5 Brand Collaboration Case Studies from Stanley, Gramicci, and More

Explore the digital marketing strategies behind sucessful co-branded product launches

While not always quick- and-easy strategy to implement, a branded product collaboration is often themost effective way of aligning two brands. A well-executed brand collaboration gets double the customers excited about new, limited edition products, exposes both audiences to both brands authentically, and generates hype and headlines along the way.

You might have noticed that brand collaborations seem increasingly common and the reason is simple: they work. Digital channels are ripe for collaborative promotion and the idea of cross-polinating bigger or more niche audiences will always be a tempting prospect for brands. The resulting products are often intriguingly quirky or genuinely exciting — gold dust in a digital world that’s always looking for something new.

Having worked with some of the biggest outdoor and menswear brands, we’ve marketed our fair share of collaborations. From the likes of Stanley’s Barbie Quencher collaboration to outdoor/lifestyle brand Gramicci’s adventures with brands like Keen and Rab, this quick overview should give you an idea of how solid marketing and digital advertising can make a brand collaboration successful.

Universal Works: Elevating Brand Collaborations With Paid Media

Universal Works have teamed up with some of the best in the business. Taion, Paraboot and Topologie are just a taster of who the menswear brand have worked with recently. As part of our digital marketing support for Universal Works, we elevate these brand collaborations. Our retainer also includes advising on wider strategies, using our industry knowledge and results with other clients to inform on topics like email marketing, customer journeys and website optimisation.

We were allocated a portion of extra budget for 2025’s brand partnerships. We assigned the extra ad spend to increase the brand’s international coverage, utilising a mix of boosted organic posts and dedicated dark posts using the brand’s creative assets. 

We were confident that utilising email lead generation ads would be a cost effective objective for our existing top of the funnel campaigns. To facilitate this, we assisted Universal Works in creating a specialised welcome flow on Klaviyo. Combining both our CRM and paid media knowledge, we were able to give customers who signed up via these lead gen ads a more streamlined journey. We used Taion and Paraboot collaboration creative for the lead gen ads, which helped bring down the cost per acquisition (CPA) by 81.6%. 

Increasing the first party data available allows us to get the most out of the marketing that we’re already doing. Email subscribers are cheaper to market to and more likely to convert. They’re also handy for creating accurate retargeting and lookalike audiences within the ad platforms we’re using.

The results were really strong across all three main collaborations in 2025. Our marketing efforts contributed to a 466.5% increase in impressions, 150.5% increase in clicks, 106.3% increase in sales, and a 16.1% increase in ROAS.

Gramicci: Strategic Brand Collaborations Led to 48% Growth YoY

Japanese climbing brand Gramicci extend their reach and cement their industry positioning through brand collaborations. Some of these–like the Rab collab–let Gramicci find more traditional, hardcore, outdoor enthusiasts, while Rab can find this younger outdoor pioneer demographic through Gramicci.

They’ve teamed up with footwear brands Merrell and Keen, as well as fashionable and sustainable brands like Greater Goods, thisisneverthat, & and wander.

As Gramicci’s European digital marketing partners, we’ve been leveraging their collaboration creative into our existing always-on campaigns across Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Messenger), Google and Pinterest. We can also work flexibly, creating dedicated asset groups for the collaborations that really need a dedicated push. 

The proof is in the pudding. Total collaboration sales for Gramicci were up 48% year on year. Across the EU business as a whole, sales were up 29% compared to the previous year. It’s a really strong increase which can directly be attributed to the brand partnerships, with these being responsible for 7% of total sales.

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Stanley x Barbie: Lead Generation for Brand Partnerships

To mark the 65th anniversary of Barbie, Stanley launched an exclusive collaboration with the iconic fashion doll brand. They released eight different Barbie branded Quenchers, which each alluded to a different Barbie character or era. 

We worked alongside the European team, adhering to the globally approved organic social calendar, plugging these organic posts into our digital advertising campaigns.

We also set up lead gen ads for the Stanley x Barbie influencer and PR events. The objective was to reach Stanley’s customers and get RSVPs. These campaigns were successful, with nearly 12,000 link clicks at a low cost per result.

Stanley x Messi: Top of the Funnel Digital Strategy for Audience Diversification

Up until a few years ago, Stanley’s brand positioning was deeply rooted in its heritage: durability, reliability, and utility for demanding environments. They’ve had quite the shift since then though, with the recent audience’s purchases being driven by trends and aesthetics, rather than functionality. The stats don’t lie either. The European brand’s Instagram account swung from 80% male followers to 80% female in just a few years.

To better balance their audience and diversify their customer profiles, Stanley invested their marketing budget into key sporting collaborations.

We worked closely with the Stanley Europe brand team on the strategy for their collaboration with Messi. We had some globally approved and locked in posts to schedule, but we also tapped into our network of social-first creators to support the launch with additional user generated content.

The combination of lo-fi social content and high quality campaign content meant we could test and learn between the first and second launches of the Stanley x Messi collection. We took findings from the first launch (the creative was a little too polished to resonate on socials) to inform our strategy for the second launch (we invested more in content that felt at home on Instagram and TikTok). 

We were provided with an additional ‘special’ budget to dedicate to finding these football fans. Layering onto the organic content strategy, we developed a highly specific and targeted paid media plan which leveraged the organic assets. We focused the budget on the brand’s key markets, meeting customers where they already are, as well as spending in locations where we wanted to find them. The campaign was focused at the top of the funnel, aiming to increase the reach, engagement and audience KPIs.

We got clever with the campaign, using interest- and demographic-based targeting to find the audience niche that Stanley were looking for. The results for these dedicated campaigns were strong. The second Messi launch was particularly successful and the stats were good. Our top of the funnel campaigns got over 36 million impressions, nearly 4 million engagements and over 99,000 profile visits.

Stanley x Arsenal: Organic and Paid Social Support for Brand Collaborations

Strengthening their ties to the sport world, Stanley launched a multi-year partnership with Arsenal Football Club in 2025. 

Arsenal comes with a longstanding legacy and a dedicated fanbase, including some social-first creators who post exclusively about the football club. Some of these people were invited to be part of the overarching brand campaign, and the smaller creators were used for the social-first assets. Much like the Messi campaign, we utilised both these social first content pieces and the brand-provided assets.

For organic social, we published the majority of posts in collaboration with Arsenal or the Arsenal women’s account. This easy win massively increased the reach to the desired audience, as well as benefitting from positive community sentiment from those football fans and the pre-existing football club loyalty. We also developed a dedicated digital marketing campaign for this high-value collaboration, catering to the prospecting football, sport and predominantly male audience. 

Combining both organic and paid social for this partnership ensured the strategy was holistic and effective. The results were in good shape, with over 1.1 million engagements at a low cost per result. Other top of the funnel objectives like reach, profile visits and impressions were well above the brand’s average too. Both the Messi and Arsenal partnerships will be instrumental in Stanley’s strategic acquisition of new audiences.

Need help with your brand partnership?

Let us know a few more details and we’ll get in touch.

Let’s go!