Modern Retail Podcast: Touchland gets acquired, what’s gone wrong with Target and the secret sauce behind brand x pop culture collaborations
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On this week’s Modern Retail Podcast, senior reporters Melissa Daniels and Gabriela Barkho discuss the acquisition of sanitizer brand Touchland. The startup was bought by Church & Dwight, the personal care group that owns Nair and Arm & Hammer, in an $880 million deal. The staff also discusses the rise and fall of Target in the past couple of years, with the retailer marred by pullback in consumer spending and boycotts.
In this episode, Daniels and Barkho also welcome Michelle Gabe, the director of marketing and partnerships at IFG, the parent company of King’s Hawaiian, Grillo’s Pickles, and Killer Brownie. Gabe joins the show to discuss what goes into brands’ collaborations with entertainment franchises and other pop culture moments, especially in film and television.
The trend was kicked into high gear during 2023’s summer of “Barbie,” when brands of all sizes went pink. Last year, a similar wave was brought on by the “Wicked” movie. Even prestige TV series are getting in on product tie-ins through brand collaborations, as this past season of “White Lotus” showed.
During her previous role at truffle sauce startup Truff, Gabe helped bring these types of partnerships to life, such as a collectibles collaboration with the “Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which garnered a waitlist of 20,000. Here is what she had to say about the best way to approach major IP tie-ins.
Below are some highlights from the conversation, lightly edited for clarity and length.
On using a Super Mario collaboration to educate people about truffles
“I knew that with the consumer, Truff was having the problem of people understanding what exactly a truffle is, and that’s a mushroom. We saw this as an educational moment that also offered cultural relevance and hype, and allowed us to lean into something that we knew a lot of people were excited about. A big ‘aha’ moment was when I asked every person in our office about Mario and what they thought about it. Each and every person, from young to all the way up to our oldest, had their own Mario character. I’m a Yoshi, some others were Luigi. There was a lot of internal excitement around that, and that’s when we knew we had to bring this to life in the right way.”
Why entertainment studios are increasingly amenable to licensing IP
“From my observation, I think the world is just more connected now than ever. So just launching a commercial and doing a few events and a launch party, that’s not going to cut it for a premiere of a new movie. They’re trying to go all out, because these partnerships offer free media value. Think about it like this: if you are partnering with a [brand] like Truff or King’s Hawaiian, they’re putting all their apples in that basket and are ready to go. They [brands] want to bring attention to your movie or show.”
Product tie-ins when it makes sense
“If you pull off a collaboration, or even if you do just one right, people will notice. You’ll get an inbox full of pitches, and there are so many people that want to secure these partnerships. My motto is always to hear out each and every pitch, because something could click that you never even thought of before. But on the flip side, it’s smart to be strategic. Less is definitely more in every way as you want to take the time and effort to build the right story and the right momentum. So even though some might seem exciting – it might have been your favorite movie growing up – it really is okay to say no when you think about how the collaboration could fit into the broader marketing plan for your business.”