2022 was many things, but boring wasn’t one of them - and when it comes to epic brand collaborations, last year delivered in spades! From iconic product bundles to quirky limited-edition products and everything in between, here are some of our favourite brand x brand partnerships from the year of pairs.
You can file this one under ‘collabs we didn’t see coming’ - but that’s what makes it so great! 7/11 and Adore Beauty teamed up to create a limited edition coffee body scrub made using grounds from the store’s coffee, with Olympia Valance adding some star power to their campaign.
An unlikely collab like this one is the perfect way to get people talking about your brand, both online and offline, while also bringing in a stream of revenue from product purchases or, as in this case, making a wonderful surprise and delight gift with purchase for loyal customers. It’s a win win! You can read more about why this collab was a marketing match made in heaven HERE.
St.Ali and Breville teamed up this year for a fantastic Father's Day product bundle. For every purchase of a Breville coffee machine, customers would nab a bunch of bonus coffee beans from St.Ali, & a discount on an ongoing subscription once they had run out. It’s a collab that just makes sense, but is so cleverly executed (and has found its way into the home of a few Collaboaurus staffers too!). Product bundles are an amazing way to drive sales and grow your audience, and in the case of St.Ali, they have the potential for continued subscriptions, creating a whole new customer base and revenue stream.
We love that this partnership was promoted in-store at Harvey Norman to take advantage of foot traffic marketing (often overlooked!)
Who doesn’t love a good margarita? Cointreau collaborated with Yotpo to set up a super-cool margarita pop-up inside a waterfront mansion for Yotpo’s Women in Ecommerce lunch, and safe to say it was a hit!
For Cointreau, it was an amazing collab for getting content such as photos for social media and their website, awareness, positioning and social reach. And for Yotpo? This was the ultimate collab for creating an amazing event experience and for talkability, not to mention saving cash on cocktail hour.
When lifestyle brand In The Roundhouse teamed up with fashion brand Alemais, we just knew it was going to be summer dinner party goals. Sure enough, the stunning dinnerware featuring Alemais prints, as well as the reversible placemats and napkins, were everything we’d dreamed of and more!
Our biggest takeaway here - know what your brand’s strengths are and play them! In this case, Alemais is known for their stunning fabrics and prints, which were easily transferable onto other, non-fashion goods. Think outside the box when it comes to collabs and you might just create the next big thing.
Australian Birth Stories teamed up with Made by Fressko in early 2022, offering everyone who subscribed to ‘The Birth Class’ a free stainless steel flask and sip lid. This was an amazing example of the shared value inside a GWP or Gift with Purchase collab. - for Australian Birth Stories, they were able incentivise people to sign up for the course and give some extra value to customers, while Made by Fressko were able to tap into the huge audience that follows ABS and get their brand in front of them. It’s also a lesson in thinking outside the box to see where your audiences align - in this case, the drink bottles are positioned as being perfect for labouring or nap trapped mums!
Beauty collabs were also having a hot minute this year. We loved Adore Beauty x 7/11’s Coffee Scrub, and Lanolips x Gelato Messina returned for another year of lip-smackingly good ice-cream flavoured lip balms. But the ultimate beauty collab (in our opinion) was Go-To Skincare x Four Pillars, releasing the limited edition peach coloured gin and selling it complete with a Go-To sheet mask. The gin sold out in the first day and was so popular that the brands are now doing a second release.
Our key takeaway from this collab - you might not see any parallels with your brand and the brand you’ve just gotten a request from. But if you can think outside the box and come up with creative ways to work with a brand, you might just find you’ve got this season’s newest hit on your hands. Even better, Business and Pro subscription plans get you access to a dedicated account support person who can help you generate ideas and build a successful campaign
When Omega and Swatch came together to release the limited edition MoonSwatch watch, it truly blew up (in a good way!). In Australia, thousands queued outside shopping centres in the early hours hoping to snag one, with purchasing limits of one watch per person having to be put in place. The PR that came from this collab was huge - it went viral online, with news reports about the chaos featuring for days afterwards.
The key learning? When you release a product as a single brand, it’s exciting. But when you harness the power of two iconic brands instead of one, especially for something limited edition, you’re reaching double the audience and the potential for creating a huge PR buzz rises exponentially.
When Lisa Dot Design and So Sally Said connected on Collabosaurus, little did they know that just a few short months later, they’d both be donning (extremely chic matching) overalls and painting incredible murals together! In one of the brightest collabs to come to life on Collabosaurus this year, Lisa shared her insane talent for art and painting with Sally, an interior designer with an amazing eye, and the results were just as mindblowing as you would expect. These two cleverly leveraged significant content creation and social media cross promotion to make the most of their campaign as well.
Moral of the story? Always start that conversation, even if you’re just not sure - there might be brand collab avenues you haven’t even thought of that you can explore together!
Personally vetted by the Collabosaurus team, this collab by two artisans is just too delicious to not get a mention. The best butter and the best salt, makes the best salted caramel and that is exactly what Pepe Saya and Olsson’s Sea Salt has done. Bon Appetite! Delicious.
In one of our favourite collabs to come from the platform, Sarah Darby teamed up with Seafolly to make their Summer 2021 launch event in Sydney incredible. Technically, this collab happened in December '21, but as it was late in the year, we needed a chance to share it! Held on the beach for a range of influencers and media, Sarah created stunning custom illustrations for guests to take home on the day. Guests were invited to decorate the images she created with custom Seafolly bikini stickers - an interactive, fun experience that also highlighted the new swimwear range for Seafolly.
Experiential collabs are an amazing way to add value and talkability to your event, bringing it to life and ensuring your guests will remember it long after it’s finished. It’s also a great way for the brands involved in the experience to reach a whole new audience and gain some media attention - truly a win-win!
Want to leverage your own creative collaboration?
So, there’s been a lot of great collabs this year & there’ll be many more in 2023. If you want to have a look at the types of collaborations & partnerships you could create & brands you could connect with next year - you can list your brand on Collabosaurus & preview your matches immediately, for free.
Alternatively, find inspiration & more ideas on our free idea generator! Click HERE