The 5 Rules of a Great Brand Collaboration

Rule 1: It Must Work Both Ways

Obviously a great collaboration lifts both partners. The best create a genuine exchange of audiences, credibility and relevance.

The recent gold standard: Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch. A £270 plastic version of a £6,000 icon.

Swatch sales tripled, from CHF 214m to CHF 660m. Omega's Speedmaster line saw a 50% global sales increase. Queues formed overnight in London, Sydney, New York and Tokyo.

Swatch got cool. Omega got younger with an entry level version - a new generation discovered the real thing by wearing the affordable one first. That is a collab that floats all boats.

Rule 2: New Audiences, Not Just New Products

A collab is first and foremost an audience growth tool. The question: who will discover us through this that would never have found us otherwise?

LEGO is the textbook case. In 1998, facing declining sales and mass layoffs, LucasFilm came knocking about Star Wars. One board member reportedly said: 'Over my dead body will you be launching LEGO Star Wars in Europe.'

LEGO Star Wars increased revenue 35% immediately. By 2022, LEGO revenue hit $9.28 billion, outpacing the entire toy industry. The Star Wars and Harry Potter partnerships are now credited as the primary drivers of one of the greatest brand turnarounds in corporate history.

LEGO extended its Star Wars licence to 2032. That is a 34-year relationship born from a collab nobody internally wanted.

North Face x Gucci, the most hyped fashion collab of 2021, generated over $15 million in earned media value. North Face gained fashion credibility; Gucci gained Gen-Z's gorpcore obsession. Critics worried North Face would lose its rugged authenticity. The data disagreed.

Rule 3: Scarcity Creates Desire. Ubiquity Kills It.

Limited editions work because they create urgency. Over-extend and you destroy the magic. Scarcity built Supreme and was soon copied by Primark et al. Limited affordable fashion X high end fashion only worked because the items were limited. Swatch/Omega restricted supply to shops - creating queues that looked great on social media. A trick borrowed from Apple every time it launches a new product. 

But when U2 (admittedly not in their prime) gave their album away free with every iPod, the lesson was brutal: forced ubiquity is the enemy of desire. A gift nobody asked for is spam at scale.

Rule 4: Surprise Beats Synergy

The best collabs are not the obvious ones. Pairings that lodge in culture are the ones nobody predicted but everyone immediately understood. The music industry does this well.

Elton John and Damon Albarn are the masters of this. Both have stayed culturally relevant decades past their commercial peaks through eclectic, sometimes baffling collaborations with rising artists. Elton with Dua Lipa, Gorillaz, Lil Nas X. Albarn building entire projects around cross-genre juxtapositions. But know what you are trading and when.

Cannily, Dua Lipa ‘snubbed’ Elton at his Glastonbury show - I suspect she was carefully balancing her exposure and keeping her powder dry for her own set a year later 

Oreos have made collabs a business model: Post Malone, Selena Gomez, Coca-Cola, Lady Gaga, Pokemon, Star Wars, Super Mario. Most are 'us + latest thing' and work modestly. But the Game of Thrones edition, with embossed House sigils, was genuinely brilliant. Totally unexpected. Looked great. People collected the packaging. 

Rule 5: It Cannot Be Cynical

A great collab has genuine creative intent. The audience always smells the opposite.

Paul Smith x Mini is a warning. Mini has outgrown its cheeky, democratic heritage. Paul Smith has over-extended its licensing. Two brands that have both wandered from their core combining does not produce something new. To me it feels desperate.

Contrast with LEGO. Internal opposition to the Star Wars deal was enormous. The team pushed through because they could articulate why Star Wars was not a fad but a classic conflict between good and evil, aligned with LEGO's own values of creative play.

The internal energy matters too. Pitching a product made with someone extraordinary is a morale event as well as a marketing event - “guess who we’re working with?”

One question: could either brand have made this alone? If yes, the collab is decorative. If no, you might have something real.

The five rules for a great collab are:

1. It Must Work Both Ways (Swatch x Omega as the centrepiece)

2. New Audiences, Not Just New Products (LEGO's full turnaround story with the numbers)

3. Scarcity Creates Desire. Ubiquity Kills It. (U2/iPod cautionary tale + Oreo spectrum from genius to Avatareos)

4. Surprise Beats Synergy (North Face x Gucci, Elton/Damon, plus your Barclays x Prison Service and Thames Water x Aesop ideas — I kept those in as genuinely interesting)

5. It Cannot Be Cynical (Paul Smith x Mini as warning, LEGO's internal conviction as the counter-example)