BRAND JAM LAB SPECIAL REPORT: BRAND INNOVATION IN NUMBERS

One of the odd things about brand innovation is the low availability of hard data about what it is and how it works. Considering that more than 20 years have passed since Braun teamed up with Oral-B, it’s surprising how little information and infrastructure and exists around a topic that has become an essential part of the marketing toolkit of so many successful brands. The marketing industry has probably expended a hundred times more effort examining advertising on Snapchat than on understanding the dynamics of the Collaboration Generation.

Brand Jam was set up with the intention of helping to fill that gap, but instead of providing the usual anecdotes and independent analysis, we wanted to go further and attempt to quantify the entire brand innovation landscape as it stands. What follows are some top-line insights to help define what brand innovation is and who’s doing it.

Throughout the January-March 2018 period I catalogued more than 520 cases of brands staging new product offerings using narratives based on collaboration or inbound licensing.

1. Brands Prefer Brands

Brands can take many different paths to engage with external partners. The nuances and benefits of each are an interesting subject, but the key takeaway for now is that in the quarter just completed, the licensing industry was the partner of choice in only 28.6% of cases.

While licensing is a useful resource for generating recall, when brands are seeking out partners, they are far more likely to place a premium on enhanced styling, personalisation and exclusivity. Brands collaborate far more frequently with other brands (36.5%) and designers (11.1%). Artists and art licensing feature almost as often as designers, accounting for 10.4% of all campaigns.

Contrary to what marketing bloggers might have us believe, social influencers feature as contributing partners in only 1.2% of campaigns – almost all of them in cosmetics and beauty. By contrast, true celebrities from the realms of music, sport, movies and modelling account for 7.5%.

2. America Sets the Pace

American brands are far and away the most active brand innovators, with the USA being the country of origin for 43.6% of campaigns – a number inflated somewhat by high rates of American ownership of key licensed properties.

Japan and the UK each accounted for 11.5%, with Italy, Germany, France in the next tranche – each with around 6%. Other countries that score highly are Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Canada and Korea.

Nearly half (45.2%) of all campaigns take place between partners of shared nationality. Put another way, it’s more common for brands to reach for the exotic than the familiar.

 3. Fashion Rules….Or Does It?

Apparel, footwear and fashion accessories accounted for nearly three quarters (72.9%) of all brand innovation campaigns launched during the period – but not because of sneakers. Categories directed at young audiences (sneakers, sport, denim/young fashion) accounted for less than half of this number, with sneakers making up only 10% of the total landscape.

The non-fashion categories with the highest levels of activity were watches & jewellery, décor, food & beverage and cosmetics. While the raw statistics paint a picture of minor categories being overshadowed by fashion, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that a category like watches and jewellery is still innovating at the rate of ten cases per month.

Fashion’s high ranking is also inflated by a couple of factors. Firstly, most fashion brands are obliged to reinvent their entire product offering at least twice a year. Secondly, the number of highly successful campaigns in fashion over the last decade has inspired competitors and contemporaries to act similarly. Success breeds success.

Interestingly, nearly 60% of fashion’s collaborations in the last quarter were executed with partners from outside the fashion industry – pointing to the possibility that their high rate of involvement may be as much a product of circumstance as the result of any abnormal affinity for collaboration.

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