pearson described as having “real girlboss energy.”
For Minifie, wrapping The Boys after five seasons as a fan-favourite series regular is a career milestone in itself. What started as a small recurring role that was supposed to end in Season 1 evolved into a six-year series regular contract, one that saw Ashley go from fired publicist to Vice President with a superpower. This Liquid Death campaign is her first known brand partnership tied to the role.
Just as athletes like Taylor Fritz and Maren Morris have fronted beverage brand campaigns blurring the line between entertainment and endorsement, and much like Adrian Grenier leveraged his on-screen persona for a Starbucks Energy Refreshers partnership, Minifie is letting Ashley Barrett do the selling, not herself.
Liquid Death has built its entire brand on exactly this kind of irreverence. The 2024 e.l.f. Cosmetics collab, a heavy-metal makeup kit ad, hit 12 billion impressions in two weeks and sold out in under 45 minutes.
Past brand partners have included Martha Stewart, Tony Hawk, and Ozzy Osbourne, all executed on a total talent and production spend of under $2 million across all of 2024.
Takeaways
This campaign is a masterclass in what happens when a brand and a fictional universe are genuinely aligned. Liquid Death didn’t just license The Boys IP, it extended the show’s satirical DNA into a product pitch that feels less like an ad and more like deleted scene canon.
For Colby Minifie, stepping out of The Boys finale spotlight and into a brand campaign as Ashley Barrett is a smart way to cement the character’s cultural footprint beyond the show’s final episode.
What makes this particularly sharp is the timing. With The Boys ending its run on May 20, fan attention is at an all-time high, and Liquid Death is right there in the conversation without spending its way in. That’s not a coincidence. That’s brand strategy.
Does using a fictional character rather than the actual actress make a brand campaign more or less effective, and does it matter? Could Colby Minifie leverage Ashley Barrett’s post-finale cultural moment into further brand partnerships under her own name?
