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Why it pays to look beyond the obvious when it comes to brand partnerships and collaborations.
So, to the internet. Where, unfortunately, the Greggs Baked In Gold jewellery collection is, at the time of writing, completely sold out [1].
What this means is that, for the time being at least, you’ve missed out on your chance to buy what the budget-priced High Street pie shop describes as ‘a golden version of the nation’s favourite Sausage Roll’ in earring form. There’s also a golden version of the vegan version. Both were launched for London Fashion Week in collaboration with Birmingham-based fashion designer and cultural provocateur Dion Kitson, who also produced a chunky Greggs Logo signet ring, and a 10-charm bracelet featuring ‘delicious Greggs classics such as a Pink Jammie, Pizza Slice, coffee cup, a bake and more’.
If you’re quick, you might have better luck at the Anya Brands collection, hosted by upmarket accessories designer Anya Hidmarch. She still has stocks of the £195 Heinz Ketchup sachet handbag charm. She can also sell you a facsimile of a half-eaten tube of Rowntrees Fruit Pastilles, crafted in capra leather, and a Coke-can coin purse for £295. If you’re really up for it, she even has a sequinned mini bucket-bag made to look like a Duracell battery, for a mere £995[2] . And meanwhile, and elsewhere, Balenciaga have a zip-up copy of a crumpled US Lay’s crisp packet, for $1,500[3] .
We need to talk about brand collaborations.
Because we’re seeing pairings popping up right now that are radically different from much of what’s gone before. Once, brand collaborations used to make sense. Now, increasingly, we’re seeing more and more cases where, intentionally, they don’t. Or not obviously so.
Back in 2007, there was a lot of publicity around Anya Hindmarch’s pioneering canvas tote-bag for Sainsbury’s [4]. Designed as part of a collaborative project with Antidote and global social change movement We Are What We Do (now known as Shift), it was emblazoned with the slogan I’m Not a Plastic Bag and intended to draw attention to the problem of plastic waste. The pairing of the brands was attention-grabbingly surprising, on one level. Yet at the same time it was somehow appropriate. In 2007, Sainsbury’s was the UK’s leading supermarket. It had a longstanding relationship with TV chef and food campaigner Jamie Oliver. Both brands were on a mission to do their bit to make the world a better place. Both were unthreateningly aspirational. On a basic level, they were both pulling in the same direction.
But in the Greggs-style approach to brand collaboration, what we’re seeing now is wildly incompatible brands, pulling in completely different directions, somehow brought kicking and screaming together into something that significant numbers of people, nevertheless, still want to buy.
Writing in 1779, in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Samuel Johnson wrote of how, “the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.” He could have been writing about the Greggs Baked in Gold jewellery collection, had there actually been such a thing as Greggs back then, and had he not, in fact, actually been writing about the metaphysical poet John Donne.
But what he’s describing is the nature of creativity.
Natural collaborations between like-minded brands flow easily and organically. This is a good thing. But it can also be a limitation. Because if you’ve already thought of it, chances are your competitors and imitators will have thought of something similar. Anya Hindmarch’s designer tote-bags for Sainsbury’s were fresh at the time. But since then, we’ve seen a slew of similar collaborations, all along the same lines. There are Yinka Ilori’s designer tote-bags for M&S[5]. There are Lulu Guinness’s designer tote-bags for Waitrose[6]. There are many others.
Highly creative pairings are somewhat different. Albert Einstein once said, if at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. It doesn’t come much more absurd than having gold sausage rolls pinned to your earlobes. Your first reaction is that it just feels wrong. Transgressive, even. And yet, the more it sinks in, the more you see connections waiting to be brought out between the mass-market pie-and-pasty shop and the cultural enfant terrible entrusted with its jewellery collection. They’re both bold. They’re both unashamed. They’re both defiantly non-bourgeois and non-twee. They’re take-us-as-you-find-us brands. And this means they actually work together, even though you might think they ought not to. The sales success demonstrates it. And with features in across the media, from The Times[7], the Sun[8] and the Mail[9] to Esquire [10] and ITV [11]the media coverage demonstrates it.
Pure novelty only gets you so far. Without substance it does not sustain interest beyond the initial surprise. On the other hand, comfortably following the expected routes only keeps you where you are before people start to look around for something new. But put the two together and, like Greggs and Kitson, you could really be on to something. Like the infamous Ig Nobel prizes for science, what they’ve built between them is an idea that first makes you laugh – and then makes you think [12] .
[1]https://www.greggsbakedingold.co.uk/shop-collection
[3]https://www.today.com/food/trends/balenciaga-lays-potato-chip-handbag-rcna52099
[4]http://www.anyahindmarch.com/pages/im-not-a-plastic-bag
[6]https://www.thesun.co.uk/shopping/28641410/viral-12-waitrose-x-lulu-guiness-bag/
[9]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13834585/Greggs-jewellery-London-Fashion-Week.html
[10]https://www.esquire.com/uk/style/fashion/a62132591/fast-food-fashion-greggs-jewellery-dion-kitson/
[12] https://improbable.com/ig/about-the-ig-nobel-prizes/