Brand awareness is huge, and brand equity can hold huge monetary value, as we’ve learned this week with Elon Musk’s “X”. But brands leveraging other brands equity to improve their own showing is becoming more popular. Barbie as an example had a huge impact, being utilised by a whole host of brands, from Primark to Rolex and everything in-between. Let’s jump into some examples of our favourite brand collaborations. See if you can spot a personal success story from the ads creative solutions team in this blog!

Barbie Takes Over The World

The Barbie film is everywhere, there is no escaping it. With everybody talking about the summer blockbuster, brands across the world have been jumping on whatever they can to push sales alongside Barbie.

Boohoo and Primark are some obvious examples that would collaborate with a film such as Barbie, as the opportunities to use the logo on clothing items and accessories is abundant and will drive up sales alongside the movie hype.

From fast fashion to fast food? Barbie even got the Burger King treatment. Burger King Brazil coming up with a clever marketing campaign around Pink Burger Sauce! We told you she was everywhere.

We have also seen huge collaborations from world-renowned luxury brands such as Tag Heuer, who have utilised Barbies very own Pantone Pink to create an exclusive Barbie watch.

But this isn’t a Barbie blog! We just wanted to whet the appetite and use some very relevant examples to highlight the importance of brand collaboration, to all types of businesses. Plus, there are thousands of Barbie collabs!

Budgy Smuggler and People’s Captain

“People who like Budgy Smugglers like Beer”. A bit of a stretch yes, and we don’t want to put anybody into a box, but when People’s Captain a craft beer brand with mental health at their core and Budgy Smuggler teamed up to make a beer and Budgy pairing, who could see a downside to such a team?

Other than just increasing sales and brand awareness why have we chosen this as a good brand collaboration? Well, there are two reasons.

1 With People’s Captain being founded around having a drink with friends and putting mental health at the forefront of the conversation, and Budgy Smugglers’ forward thinking body confidence message, these two brands are really promoting positive mental health.

2 Through the collaboration, our Business Development Manager Andrew won a competition pack, which explains the bias behind this pick!

Nike and Ben & Jerry’s

The Chunky Dunky was a 2020 collaboration between Ice Cream connoisseurs Ben and Jerry’s and sports specialists Nike. They immediately sold out upon release and can now be spotted on sale for upwards of £3,000.

Inspired by the Chunky Monkey flavour, and incorporating the classic Dunk style of trainer, this collaboration is a great indication of how sometimes, even brands that have no common interest or even common customers, can still work together successfully.

The Chunky Dunky unwrapping videos are still widely spread on TikTok 3 years after the initial release and really was a collaboration for the ages.

Absolut and Heinz

Ever thought about putting Brandy in your Lasagne? How about Tequila in your ravioli? Of course not, so why have Heinz and Absolut joined forces to make Tomato Vodka Pasta Sauce?

Bringing the expertise of Heinz of creating pasta sauces and the magic of Absolut Vodka to intensify the flavour, why wouldn’t these two powerhouses collaborate?

We all know the classic collaboration of vodka and tomato juice; a Bloody Mary is essential for a heavy weekend. Vodka and pasta are a classic recipe, and having two of the best in their individual fields coming together was going to lead to something special, and that’s exactly what we got.

The Absolute – Heinz collaboration went down a treat with customers from both sides coming together to experience the collaboration! Would you try the new sauce?

Fortnite and Travis Scott

When talking about brands, we cannot forget about personal brands. The likes of the Kardashians, David Beckham and in this instance, Travis Scott can have a huge impact through collaboration.

Travis Scott performed the first ever live in-game concert when he performed Astronomical live on April 23rd 2020. This collaboration had flocks of Travis Scott fans heading into the game to catch a glimpse of his performance.

But why would he do this?

Exposure and brand awareness.
Fortnite, at the time, was taking the world by storm and had tens of thousands of players online daily, so getting his sound out to a different audience may have gained him some new fans. And similarly, Fortnite will have seen an increase in game interest from Travis’ fans from all around the world.

There must be a small mention to the COVID-19 pandemic for helping this collaboration come along! But we didn’t think calling this the Fortnite, Travis Scott and COVID collab would have been fair! But this was a fantastic collaboration during the pandemic to allow people to listen to a concert from their own homes! True out of the box thinking!

Truly a collaboration both sides were going to benefit from!

Summary

Collaboration. Whether it be for selfish reasons to piggyback on another, larger brand to improve your exposure. Or about creating something together that will improve the lives of your customers or your own offering in general, brands will only tend to collaborate when there is a need or an end goal which is beneficial to both parties.

We are lucky to have seen some fantastic collaborations over the years, where money has gone into research and development to bring us something truly special, but we are also lucky to have seen the silly side of collaborations allowing brands to have a bit of fun.