New Year's co-branded models: the undefeated Chinese style, the people-friendly cartoon style, which one do you pick?

The Spring Festival is a traditional festival that attracts a lot of attention from consumers. Many companies choose to establish joint ventures. They can use the other party's fame to market their own products, achieving a win-win situation, and can also increase the sales and popularity of both parties. The author of the following article has made a detailed analysis of some joint brands for us, let's take a look.

Why co-branding?

• Increase product exposure and topic spread,
• Cross-border complementarity increases premiums.
• Extend non-product functions,
• Add new SKUs to meet consumers' demand for new products.

You can also use the other party's fame to market your own products, which can achieve a win-win situation and increase both sales and popularity. Some companies also want to communicate with young consumer groups by creating cross-border co-branded products and promote brand rejuvenation.

So, why do companies want to establish joint ventures during the New Year? Because the Spring Festival is a traditional festival that consumers pay close attention to, it is highly correlated with consumer products and is also a peak period for consumers to purchase and consume. Therefore, companies take the opportunity to launch joint venture series, which is a marketing need and can also increase popularity. Joint ventures, limited editions, seasonal limited editions, etc. have replaced classic models and become the first choice for companies. In particular, consumers have put forward the idea that "life needs a sense of ritual", and festivals need a sense of ritual even more. Therefore, there is an increasing attention to traditional Chinese festivals. As the most important traditional festival of the year, the appearance of "New Year joint ventures" at this moment will inevitably lead to heated discussions.

What are the traditional ways of co-branding for the New Year? The first is "red". In traditional Chinese culture, red symbolizes joy, prosperity, and auspiciousness; in important events and places, it also represents solemnity, dignity, and authority. Therefore, red is often used to create a festive atmosphere for family reunions. The second is "home", focusing on the core of Chinese emotions "family love and inheritance" to create co-branded products.

1. Exquisite Chinese style

The recent New Year's joint craze is summarized and can be roughly divided into Chinese style and cartoon craze.

1. Chinese style

Recently, "Cha Yan Yue Se" and the folk dance drama "Dream of Red Mansions" launched a limited edition paper cup jointly launched, presenting classic plots such as Taolin Bao Dai reading the West Chamber in "Dream of Red Mansions" on the paper cup. The character design refers to the costumes of the folk dance drama and is smudged with ink. Users can place an order at Nanjing Jingfeng Center Store to get the themed drink cup, and it will be launched in stores across the country from December 12.

Subsequently, the 2023 Guojiao 1573×Xue Song "Song Mountain Splendid" Art New Year Wine, jointly named with contemporary artist Xue Song, combines the "new landscape" and the typical image of pine in artist Xue Song's works with the brand spirit of Guojiao 1573, and uses artist Xue Song's works "Song Mountain Splendid" and "Spring Outing" as creative prototypes, and "pine", "Golden Mountain" and "Zodiac Rabbit" as design elements for secondary creation and bold innovation, using classic art masterpieces and China's rich and fragrant wines to "jointly present" the Year of the Rabbit New Year, conveying the beautiful wishes of "Splendid pine mountains and magnificent mountains and rivers".

Artist Xue Song, who "uses fire as a medium" to make innovative breakthroughs, is a leading figure in Chinese contemporary art. He created an original artwork "Splendid Pines and Beautiful Mountains" specifically for the 2023 Guojiao 1573 Art New Year Wine. The work is colorful and full of affection, giving the Art New Year Wine a unique artistic charm and rare artistic value. This will also bring innovative surprises to the New Year of 2023, allowing every witness to feel the New Year's wishes of "Splendid Pines and Beautiful Mountains, Magnificent Mountains and Rivers".

Children's brands do not follow the cartoon route, but instead reproduce the Chinese style and lead children into the new world of China. Recently, Balabala teamed up with Chen Fenwan, a top paper-cutting artist born in the 1990s, to launch a New Year joint series. This is the first time that Chen Fenwan has cooperated with a children's clothing brand. The series combines the zodiac rabbit with paper-cutting art, and interweaves children's fashion with traditional culture, highlighting the new national trend. This joint venture is based on the national trend, emphasizing that every child has his or her own unique ideas. They are all individuals with distinct personalities. They inspire unlimited inspiration and imagination in their childhood growth of asking questions, thinking, and exploring, and encourage children to burst out with various possibilities of 1+1 being greater than 2.

The theme of the Yanziwu Tribute to the Chinese National Treasure·Fresh Bird's Nest (Limited Edition for the Spring Festival) is to pay tribute to the Chinese national quintessence. Nine Peking Opera figurines are designed based on the popular characters of Peking Opera, of which five are regular and four are hidden. Two are randomly placed in each blind gift box. The colorful, delicate and smart Peking Opera figurines not only increase the suspense of the blind box, but also upgrade the New Year gift, making the Yanziwu Tribute to the Chinese National Treasure·Fresh Bird's Nest (Limited Edition for the Spring Festival) full of new ideas.

