Trend brand collaborations: co-branding as the key to more success

The market is becoming increasingly competitive, which means that companies are facing ever greater challenges. If you want to stay relevant, you have to be creative – and, it seems, collaborative too. In fact, brand collaborations have become a key strategy for strengthening one’s own brand in recent years. In this article, we take a closer look at this exciting trend. We shed light on the great success potential of co-branding and discuss what it takes for a partnership to achieve the desired effect. In addition, we provide some concrete examples of brand collaborations, some more harmonious, some more disruptive, but all successful.

Goals and potential of brand collaborations

What can happen when two or more brands join forces to develop and present a new, joint product? Quite a lot, actually. Co-branding offers the participating brands the opportunity to tap into new target groups and win new customers. At the same time, the brands can offer added value to their existing customers, which in turn helps to increase customer loyalty. In principle, well-executed collaborations improve the brand image of all the brands involved, especially if the partners are well-known companies, because this strengthens trustworthiness, along the lines of “If this reputable company collaborates with brand XY, the latter must be of high quality”.

Each brand can make use of the characteristics of the respective partner brand(s) to further develop itself or even reposition itself on the market – for example, when it comes to adapting to a changing market situation. Not to mention that partnerships can be advantageous from an economic and ecological point of view through the shared use of resources. Reducing costs and CO2 emissions is of enormous importance to every company today. Ultimately, the collaboration should create a win-win situation and generate increased sales for all brands involved in the short and/or long term – and in practice this is now the norm rather than the exception, proving that brand collaborations work.

Co-branding as the preferred strategy

Brand collaborations or cooperations can take many different forms. Here is an overview of the most important variants:

– Co-promotions (joint promotions): when several brands promote each other, e.g. as part of a competition cooperation

– Co-referencing: when several brands present and recommend each other to their own customers

– Co-events: when several brands organize an event together to appeal to a common target group

– Online collaborations: when brands collaborate via digital touchpoints, e.g. via content marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing or affiliate marketing

– Media partnerships: when a brand works with a media company on communication policy, e.g. in the form of special advertising or preferential treatment in editorial reporting

– Co-advertising: when several brands advertise together, with each brand remaining recognizable

– Cross-selling (sales partnership): when several brands also use their partners’ sales channels to reach new target groups

– Co-marketing: when a brand works with a specific retailer to market its products

– Ingredient branding: when a brand uses and markets a specific element of another brand (a good example is computer manufacturers who use Intel chips in their devices and clearly communicate this with slogans like “Intel inside”)

– Co-branding: when several brands are used to launch a new, joint product, with the partners remaining recognizable as independent brands

Currently, co-branding is the main driver of the collaboration trend. For this reason, we will focus on it in the rest of our article, especially when we turn to practical examples from various industries.

Note: In our article, we use ‘collaboration’ and ‘cooperation’ synonymously. Although there have been numerous attempts to differentiate between the terms, there are no consistent definitions. We will therefore use both terms and always mean the cooperation of several parties.

Prerequisites for effective brand collaborations

Who should collaborate with whom? In and of itself, there are hardly any limits or rules in this regard. As you will see below in the real examples, brands from completely different product segments often enter into a successful partnership. An effective brand collaboration does not require the brands involved to be active in the same industry. It is not even necessary that the brands appeal to similar target groups – on the contrary: sometimes brands deliberately team up with contrasting customer prototypes in order to present themselves to a different consumer group and ideally to get them excited about their own products.

However, even if there is nothing wrong in principle with a collaboration between contrasting brands, the cooperating brands should harmonize to a certain extent. In this context, we are mainly referring to brand values and philosophy. While we are always in favor of seeing the positive, negative examples are better suited to illustrate this aspect: a collaboration between a brand that is committed to environmental protection and a brand that only does the bare minimum in this regard to comply with legal requirements would not appear particularly authentic. And a collaboration between a low-cost brand and a luxury brand would be equally inappropriate.

In short, the partner brands should have similar values and goals to your own company. Mutual sympathy is also important. As a rule, interested and attentive consumers can tell whether the collaborating brands are on the same page or whether it is a purely utilitarian partnership. And if the brands get along well, a long-term, mutually profitable cooperation can quickly result. With this in mind, it is advisable to carefully consider and analyze which brands are suitable for collaboration.

From harmonious to disruptive – (almost) anything is possible

Brands that come from the same industry and also fully and completely agree on the most important brand values sometimes find it easier to develop joint products. However, it can be particularly appealing and ultimately promising to temporarily unite with brands that belong to a completely different product category and/or appeal to a target group that is more or less distant from one’s own. Sometimes, the most interesting developments arise from such contrasting collaborations.

