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BRAND INNOVATION IN NUMBERS
One of the odd things about brand innovation is the low availability of hard data about what it is and how it works. Considering that more than 20 years have passed since Braun teamed up with Oral-B, it’s surprising how little information and infrastructure and exists around a topic that has become essential to the marketing toolkit of so many successful brands. The marketing industry has probably devoted a hundred times more effort towards examining advertising on Snapchat than understanding the dynamics of the Collaboration Generation.
Crescendo Brands was set up with the intention of helping to fill that gap, but rather than providing the usual anecdotes and independent analysis, I wanted to go further and attempt to quantify the entire brand innovation landscape as it stands. What follows are a few top-line insights to help define what brand innovation is and who’s doing it.
Throughout the January-March 2018 period I catalogued more than 520 cases of brands staging new product offerings using narratives based on collaboration or inbound licensing.
1. Brands Prefer Brands
Brands can take many different paths to engage with external partners. The nuances and benefits of each are an interesting subject, but the key takeaway for now is that in the quarter just completed, the licensing industry was the partner of choice in only 28.6% of cases.
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While licensing is a useful resource for generating recall, when brands are seeking out partners, they are far more likely to place a premium on enhanced styling, personalisation and exclusivity. Brands collaborate far more frequently with other brands (36.5%) and designers (11.1%). Artists and art licensing feature almost as often as designers, accounting for 10.4% of all campaigns.
Contrary to what marketing bloggers might have us believe, social influencers feature as contributing partners in only 1.2% of campaigns – almost all of them in cosmetics and beauty. By contrast, true celebrities from the realms of music, sport, movies and modelling account for 7.5%.
2. America Sets the Pace
American brands are far and away the most active brand innovators, with the USA being the country of origin for 43.6% of campaigns – a number inflated somewhat by high rates of American ownership of key licensed properties.
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Japan and the UK each accounted for 11.5%, with Italy, Germany, France in the next tranche – each with around 6%. Other countries that score highly are Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada and Korea.
Nearly half (45.2%) of all campaigns take place between partners of shared nationality. Put another way, it’s more common for brands to reach for the exotic than the familiar.
3. Fashion Rules...Or Does It?
Apparel, footwear and fashion accessories accounted for nearly three quarters (72.9%) of all brand innovation campaigns launched during the period – but not because of sneakers. Categories directed at young audiences (sneakers, sport, denim/young fashion) accounted for less than half of this number, with sneakers making up only 10% of the total landscape.
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The non-fashion categories with the highest levels of activity were watches & jewellery, décor, food & beverage and cosmetics. While the raw statistics paint a picture of minor categories being overshadowed by fashion, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that a category like watches and jewellery is still innovating at the rate of ten cases per month.
Fashion’s high ranking is also inflated by a couple of factors. Firstly, most fashion brands are obliged to reinvent their entire product offering at least twice a year. Secondly, the number of highly successful campaigns in fashion over the last decade has inspired competitors and contemporaries to act similarly. Success breeds success.
Interestingly, 60% of fashion’s collaborations in the last quarter were executed with partners from outside the fashion industry – pointing to the possibility that their high rate of involvement may be as much a product of circumstance as the result of any abnormal affinity for collaboration.
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British gentleman’s style is a trope with seemingly endless creative possibilities. As well as enjoying a healthy home market, vast communities of British aficionados in markets like Japan, Italy and the US constantly seek out new products and narratives that confirm their taste and cultural awareness. Against this background, the decision of quality knit brand, Sunspel, to use a capsule collection to tether its legend to James Bond author Ian Fleming provides a compelling story that emphasises Sunspel’s essence, while perfectly embodying the notion of British understatement – in both style and concept.
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British tailoring meets Japanese utility. This beautifully efficient capsule combines Casely-Hayford clothing with Porter portability. Those who know the Japanese brand’s aesthetic will recognise immediately that Porter’s input extends far beyond bag supply. Brands enter dangerous territory when they take innovations to extremes, and nowhere is the line between new and novelty finer than when designers decide to drastically rethink standard fashion items. In what must be the millionth attempt to create the perfect men’s travel suit, Porter brings precisely the right gravitas and audience to the challenge.
