Collaborations Will Define 2024 (and Every Year After)
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Collabs are nothing new. There have been sneakers, artisanal cheeses, luxury candles, and luxury cars. GoPro teams up with Red Bull to encourage caffeinated bad-decision making. But the increasing frequency of High-Low Collabs (Think: Karl Lagerfeld and H&M or Puma and Balmain) does signal a change. This isn’t your grandma’s Disney kitchen clock. This is about the same thing every influencer team-up on Instagram is about – the relentless pursuit of adjacent audiences and the creation of artificial demand.
A 2020 study in the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management found that the most lucrative collaborations produce limited-edition products stocked for a bounded period which speaks to the historic strengths of both brands. An example: JW Anderson, which sells sweatpants for $400 and knitwear for twice as much, partners with Uniqlo to sell $30 flannels and $40 jackets. JW Anderson remains focused on refined silhouettes and neo-preppy color palettes and Uniqlo guarantees a high ROI product to its consumers, who favor the Japanese retailer because it sells good cheap stuff in precisely the way JW Anderson does not.
The most successful collab of all time may have been Target’s Missoni collab in 2011, which crashed the Target site (people love zig-zaggy knitwear). In 2019, Target did it again. At some point in the not so distant future… yup.
Target is really good at this. The megastore’s 2008 collaboration with Alexander McQueen was worth $2.1 million to Target for the time period it was in stores, Right Angle Research, a luxury-good market research company, estimated. A 2020 article in The Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services found that the perceived “symbolic parent brand” generally drives the success of a collaboration. “Ikea Presents: Byredo” < “Byredo (at Ikea).” The larger brand becomes a platform.
But not all collabs work. Target recently partnered with hyper-preppy clothing brand Rowing Blazers. Product is still on shelves. It’s probably safe to expect more of that going forward for the simple reason that a lot of collabs now seem to be built around social media. Rowing Blazers has a chunky following, but that following may not have vibed with Target (the brand’s name refers to jackets worn by Oxford Crew teams) just as Target shoppers may not have seen a display of rugby sweaters and corduroy jackets and registered a new aspirational brand. The businesses interests aligned, but the audiences weren’t actually adjacent. It probably seemed like they would be on Insta.
Social media is, of course, driving these things. The hashtag for North Face and Gucci’s recent partnership racked up over 8.6 million views on TikTok. And recently, Nicolas Granato, a business analyst at Farfetch, told SPY that social media attention is particularly good for the luxury brands involved in a partnership, as with Loewe’s collaborations with Studio Ghibli because they enable brands to “expand beyond their traditional luxury audience and categories.”
Loewe doesn’t just want followers who can afford its $4,000 puzzle bag. Loewe wants followers that wish they could afford a $4,000 puzzle bag. Aspiration props up price. It’s not just reaching an adjacent audience, it’s teasing them a bit. Giving them a taste.