Co-branding strategies in luxury fashion: the Off-White case

Increasing competition has induced brands to find ever more innovative ways to raise awareness. Among the latter, co-branding has recently become pervasive in the luxury fashion sector. Despite the growing interest in co-branding, no study to date has examined how luxury fashion brands can strategically combine different types of co-branding and the amount of media visibility that they can gain by means of these brand alliances. Drawing on both case study analysis and automated text analysis, this paper on the longitudinal case of the luxury fashion brand Off-White offers important managerial implication. It shows that, to create a successful co-branding portfolio, luxury brands should initially collaborate with renowned brands in the same target market, and only later with brands operating in other sectors. This study also reports empirical findings with which to understand what are the most suitable forms of co-branding to pursue to increase media visibility and consumers’ engagement in social media.