Click 'Read Original' for details. Since the RIO cocktail x Liushen floral water co-branded product went viral last year, it became hard to find, and co-branded products have sprung up across the e-commerce industry. In the apparel sector alone, we've seen Want Want selling clothes, Lao Gan Ma selling clothes, Pepsi selling clothes, and Hongqi cars selling clothes. Even NetEase Cloud Music, taking advantage of the 618 shopping festival, crossed over with Three Gun to launch the 'Le' series of underwear and socks. Cross-border co-branding and 'guochao' (national trend) have repeatedly gone viral. The Forbidden City IP has co-branded with dozens of brands, which feels over-commercialized; now just hearing 'Forbidden City' makes me dizzy. What is a co-branded product? Commonly, co-branding refers to cross-industry brand collaboration, creating new products through partnerships with other brands, IPs, or celebrities, leveraging both parties' influence to enhance the commercial value of the brand/product. Co-branded products are the best embodiment of 'product-as-marketing,' combining product innovation with topic-driven communication and brand building. Currently, co-branded products fall into several major categories: 1. Brand x Celebrity 'Celebrities' include four types: stars, renowned designers/artists, virtual characters, and industry influencers. This is common: sports brands partner with athletes, fashion brands with celebrities, foreign brands with designers/artists. Collaboration methods vary: printing the celebrity's image, having them participate in design, or bundling with merchandise in gift boxes. Artist co-branded products Celebrity co-branded products Influencer co-branded products Virtual character co-branded products Advantages of this model:

  • The partner has a large fan base, which the brand can leverage for sales growth;
  • Celebrities' topicality easily triggers social media buzz;
  • Celebrities can also get closer to their fans through the collaboration. 2. Brand x IP IPs include movie IPs (Marvel), anime IPs (One Piece, Pikachu, Peppa Pig), cultural IPs (Forbidden City, British Museum), game IPs (Honor of Kings, League of Legends), and web variety show IPs. MAC x Honor of Kings Anta x Marvel British Museum x Perfect Diary Advantages of this model:
  • Brand-IP co-branding makes the IP more approachable and tangible;
  • Well-made IP merchandise can boost the IP's popularity;
  • Unlike celebrities, IPs avoid risks of scandals or image collapse. 3. Brand x Brand This has become a hot trend in e-commerce over the past year, often involving two completely unrelated brands in a cross-industry 'marriage.' Examples include the viral RIO cocktail x Liushen floral water/Hero ink, Want Want x Takasha/Chando, Li-Ning x Hongqi, and Anta x Coca-Cola. Li-Ning x Hongqi Want Want x Chando RIO x Hero ink Advantages of co-branded products Now, let's get to the core topic: What are the real advantages? 1. Increased product exposure and topic-driven communication Without exposure, there's no awareness; without topics, there's no spread. E-commerce is fundamentally about transactions, so a product with buzz naturally attracts traffic, especially when traffic is expensive and hard to find. Co-branded products might be visually stunning, backed by celebrities or top IPs, or be brainchildren of two cross-industry brands. If any one of these elements is executed to the extreme, it creates a traffic spike. For brands, this is a great opportunity to boost exposure. Good co-branded products also serve as traffic drivers; when a large influx of visitors arrives, it can lift overall store sales, bringing both fame and profit. Library of Fragrance x White Rabbit 2. Cross-industry complementarity, higher premium Co-branded products achieve 'one product with two distinct characteristics,' giving them more room for premium pricing. Additionally, co-branding covers both parties' target audiences, creating user base complementarity. Many brands now want to reach diverse consumer groups, including Gen Z, silver-haired consumers, and lower-tier markets. Such cross-industry collaborations are a win-win and a direct way to reach potential consumers. 3. Extending non-product functions Co-branded products aim to generate buzz through communication and later PR, with sales as a secondary goal. Hence, they are often limited editions. Brands use 'hunger marketing' to create scarcity, leading to non-product functions like gifting and collecting. 4. Adding new SKUs to meet consumer demand for new products Merchants want to continuously add new SKUs to diversify product lines and combat consumer fatigue. Co-branded products often innovate in form rather than core function, making them the lowest-cost innovation method—ideal for brands with limited R&D capabilities. Pitfalls of co-branded products The original intention of co-branded products is to create buzz for the brand. While selling out and boosting sales is hoped for, the focus should not be solely on sales; co-branded products are a medium for brand communication. Why?
