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DPS Skis Turns Ski Ownership Into a Generational Heirloom
DPS Skis launched "Live For It – The DPS Will and Testament" in March 2024, a United States campaign created by TDA_Boulder that repositions premium skis as heirloom objects durable enough to be passed down to future generations through a legally binding will.
The campaign makes a singular, provocative claim: DPS skis are engineered so well they can outlast their owners. Rather than promoting seasonal performance or on-slope technology in conventional terms, TDA_Boulder built the entire campaign around the legal concept of inheritance. Each pair of DPS skis ships with a QR code linking to a dedicated will-and-testament website, where customers can generate and download a personalised, legally binding document naming their chosen heir. The mechanic transforms a transactional purchase into a multi-generational commitment, giving the brand's premium pricing a narrative justification that no competitor in the United States ski market has attempted at this scale.
The campaign launched across digital platforms, video content, and experiential marketing, anchored by two distinct video spots titled "Legacy" and "Heirloom," as documented by the Outdoor Industry Association. Primary markets span major ski regions across the United States, including Utah, Colorado, California, and Vermont — the heartland of American alpine culture. The will-and-testament website activation functions as both a product-registration analogue and a brand-loyalty device, binding customers emotionally to the DPS name at the moment of purchase rather than years later. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 71 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual originality and coherent multi-channel execution against a niche but highly engaged audience.
DPS Skis competes in the premium freeride, all-mountain, and touring segment of the United States ski market, not across the mass-market category. That distinction is central to understanding the strategic logic of the "Live For It" campaign. In a category where brands such as Völkl and Faction compete aggressively on performance credentials and athlete endorsement, DPS chose to compete on longevity and legacy — a positioning axis that neither competitor had claimed with equivalent creative conviction.
The broader skis and snowboards market segment was valued at approximately 1.72 billion US dollars in 2024 with a forecast compound annual growth rate through 2033, according to Credence Research. Within that market, DPS occupies a premium tier defined by aerospace-grade carbon fiber construction and a lifetime warranty — engineering credentials that make the heirloom proposition credible rather than merely aspirational. The campaign's strategic intelligence lies in converting those engineering facts into an emotional and legal narrative rather than a technical one.
As reported by MediaPost in March 2024, the campaign launched on March 6, 2024, with trade coverage appearing on March 11, 2024, signalling rapid industry attention. The Outdoor Industry Association documented the launch date, underlining the campaign's relevance to the wider outdoor sports business community in the United States. TDA_Boulder's strategic rationale, per the agency's own published materials on tdaboulder.com, framed the skis not as seasonal sporting equipment but as objects with enough material integrity to function as a bequest — a frame that simultaneously justifies premium pricing and deepens brand loyalty across a customer's lifetime rather than a single season.
Jonathan Schoenberg, Executive Creative Director and Partner at TDA_Boulder, led creative development on the "Live For It – The DPS Will and Testament" campaign. Schoenberg articulated the core insight directly, as quoted by MediaPost and shop-eat-surf-outdoor.com: "If more equipment lasted as long as DPS Skis, people in mountain towns would be leaving more gear to friends and family." That single observation became the conceptual spine of the entire campaign.
The creative execution splits across two video spots — "Legacy" and "Heirloom" — each approaching the inheritance idea from a different emotional register, as documented by the Outdoor Industry Association. The naming of the spots is itself a deliberate creative choice: both titles carry the weight of permanence, directing the viewer's attention away from the transient thrill of a ski run and toward the longer arc of a skiing life. The visual language of the spots, consistent with DPS's established cinematic aesthetic documented on dpsskis.com and powder.com, draws on the brand's heritage of short-form ski filmmaking to ground the legal conceit in genuine mountain culture.
The will-and-testament website represents the campaign's most distinctive creative asset. Accessible via a QR code included with every pair of skis sold in the United States, the site allows customers to complete and download a personalised, legally binding will naming their ski heir. The mechanism is not a novelty gimmick but a structurally sound activation: it extends the campaign's narrative into the customer's own life story, makes the brand's durability claim tangible at the moment of product receipt, and generates organic social sharing as customers document and discuss their bequest decisions. The integration of a physical product trigger — the QR code — with a digital legal document is an unusually cohesive piece of campaign engineering for the sports and fitness category.
No independently verified third-party performance metrics for the "Live For It – The DPS Will and Testament" campaign — including reach figures, conversion rates, or sales uplift — are publicly available as of this writing. What is documentable is the campaign's structural effectiveness and the scale of trade-press attention it generated within days of its March 6, 2024 launch in the United States.
MediaPost covered the campaign on March 11, 2024 — five days after launch — indicating rapid uptake among advertising and marketing trade press, which for a specialist ski brand with a niche audience represents a meaningful signal of creative resonance beyond the category. The Outdoor Industry Association's documentation of the launch date further confirms the campaign's standing as a notable industry event within United States outdoor sports marketing for 2024.
From a structural standpoint, the will-and-testament mechanic creates measurable engagement infrastructure. Every QR code scan represents a trackable customer interaction; every completed will represents a declared brand commitment. Both data points would be available to DPS and TDA_Boulder as first-party metrics, even if not disclosed publicly. The dual-spot strategy — "Legacy" and "Heirloom" — provides A/B creative data on which emotional register performs more strongly with DPS's core audience in skiing regions across the United States. The campaign's Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100 reflects coherent conceptual ambition, distinctive channel integration, and credible brand alignment, weighted against the absence of publicly verified outcome data.
"Live For It – The DPS Will and Testament" is a March 2024 United States campaign by TDA_Boulder for DPS Skis. It positions DPS skis as heirloom objects built to outlast their owners, complete with a will-and-testament website where customers can create a legally binding document naming their ski heir, as documented by the Outdoor Industry Association.
TDA_Boulder created the campaign. The Boulder-based agency announced its involvement on March 7, 2024, per tdaboulder.com. Executive Creative Director and Partner Jonathan Schoenberg led the work, framing the campaign around the insight that DPS skis are engineered to last long enough to be legitimately passed down to the next generation.
Each pair of DPS skis ships with a QR code. Scanning it takes the buyer to a dedicated website where they complete and download a personalised, legally binding will naming their chosen heir. The mechanic, documented by the Outdoor Industry Association and reported by MediaPost, converts a ski purchase into a formal, multi-generational inheritance commitment.
DPS Skis targets ski regions across the United States including Utah, Colorado, California, and Vermont, as identified in campaign documentation. These states represent the core of American alpine skiing culture and align with DPS's premium freeride and all-mountain customer base, the segment in which the brand competes against rivals such as Völkl and Faction.
The Clapboard Score for "Live For It – The DPS Will and Testament" is 71 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong conceptual originality, coherent multi-channel execution anchored by the will-and-testament website, and credible alignment with DPS's engineering heritage, balanced against the absence of publicly verified performance outcome data.
The campaign occupies a positioning axis no major United States ski competitor claimed with equivalent conviction in 2024. While brands such as Völkl and Faction focused on performance credentials and athlete endorsement, DPS and TDA_Boulder reframed premium pricing around legal inheritance, making durability a narrative and emotional argument rather than a technical specification, according to Outdoor Industry Association coverage.
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