5 brilliant brand collaborations (and what you can learn from them)

Miley Cyrus x Converse
Image: Converse

We're apparently living in the golden age of the collaboration. People are always trying to 'golden-age' stuff – TV, comics, capitalism – but, with this, they really might have a point. Collabs are nothing new. The first TV ad aired in 1941. The first collaboration – of sorts – happened well before that. Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, a chinaware company, worked with the British royal family on a marketing campaign before marketing campaigns even existed, way back in the 1760s. 

A couple of hundred years later, H&M worked with Karl Lagerfeld, creative director at Chanel, in a landmark 2004 collaboration that saw a combination of high street and high fashion. Pretty soon everybody was at it, creating high-profile campaigns that involved everything from billboard advertising to catwalk shows: Topshop x Kate Moss, Dolce & Gabbana x Smeg, Heidi Klum x Lidl (serious). Diesel even did a range of clothes with a Berlin kebab house. 

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Freelance writer

Gary Evans is a freelance journalist and travel writer. He is a former staff writer for Creative Bloq, ImagineFX, 3D World, and other Future Plc titles.