Moreover, consumers who participate in the blind box interactive activity will have the opportunity to win a gift of Yanzhiwu Star Diamond Bird's Nest. In addition, the gift box also comes with an interactive game of treasure hunting chess, which incorporates Peking Opera culture and bird's nest culture. The end point of the treasure pavilion is the world-famous Deheyuan Grand Theater. In this treasure hunting battle, Peking Opera figures will be transformed into treasure hunting chess pieces, integrated into the game, and fight side by side with players.

At the beginning of the 2023 Spring Festival, the Palace Museum's IP "The World in the Palace" joined hands with ROOKIE to create a new joint series. Combining traditional Chinese culture with fashion trends, creating a national trend series of clothing, injecting new vitality into traditional Chinese culture and bringing out the national trend. ROOKIE pays tribute to traditional Chinese culture through this cooperation, and works together to promote and guide consumers to pay more attention to national trend culture. At the same time, this is also the first time that ROOKIE has launched its own brand clothing products.

At the same time, Triumph teamed up with Chinese fashion designer Yuhan Wang to launch a designer co-branded product for the first time, incorporating the traditional Chinese classical image of plum blossoms into underwear, nightgowns, eye masks and other intimate apparel, bringing two series, Style Fei and Style Mei, and launching the "Hao Jiu Mei Jian" limited gift box, cheering for women who are as elegant and tough as plum blossoms, and arousing everyone's attention to the gentle and powerful female role models around them.

If the Chinese-style collaboration is a tribute to the culture, then the cartoon collaboration is an attempt for the brand to be more friendly and cute and closer to young consumers.

2. Cartoons: Make your brand cuter

On December 13, "Guan Cha New Food Gift" launched a SpongeBob SquarePants collaboration dessert blind box, which includes two specifications of 16 and 32 pieces, priced at 149 yuan and 328 yuan respectively. The 16-piece product will come with a SpongeBob SquarePants themed red envelope and a customized gift bag, and the 32-piece product will also come with refrigerator magnets and couplets.

On December 14, NEIWAI announced the launch of a new year joint series with the famous British picture book IP Peter Rabbit. In the fairy tale, Peter Rabbit, who loves adventure, has a shelter called the Rabbit Hole, from which the brand derives the concept of "home". This series incorporates the image of Peter Rabbit into household clothing and accessories for women, men, and children. In addition, based on the joint series, NEIWAI also cooperated with Master Hippocampus to launch the "Homecoming - NEIWAI Year of the Rabbit Joint Model" shooting plan.

In December 2022, Elizabeth Arden, a brand with more than a hundred years of professional skin care and makeup experience, once again joined hands with POP MART to break the circle and jointly customize the new LOHAS series of the trendy IP image HACIPUPU, and jointly launched a New Year limited joint gift box with the Arden Capsule Family, to jointly unlock cute surprises, enjoy freedom and innocence, and start a LOHAS journey with Arden in 2023.

As the New Year approaches, Moose Knuckles takes this opportunity to collaborate with the classic animation IP TUZKI to launch a fun co-branded series for the Year of the Rabbit, and works with spokesperson Chen Feiyu to shoot a New Year blockbuster to show the fun of staying at home for the New Year. Moose Knuckles, a hardcore warmth pioneer, combines the brand's consistent pragmatic fashion luxury with TUZKI's exclusive fun, adding more choices to this winter's new clothes.

With the coming of the New Year, Bananain's new "Red Plan" series of products across the board aims to use the zodiac culture as a clue to further create new year red products with both design and culture. At the same time, it cooperated with domestic calligraphy artist Zhu Jingyi and emerging artist Fansack to launch artist co-branded red products. In addition to the artist co-branded products, Bananain also launched New Year gift boxes-the Red Box and the Lucky Box, and all categories including home clothes, underwear, bras, socks, thermal leather warmers, children's clothing, hats and gloves have launched red product series, and released the 2023 "Rabbit" year animation MV "Ten Thousand Rabbits", which interprets the zodiac culture with visual art innovation and redesigns the basic red New Year style.

The 2023 Lunar New Year is here, and adidas Originals has teamed up with Chinese contemporary artist Han Meilin to launch a special Spring Festival joint series. Mr. Han Meilin combines his own re-creation of the twelve zodiac signs with rich colors and materials, and presents them on the classic "shell toe" superstar shoe. The integrity and series of this joint series are excellent and have great collection value.

Mr. Han Meilin's artistic practice and development involve painting, calligraphy, sculpture, design, ceramics, folk art and other fields. His representative works include the ancient calligraphy collection "Book of Heaven" and the Beijing Olympic mascot Fuwa. As a representative figure who inherits and innovates Chinese traditional culture, his works are collected by many national museums such as the Palace Museum, the National Museum of China, and the British Museum. The artistic value is self-evident.