In this context, it should be noted again that disruptive approaches are becoming more and more important anyway. The reason for this is that the competition is getting bigger and bigger. If you want to stand out from the competition and catch people’s attention, you have to lure consumers out of their comfort zone, so to speak, and use a creative approach to encourage them to break away from the familiar and embrace something new and alternative instead. This is quite challenging, after all, consumers should be positively shocked, not irritated.

Real examples from different industries

Enough theory. To wrap up our post, let’s look at some examples of real brand collaborations. Our compilation includes products from a range of industries – from clothing and shoes to food, toys and tech accessories, there’s something for everyone. And the brands involved also cover a wide spectrum: in some collaborations, the brands are very similar, while in others they are so far apart that you might initially wonder why these companies, of all things, are working together. Ultimately, however, you will be impressed by the often unusual result.

Clothing and shoes: brand collaborations from the fashion industry

This jacket from The North Face and Gucci combines sporty and elegant luxury.

Luggage from a collaboration between Louis Vuitton and BMW: elegant and technically sophisticated.

In addition to carmaker BMW, clothing brand Supreme has also teamed up with Louis Vuitton to create casual, elegant clothing and accessories in top quality.

The shoes that resulted from the collaboration between Vans and Nintendo are sure to delight gaming fans.

When sportswear manufacturers collaborate with food brands, the result can be shoes like the Reebok x Pepsi or Nike x Ben & Jerry’s.

Another well-known sportswear brand, Puma, has released stylish sneakers in collaboration with Rihanna’s cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty.

You wouldn’t necessarily expect a shoe brand to collaborate with a fast food company either. But Crocs and KFC prove us wrong.

Similar to what has been said about Crocs x KFC, the same can be said about the cooperation between Saucony and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Food: from Barbiecue sauce to Hundjes

Heinz has joined forces with Barbie. The result: a pink Barbiecue sauce that stands out.

Heinz is generally very keen to experiment, as its collaboration with Absolut shows. If you fancy cooking pasta alla vodka for a change, you should buy the pasta sauce, which is available exclusively in the UK.

Barbie is obviously not enough of a collaboration either: the brand has created a modern drink with Olipop.

Oreo cookies in the limited Lady Gaga edition – a must-have for fans of both camps.

Under the slogan ‘Besties for a limited time’, Coca-Cola and Oreo have brought products to market that combine the individual flavor characteristics of the two brands.

And Oreo again: the brand has entered into a sweet and sour collaboration with Sour Patch.

The ‘Timbiebs Timbits’ can be described as purely sweet. These are the donut flavors created by Justin Bieber for the Tim Hortons fast food chain.

With the ‘TruffVels’ from Compartés and Velveeta, lovers of sweets with a savory touch get their money’s worth. These are white chocolate truffles with a creamy cheese filling.

Similarly unusual is the French fry-flavored ice cream, the result of a collaboration between goodpop and Ore-Ida.

The collaboration between Philadelphia (cheese spread) and Milka (chocolate) also caused quite a stir. But let’s be honest: Who wouldn’t want to at least try this product?

Hidden Valley Ranch and Cheez-It have created a sauce that harmoniously combines the special flavors of both brands.

The flavors of the brands combine in the collaborative product from Goldfish and Frank’s RedHot to create crispy-hot snacks.

Pringles and The Caviar Co. are creating a sense of wonder and a special taste experience with their jointly developed chips.

The Dr. Pepper brand has given the Peeps marshmallows the flavor of its popular soft drink.

Dr. Pepper has also joined forces with Coffee mate to create an unconventional – “dirty” – soda flavor.

Stranger things happen with the Baskin Robbins coffees.

Mentos with Fanta and Tic Tac with Sprite flavors seem much less strange than many of the other collaborations presented.

Sprite has also entered into a collaboration with Ginger.

Pepsi and Peeps – both brands are repeat offenders when it comes to collaborations – have released a joint drink.

The smoothie from true-fruits and Em-Eukal is said to taste fruity and fresh.

Katjes and Martin Rütter have worked together to create Hundjes. This licorice edition is free of animal gelatin and is completely vegan.

Other collaborations between more or less contrasting brands

Lip balm with the aroma of spicy sauces and dressings? That’s what happened when the cosmetics brand Burt’s Bees teamed up with Hidden Valley Ranch.

Lip gloss in a ketchup packaging is the disruptive result of the collaboration between Mschf and Fenty Beauty.

Lego and Star Wars have developed a Lego set together.

And then there is the collaborative watch from Apple and Hermes.

A brief final word

As you can see from our numerous examples, there is almost nothing that does not exist in collaborations today. The brands and products can be very harmonious, but also the total opposite. In any case, brand collaborations open up excellent opportunities for brand strengthening and business growth.