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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Gary Evans is a journalist with a passion for creative writing. He's recently finished his Masters in creative writing, but when he's not hitting the books, he loves to explore the world of digital art and graphic design. He was previously staff writer on ImagineFX magazine in Bath, but now resides in Sunderland, where he muses on the latest tech and writes poetry. 

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