This time, the adidas Originals x Han Meilin Chinese New Year Zodiac Special Series uses the classic Superstar shoe as the creative base, draws the essence from Chinese traditional culture, and uses Mr. Han Meilin's art works on a large area of ​​the shoe body, presenting traditional culture with contemporary aesthetics to celebrate the arrival of the Chinese New Year.

At the same time, HARMAY teamed up with MARVIS to launch a new plum-flavored toothpaste, which mainly features brown sugar, plum and mint flavors to awaken consumers' childhood memories. In addition, a futuristic black and silver device "dropped" into the Beijing Xidan pop-up store, inviting consumers to visit and check in. MARVIS is an Italian oral care brand known as the "Hermes of toothpaste."

To support the development of Chinese animation and pay tribute to China's excellent animation, during the Spring Festival this year, Pizza Hut teamed up with the classic animation characters of Shanghai Animation Film Studio, the Calabash Brothers, to hold a "Chinese Animation Year in Western Restaurants" theme event at the Shanghai Metro City Restaurant.

In recent years, Pizza Hut has collaborated with the Palace Museum to bring the "Five Blessings Feast" and launched the "Great Beauty of Intangible Cultural Heritage" theme event in collaboration with intangible cultural heritage art, allowing more Chinese consumers to experience the charm of traditional Chinese culture in Western restaurants. This year is the fourth consecutive year that Pizza Hut has created the "Chinese New Year in Western Restaurants". This time, Pizza Hut has teamed up with Calabash Brothers to create animation experience restaurants and rich theme activities across the country to attract more family consumers to Pizza Hut to celebrate the New Year.

To celebrate the upcoming Year of the Rabbit, Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products and BOSS have teamed up to launch an exclusive co-branded series featuring classic Looney Tunes characters. This exclusive co-branded series combines Bugs Bunny and his friends with traditional Chinese New Year elements such as Chinese red, featuring a series of new products such as sportswear, knitwear and outerwear in a luxurious and casual style.

Mulberry has launched a number of unique collaborations over the years, and this year's limited edition Mulberry x Miffy capsule collection sees the curious adventures of Miffy, the Dutch cartoonist. Miffy will appear in a series of bags and accessories, including keychains, travel and technology accessories, small leather goods and iconic Mulberry bags. Miffy will also appear on the envelope wallet and the shoulder strap of Mulberry's classic Bayswater handbag, as well as several new tote bags created specifically for this series.

This joint series adopts cheerful tones such as coral orange, grass green, cornflower blue and ivory, cleverly combined with Miffy's eye-catching color blocks, echoing Miffy's iconic simple design style and bright colors, and brilliantly showcasing Mulberry's modern interpretation of British tradition, bringing together two iconic brands in a fun and lively way.

NEXY.CO (Nexy.co) joins hands with young artist Deng Yu to create an exclusive Nana Rabbit image and launch the "NEXY.CO×Deng Yu Chinese Zodiac Rabbit Year Joint Series". Art blesses fashion, welcoming the beautiful New Year with wisdom and beauty.

The limited edition DIOR launched for the Chinese Year of the Rabbit in 2023 is still the popular DIOR BY ERL co-branded series. The rabbit shape chosen is also the DIOR BY ERL rabbit pattern that the brand specially designed to pay tribute to the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. The pattern is mainly based on contour lines, and the appearance replaces the details, which adds a cute effect without appearing overly childish. In terms of originality alone, it shows full sincerity.

By 2023, it can be said that there is no business without IP. Currently, the two-way traffic brought by IP cooperation is still considerable. Borrowing the communication scenarios jointly built by IP and brands can not only shorten the user's purchase decision-making chain, but also be beneficial to brand building and save the cost of educating consumers.

Whether it is a new brand or an old brand, IP cooperation can quickly make it popular again. De-homogenization is a good marketing strategy, but ultimately, product and effect synergy is the way for a brand to develop in the long run.

There is no shortcut in seeking healthy IP cooperation. It must not only be logical, but also beyond imagination. That is, what consumers can think of must be satisfied, that is, satisfying their basic needs. Brands must also think of things that consumers have not thought of. This is to hit the "high" points of consumers. Of course, it is best to collide with "ultimate aesthetics", because on the road to building a brand, companies themselves need to lead consumers to upgrade their aesthetics and creativity.

Therefore, it can be said that the New Year's joint marketing event is not about consumers guiding companies, but about companies having to respond beyond what consumers give. At the same time, companies have to greatly enhance the aesthetic upgrade of an era.

Author: New Consumption Think Tank

Source: New Consumption Think Tank