Why Weird Brand Collaborations Are Suddenly Everywhere

Brands collaborate.

It seems like every day brings a new announcement from a couple 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 a sweater, JELL-O and Tower 28 teamed up to make lip gloss, and Mane and Cinnabon released a lip balm and hairbrush. There’s also Gap x JYT, Realtree x Harley-Davidson and Peloton x Miley Cyrus. The list is long. Another brand collaboration is almost certainly being dreamed up in a conference room somewhere as we speak.

From a business perspective, the math is pretty simple: Brand A + Brand B = $$$. Hopefully. In an economy where it’s increasingly difficult to attract attention, a limited-edition crossover seems like as good a way as any to create a stir. But the collaborative city is becoming more and more crowded. At their best, these mashups create something truly exciting and creative that neither name could have created alone. Worst case scenario, it’s two logos plastered together on an uninspiring sweatshirt or fanny pack – a customer acquisition ploy disguised as cultural relevance.

“I don’t know if there’s as much fatigue around collaborations as there is around unoriginal ideas,” says Gabriel Whaley, founder and CEO of MSCHF, a New York-based art collective and studio. “Many people view collaborations as a substitute for taking risks.”

However, be careful with brands: customers learn to tell the difference.

It’s no surprise that Liquid Death was involved 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 water and canned beverage company made a name for itself with its eyebrow-raising brand collaborations long before it teamed up with the Kelce brothers’ Garage Beer to jump on the anti-AI bandwagon. Liquid Death teamed up with Spotify to launch a $495 funeral urn that plays music, Elf Cosmetics to make $34 “corpse paint” makeup, and Depend to create $75 “pit diapers” for music lovers who don’t want to lose their seat at a show.

I don’t know if there’s as much weariness around collaborations as there is around unoriginal ideas.

Andy Pearson, Liquid Death’s vice president of creative and head of its in-house production arm, Death Machine, tells me he’s aware that this stuff seems absurd. That’s the point. The “logic of liquid death” dictates that an idea “at first glance seems super stupid” but must be supported by a coherent argument. “We want to create things that are real entertainment,” he says, without explaining why consumers should choose any product. “It’s about finding things that make a lot of sense or don’t make any sense.”

Liquid Death generally takes creative direction on its partnerships – there are no decisions by committee. This philosophy means that things don’t always work out. They recently abandoned a project with language learning platform Duolingo because both parties were trying to “run the show.” This artistic work is of course at the service of a commercial objective: reaching new customers. After all, the company has a product line with YouTuber MrBeast’s brand of snacks and chocolate. Pearson prefers to refer to this as “awareness” 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’m not sure how many people want the receptacle for their loved one’s ashes. But there’s something truly unique about this concept: it probably couldn’t have existed without these two specific companies. That’s what the magic of collaborations is supposed to be, says Quentin Humphrey, director of WGSN, a consumer trend forecasting company. They are “two brands coming together to create new worlds,” he says. Lackluster collaborations too often rely on “global rental,” with one company simply borrowing the audience and cachet of another.

“Collaborations used to be like events. Today, they’re like an inventory with a storyline,” says Humphrey.

There are some basic bases that all collaborations must cover. They must be limited in duration, product range and number of units to be sold. What is in the drop must not be a product already sold by one of the brands. The partners must be complementary, not necessarily identical, and the connection must make intuitive sense while expanding what each represents.

The trap that many businesses fall into is that even though they check many of these boxes, they don’t create anything. Really special. The creation may be weird, but does anyone care or want it? Thomai Serdari, a professor of luxury marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says brands rely on collaborations because they struggle to come up with new ideas targeting new segments. They’re also responding to a time when markets are extremely fragmented and it’s harder than ever to attract and retain attention, particularly among younger potential buyers.

“The Gen Z consumer is fragile,” says Serdari. “They are brand agnostic, or so they say.”

Companies have had some success on this front. Gap, for example, said that nearly a third of its customers who make one of its collaborative purchases are new to the brand and attributed its growth among younger consumers to collaborations.

Collaborations are also a way for brands to respond to ever-faster consumer cycles, in which trends come and go at lightning speed, says Ali Furman, consumer markets sector leader at PwC. “There’s this whole surfing speed-culture situation where collaborations allow you to borrow relevance from a specific moment faster than just building it on your own, which might cause you to miss a window,” she says.

Collaborations used to feel like events. Now it’s like an inventory with a storyline.

Nostalgia, for example, is all the rage right now. If you’re Starbucks, teaming up with Peanuts to introduce Snoopy and Charlie Brown in a fall collection is a nimble move.

These types of links can also go bad. Case in point: the recent rift between golf brands Callaway Golf and Good Good after airing an ad that opened with a golfer pushing a woman to the ground to prevent her from hitting his driver. Nobody does well in this one.

There is no perfect formula for what makes a collaboration work. It should look unique, but not random. It should be new, but not for the sake of novelty. Perhaps most importantly, even though it’s essentially marketing, it shouldn’t feel like that’s the whole point.

“We live in a time where everything kind of comes down to marketing,” says MSCHF’s Whaley. “I think that means the opportunity is to try to do something good rather than trying to do marketing for the sake of marketing.”

Quincy Moore, CEO of New York or Nowhere, a streetwear and clothing brand, deals with what most would consider a good problem: 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 finals, and a bustling new mayor at City Hall. Given this renewed boldness, many brands are looking to get in on the action. Every time he considers a new partner, Moore says he asks himself a basic question: “Do we have anything new to say?”

They’ve made continued, 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 recently reminded on Twitter, he’s a New Yorker.)

Arriving at a collaboration is a long process, Moore says. Sometimes it’s a question of bandwidth or whether legal and licensing agreements can be reached. Since they often enter into multi-year deals, his team also wants to ensure projects aren’t treated as one-offs. Of course, the second drop won’t generate as much hype as the first, but they want to generate continued sales. Ultimately, he says, the task is to determine: “Does this deserve to exist or not?”

That may seem like a low bar, but it’s one more question companies must ask themselves if they can overcome before rushing the latest Franken product down the manufacturing line.

Emilie Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and economics.