The brands, they are collaborating.
It seems as though every day brings a new announcement from an odd-couple pairing of companies (or a company and a celebrity) about some sort of co-branded product. In the past month alone, Dunkin’ and L.L.Bean came together to sell a tote bag and sweater, JELL-O and Tower 28 teamed up to make lip gloss, and Mane and Cinnabon put out a lip balm and hairbrush. There’s also Gap x JYT, Realtree x Harley-Davidson, and Peloton x Miley Cyrus. The list goes on and on. Another cross-brand collab is almost certainly being dreamed up in a conference room somewhere as we speak.
From a corporate perspective, the calculation is pretty straightforward: Brand A + Brand B = $$$. Hopefully. In an economy where it’s increasingly difficult to get attention, a limited-edition crossover seems like as good a way as any to manufacture an event. But collab city is getting pretty crowded. At their best, these mashups create something that’s genuinely exciting and creative that neither name could have made alone. At their worst, they’re two logos slapped together on an uninspiring sweatshirt or fanny pack — a customer acquisition ploy dressed up as cultural relevance.
“I don’t know if there’s as much collab fatigue as there is fatigue around unoriginal ideas,” says Gabriel Whaley, the founder and CEO of MSCHF, a New York-based art collective and studio. “A lot of people see collabs as a substitute for taking risks.”
Brands beware, though: Customers are learning to tell the difference.
It’s not surprising that Liquid Death had a hand in former NFL star Jason Kelce’s recent ad encouraging consumers to send their urine to data centers (which you probably shouldn’t, FYI). The canned water and beverage company made quite a name for itself with its eyebrow-raising brand collabs well before it teamed up with the Kelce brothers’ Garage Beer to jump on the anti-AI bandwagon. Liquid Death joined forces with Spotify to launch a $495 funeral urn that streams music, e.l.f. Cosmetics to make $34 “corpse paint” makeup, and Depend to create $75 “pit diapers” for music-lovers who don’t want to lose their spot at the front of a show.
I don’t know if there’s as much collab fatigue as there is fatigue around unoriginal ideas.
Andy Pearson, the vice president of creative at Liquid Death and the head of its in-house production arm, Death Machine, tells me he’s aware this stuff sounds absurd. That’s the point. “Liquid Death logic” dictates that an idea often “on the surface sounds super stupid” but is backed by a coherent case. “We want to make things that are genuine entertainment,” he says, not bullet points on why consumers should choose whatever product. “It’s finding things that either make a ton of sense or make zero sense.”
Liquid Death generally takes the creative lead in its partnerships — there’s no decision by committee. This philosophy means things may not always work out. They recently abandoned a project with language-learning platform Duolingo because both sides were trying to “lead the dance.” This artistic work, of course, is in service of a commercial goal: reaching new customers. The company has a product line with YouTuber MrBeast’s snack and chocolate brand, after all. Pearson prefers to talk about this as “awareness building” rather than going viral.
“It gives us this exposure to all these little corners of different types of people,” he says.
Your mileage may vary on the Bluetooth urn — I don’t know how many people want the receptacle for their loved one’s ashes blasting tunes. But there is something truly unique to the concept: It likely couldn’t have existed without these two specific companies. That’s what the magic of collabs is supposed to be, explains Quentin Humphrey, a director at WGSN, a consumer trend forecasting company. It’s “two brands coming together to create new worlds,” he says. Lackluster collabs too often rely on “world renting,” with one company simply borrowing another’s audience and cachet.
“Collabs used to feel like events. Now it’s like inventory with a storyline,” Humphrey says.
There are some basic bases all collabs need to cover. They ought to be limited in duration, product range, and number of units for sale. Whatever’s in the drop shouldn’t be a product that’s already being sold by one of the brands. The partners should be complementary, not necessarily identical, and the tie-up should make intuitive sense while expanding what each one represents.
The trap many companies fall into is that, while they’re checking many of these boxes, they’re not creating anything truly special. The creation may be weird, but does anybody care about or want it? Thomai Serdari, a luxury marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says that brands lean on collaborations because they’re struggling to come up with new ideas that target new segments. They’re also reacting to an age when markets are extremely fragmented, and it’s harder than ever to get and keep attention, especially among younger potential buyers.
“The Gen Z consumer is flaky,” Serdari says. “They are brand agnostic, or so they say.”
Companies have had some success on this front. Gap, for example, has said that nearly a third of its customers who make one of its collab purchases are new to the brand and attributed its growth among younger consumers to collaborations.
Collabs are also a way for brands to react to ever-accelerating consumer cycles, in which trends come and go at lightning speed, says Ali Furman, consumer markets industry leader at PwC. “There’s this whole speed-culture surfing situation where collaborations allow you to borrow relevance in a specific moment faster than just building it on your own, which you might miss a window,” she says.
Collabs used to feel like events. Now it’s like inventory with a storyline.
Nostalgia, for example, is trending right now. If you’re Starbucks, partnering with Peanuts to feature Snoopy and Charlie Brown on a fall collection is an agile maneuver.
These types of tie-ups can also go awry. Case in point: The recent breakup between golf brands Callaway Golf and Good Good after they put out an ad that opened with a golfer pushing a woman to the ground to stop her from touching his driver. No one came out looking good in that one.
There’s no perfect formula for what makes a collab work. It needs to feel unique, but not random. It ought to be novel, but not for novelty’s sake. Perhaps most importantly, while it is marketing at its core, it shouldn’t feel like that’s the entire point.
“We live in a time where everything just sort of distills down to marketing,” Whaley, from MSCHF, says. ” I think that means the opportunity is to try and make something good versus trying to just make marketing for the sake of marketing.”
Quincy Moore, the CEO of New York or Nowhere, a streetwear and apparel brand, is managing what most would consider a good problem to have: his company is inundated with collaboration requests. New York City is having a bit of a moment, with the Knicks winning the NBA Championship, hosting the World Cup final, and a buzzy new mayor in City Hall. Given the renewed swagger, a lot of brands are looking to get in on the action. Whenever he’s considering a new partner, Moore says he asks himself one baseline question: “Do we have anything new to say?”
They’ve got ongoing and more obvious partnerships with major sports teams, like the Knicks and Yankees, and teamed up with Saturday Night Live for the show’s 50th anniversary. This fall, New York or Nowhere is launching a Sesame Street collection. (As Elmo was recently reminded on Twitter, he’s a New Yorker.)
Getting to yes on a collaboration is a long process, Moore says. Sometimes it’s a question of bandwidth, or of whether legal and licensing agreements can be reached. Because they’re often entering into multi-year agreements, his team also wants to ensure that projects aren’t treated as one-offs. Sure, the second drop won’t generate as much hype as the first, but they want to generate ongoing sales. Ultimately, he says, the task is to figure out, “does this deserve to exist or not?”
That may sound like a low bar, but it’s one more companies need to ask themselves whether they can get over before rushing the latest Franken-product to the manufacturing line.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
Business Insider’s Discourse stories provide perspectives on the day’s most pressing issues, informed by analysis, reporting, and expertise.
