Over the past couple of years, mushrooms have been at the center of a growing list of collaborations focused on sustainable accessories and footwear, functional drinks, and plant-based proteins, as well as gaining popularity as a design element. Psychedelic mushroom-based products containing psilocybin or other hallucinogenic compounds have been at the center of collaborations as […]
Archive | Celebrity
Oh, Baby
The market for nursery décor and other baby products is crowded, and it can be difficult for new and expecting parents to make a decision on what to buy. Licensing helps marketers differentiate and add trust. Conversely, the category is attractive to licensors due to its growth prospects; most of the many researchers studying the […]
A Bundle of Energy Drinks
Celebrities—especially those known primarily as social media influencers—are increasingly hitting the energy drinks, both in their personal lives and through licensing deals, or other forms of partnership, with energy drink companies. Most of the collaborative products tend to be limited-edition, co-branded flavors rather than long-term lines. And some of the pairings take the form of […]
A Budding Celebrity Sector
Celebrity floral designers are frequent collaborators with floral delivery services, local florists, subscription floral boxes, and the like. Recently, a few have started to expand their scope of collaboration slightly by pairing with non-floral-specialist brands or retailers, sometimes even extending into categories beyond flowers, albeit mostly still with a close connection to their core area […]
The Value and Variety of VTubers
By Karen Raugust on June 22, 2023 in Celebrity, Character/Entertainment, Content, Digital, International, Licensing
Consumer interest in VTubers (“virtual YouTubers”)—which got their start in Japan in the mid-2010s—has expanded significantly since the start of the pandemic, both in these digital influencers’ country of origin and abroad. VTubers are anonymous creators who use motion-capture and other technologies to create an animated avatar, usually anime-like in style, that does everything a […]
Cutting the Clutter
Last week, de-cluttering expert Marie Kondo, made famous in the U.S. through her Netflix show, Sparking Joy, as well as her four books, announced a collection of home organization products with 3Coins, a discount home store in Kondo’s native Japan. The first category to debut is kitchen storage, including bags for sorting perishables, expandable organizers, […]
The Mainstreaming of Drag-Related Merchandise
Drag performers have been active in collaborations in the cosmetics space in a big way going back at least four or five years—we wrote about the trend in 2018—and to some extent well before that. More recently, they have also been gradually doing deals in an ever-widening swath of categories, including products for children. That […]
Life of Luxury
The marriage of luxury brands and K-pop stars continues, as global luxury labels strive to solidify their strength in the important Asian market, as well as take advantage of the stars’ worldwide popularity. For the most part, the relationships are pure brand ambassadorships, with the singers posting on social media to their vast followings, appearing […]
Influential Collaborations
Signature product lines tied to social media influencers have become standard practice in many categories. A half dozen recent deals provide an illustration of the wide variety of influencers and partners involved in such collaborations in 2022: On December 6, MeganPlays, a leading video gaming content creator, paired with retailer Claire’s for a 23-piece line […]
Prime of Life
The presence of mature women in the licensing and collaboration landscape has been growing over the past several years. While they still account for just a sliver of celebrity licensing activity overall, women of a certain age, who historically were forgotten when it came to product partnerships, are increasingly accepted and embraced by marketers. These […]