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“Our research shows that 61% of Americans wear eyewear, another 90% eat meat. That’s 151% of Americans.” It was this logic – and the advent of April 1 – that compelled eyewear brand Warby Parker and sandwich chain Arby’s to team up for two bizarre pop-up stores called WArby’s in New York. Satirising poor collaboration ideas may be a joke with narrow audience appeal, but Warby’s merchandise was as fresh and witty as the press release that accompanied it.
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James Harden x Trolli x StockX
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Q: Can a German candy brand capitalise on sneaker mania? A: Yes. NBA star James Harden is a brand ambassador for Trolli, which followed up on a special edition gummy sweet inspired by Harden’s beard with last month’s release of new, sneaker-shaped Sour Brite Sneaks. But it was the release of full-size gummy replicas of Harden’s signature sneakers that really set things on fire. Obtainable only via raffle on the sneaker collector site, StockX, and with proceeds going to Harden’s charitable foundation, Trolli’s initiative could be the first instance of a collectible candy drop.
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NEW MARKET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
Following excellent feedback from readers to Collaboration Generation (thank you!), this month I am launching a new market intelligence service for those who want to go deeper into brand innovation.
ACCENTS IN ACCESSORIES is a quarterly report for subscribers that takes a closer, more comprehensive look into how brands and retailers in some of the most competitive categories are making brand innovation work for them.
Focused on bags, footwear, watches and other personal accessories, it covers all the collaboration and licensing campaigns undertaken over the last quarter. As well as linking to more than 150 new campaigns, it zooms in on key examples to uncover details and examine their impact in media, social media and in-store.
For marketers, designers and strategists working in these categories, the new service offers a way to stay up-to-date with the competition, and a valuable reference to inspire and guide new product and campaign development.
ACCENTS IN ACCESSORIES will only be available to paid subscribers, but a free Q1/2018 sample issue is set to go out in couple of weeks. If you work in the accessories business, be sure to look out for it.
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adidas x Parley for the Oceans
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Recycled Parley Ocean Plastic has been a reliable pillar of adidas’s brand repertoire for a couple of years now. But in addition to generating positive headlines for the sports conglomerate, it’s been generating sales. adidas reported last month that it sold more than a million pairs of Parley co-branded sneakers last year, and expects to shift five million units in 2018. Compared to most names in the environmental space, Parley’s branding and visual identity is original and captivating. Despite low recognition, it seems to have been very effective at giving shape and focus to adidas’s objectives.
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This time last year I was singing the praises of a simple collaboration that taps into baseball’s working class values. With the 2018 season under way, it was pleasing to see ’47 and Carhartt build on their foothold with workwear-inspired products for all of MLB’s 30 teams. Their joint action is a marvellous example of how collaboration can enable young brands to co-exist alongside a formidable competitor (New Era). It’s also a fascinating example of two brands sharing one license.
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I doubt Makita had western hipsters on its mind when it decided to make a portable coffee maker for Japanese construction workers, but I predict it soon will. The aesthetics of power tools might not be to everybody’s taste, but they sure carry a lot of meaning in men’s fashion and lifestyle categories. Leaving aside the extended appeal of the DCM 500Z, Makita’s innovation – especially the battery pack – deserves recognition as a work of design and an initiative that puts the brand squarely in new markets. Bosch should be embarrassed for not coming up with the idea first.
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Last month’s news that Corona had actually created a branded version of fresh produce left me with mixed feelings. Like many stories I encounter in licensing media, I didn’t quite know whether to admire the entrepreneurship or despair at the implied stupidity of consumers. But what saves this particular initiative is the licensee’s intention to merchandise Corona Limes in the beer & liquor aisle. The idea to sell them in six-packs alongside cases of 24 bottles is also a way of making a buddy product even more complementary.
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THANKS FOR READING AND SHARING!
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