  1. Large brands' co-branded products are more likely to gain influence and spread. But large brands have dozens to hundreds of SKUs, with sales in the hundreds of millions; expecting one co-branded product to drive entire store sales is unrealistic.
  2. Co-branded product releases are limited by licensing periods and consumer psychology, with time and quantity constraints. They can't dominate consumer mindshare through sales volume; they must create awareness through product-driven topics. Many brands have limited budgets and can't rely on heavy advertising for rapid brand recognition. In such cases, 'cross-border co-branding' is an unconventional tactic to capture attention—a cost-effective approach where 1+1>2. Recommendations for partners Only a few co-branded products go viral; most quietly sit in brand stores without buzz or sales. Here are some suggestions for partners: For IP owners: Many IP owners, especially domestic ones, adopt a purely sales-driven mindset. They capitalize on the IP's current popularity, build sales teams, and sell the IP aggressively. Their logic: merchants buying the same IP usually do so only once, so sell as much as possible. In the past two years, with a good market, many merchants have been persuaded, but neither side focuses on optimizing the co-branded product's communication or design. Critically, some IPs haven't yet built fan loyalty or stickiness—like certain emoji and anime virtual character IPs—resulting in co-branded products with no buzz or topics, just thousands of extra inventory units. We've seen too many such cases. If IP owners don't abandon this short-sighted, sales-only approach, they'll narrow their commercial collaboration prospects and negatively impact the entire domestic IP business environment. For celebrities: The initial and most common celebrity co-branding tactic is using their image on packaging to boost brand exposure and endorsement through the 'celebrity effect.' Early on, when celebrity co-branding was rare, this approach could generate both buzz and sales. However, with the evolution of entertainment marketing, simply printing an image on packaging is now seen as blunt and less effective; consumers and fans easily tire of it. For celebrities and brands, the focus should shift to suspenseful preheating, fan tasks, fan check-ins, and idol support, using the co-branded product as a medium for deep interaction with fans and consumers, driving sales and communication. Recommendations for brands 1. Build a brand symbol Co-branding shouldn't be a one-off whim. Instead, use cross-border collaborations to turn the brand into a symbol, integrating 'brand x attribute (sports, fashion, youthfulness)' into a strong culture and consumer mindshare, spreading brand impressions. Internationally, Coca-Cola, Supreme, and Vans; domestically, Heytea, RIO, and Liushen have turned co-branding into cultural symbols deeply embedded in consumers' minds. 2. Deep integration Co-branding is not just printing two logos or a celebrity's face on packaging. Such superficial collaborations are becoming meaningless. For celebrity co-branding:
  • Involve the celebrity in design;
  • Have the celebrity participate in promotion and fan interaction;
  • Use distinctive packaging. But only a few brands can afford celebrities. Most co-branding is between two brands, where the product must either have distinctive packaging with viral potential (like White Rabbit milk candy crossbody bags or Chando x Want Want rice crackers) or be an unexpected pairing (like NetEase Cloud Music x Three Gun, RIO x Liushen, Honor of Kings x MAC). Two-brand crossovers don't require huge budgets; they test imagination. With imagination, a product can become a hit. 3. Limited releases Co-branded products should be limited editions—the so-called hunger marketing. Some brands release them in physical stores, deliberately creating long queues to simulate 'supply shortage,' which boosts desire; after all, 'the unattainable is always in demand.' The frenzy also generates secondary online buzz. 4. Targeted marketing strategies When conducting joint marketing, brands should be consumer-centric, thoroughly researching their lifestyles, preferences, and purchase motivations to uncover deep needs. Develop joint marketing strategies based on the shared target audience and product positioning. In an era where 'good wine needs no bush' is outdated, don't expect products to speak for themselves. Many viral co-branded products have carefully orchestrated promotional campaigns behind them. In communication, combine all advantages, seize the right moment, and ignite the co-branded product's communication power. 5. Complementarity Both parties should have exchangeable or shareable valuable resources that are integrable. With high customer acquisition costs and traffic, co-branding partners often complement each other's consumer bases, stacking brand value and audience coverage to achieve brand promotion, broader reach, and enhanced influence. Source: Marketing Old Wang (ID: wltx-2015)