The fine art of brand collaboration

By definition, a brand is easy to define. It’s got a border, a frame, a centre, a product, a mission. A fine artist, however, and fine art itself, in the myriad forms it now takes, is a much more amorphous state of being, one without a clear definition or clear boundaries, often without a frame.

And an artist’s mission may be a million miles from any path a brand treads, and the process of its becoming even further away from the world of briefs, vested interests and relentless revisions and amends that any engagement with brand communications entails. For confirmation, just watch BBDO’s uncomfortably hilarious Museum Worthy spot for the AICP Awards.

Above: BBDO’s uncomfortably hilarious Museum Worthy spot for the AICP Awards.

Given the gulf between the two, it’s a wonder that brands and artists get together at all – and to be fair, the field is thin when it comes to 21st-century artist-brand interactions.

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. (Andy Warhol)

Cast back to the last century, however, and there are some surprising couplings – between Salvador Dali and Chupa Chups – Spanish tooth rotters on a stick – or the more celebrated Absolut Vodka campaign, which started its ‘Absolut Collaborations’ in 1985 with former advertising industry illustrator, Andy Warhol, and has build up a portfolio of vodka label art that is past the 800 mark. 

Warhol’s first piece is, in fact, out again this year in a special limited edition, while the likes of Ed Ruscha, Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili and Louise Bourgeois and her spiders have all engaged to create work for the vodka brand.

Above: Spot showcasing Absolut Vodka's special edition Andy Warhol bottle. 

A little further back, and the figure of Viktor Vasarely waves at us from the foundation near Aix dedicated to his groundbreaking work. Not only the godfather of Op art, and a major influence on the likes of Bridget Riley, he also worked in advertising, heading up his own agency, and working for industry giant Havas.

If you’re tuning in to someone’s unique view of the world, that view has to be in alignment with the brand’s values.

But while the likes of Andy Warhol loved money, business, capitalism, and all the attention he could get while pretending to be dumb as mud, and his aesthetic was not so far from a brief for a product to fill a shelf, the majority of 21st-century artists are more likely to severely critique if not reject outright money, business and capitalism – the engines of any brand, after all.

Above: Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans on display at the Museum of Modern Art

For Leonie Ellis, founder of business development consultancy LE Collaborations, there is still a wealth of opportunity, even if artists and brands are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to how they create and operate.

“Creating new work with artists is exciting,” she says, “but authentic collaborations and understanding of process is so important. Tapping into why an artist makes their work in the first place and using its originality and purpose will connect with its power.”

Gucci were like, ‘off you go’, and provided the space and inspiration to say ‘do what you’re known for, and what you do best

She points to painter Alex Merry and her work for Gucci as a successful example of artist-brand collaboration. “The alignment of values has to be in place,” she explains, “because if you’re tuning in to someone’s unique view of the world, that view has to be in alignment with the brand’s values. So when people engage with an artist, they have to be aware it’s not about aesthetics and how it looks, but what it’s saying. Gucci were like, off you go, and provided the space and inspiration to say ‘do what you’re known for, and what you do best’. So she had total freedom with Gucci, and had a brilliant experience with a very unique outcome that married what the brand wanted to convey.”

Above: Artist Shepard Fairey created FORWARD for Kamala Harris's presidential campaign, and HOPE, which helped Obama win the 2008 presidency.

Further afield, Ellis points to Barack Obama’s commissioning of artist and activist Shepard Fairey to creating his HOPE poster and series for his 2008 election campaign – political branding that helped win the presidency. “And right now,” she adds, “Michelle Obama is working with artists including Shepard who has created Kamala Harris’s FORWARD poster to inspire voter turnout at the forthcoming US election.”

Above: After being sold at auction for £1.1m, Banksy's artwork began to pass through a shredder hidden in its picture frame, and was later sold for a record £16 million. 

By their style and their approach, artists are self-branding organisms, looking for new mediums on which to display their wares. “Dedicated page space was available to buy in publications like Adforum,” she says. “With no brand attached, seeing what was created with total self direction to express their identity led to some infamous results.” The likes of Lynda Benglis’s 1974 ‘centrefold’ ad, and Judy Chicago's now-iconic feminist ad that called on her colleagues for their sexist ways.”

[Banksy] understands secrecy and scarcity better than anybody.

Self branding is a key part of an artist’s palette today – Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Banksy are prime, if very different, examples. The latter once encouraged fans to shoplift from Guess after the shop appropriated one of his stock images for a campaign of theirs without asking. Fair dos – even if Banksy had once proclaimed that ‘copyright is for losers’ (and as a result lost a trademark battle against a greetings card company over using one of his monkey images).

Above: Feminist artist Judy Chicago.

Damien Bradfield, co-founder of WeTransfer, and an online gallerist for dozens of rising fine artists, describes Banksy as one of the masters of marketing, as canny as the canniest brand. “He understands secrecy and scarcity better than anybody, and there’s still this mystique around him that people actually want to carry on – no one really wants to burst the bubble.”

In recent years WeTransfer has hosted new contemporary art on its WePresent platform. Perhaps because it is a delivery system and not a product per se, without the weights and measures of ethics and politics that come packed with any product on a shelf, it’s become a popular brand platform for artists. “We give money or media to support them, and the ambition was to be a patron of the arts,” says Bradfield. “That’s what we wanted to be known as – we took a leaf out of the world of luxury.”

Artists love us [WePresent] because we don’t ask for brand collaboration, they don’t need to endorse us and we give them carte blanche.

What started out as WeTransfer Culture, which included stories about the artists they promoted, soon evolved into This Work and then WePresent. “Artists love us because we don’t ask for brand collaboration, they don’t need to endorse us and we give them carte blanche. We’re there as an enabler, facilitating this thing. One of best was an installation with Marina Abramovic called Traces, an online experience that mirrored her MoMo experience. And a show with her at the Truman Brewery in 2022. She was very funny, too. I expected her to be so serious. She was a real laugh to be around.”

Above: Artist Marina Abramovic, who created an online installation, Traces, in collaboration with WeTransfer.

WePresent now invites curators to expand the brand’s support of artists. “Marina was the first, last year we had Russell Tovey, and now Olafur Eliasson, who has a whole bunch of projects that are both WePresent and on billboards around New York and London. He’s curating work every week for us. The working relationship is fun. There’s no commercial pressure behind it, so it’s nice to watch the journey.”

Artist, illustrator and host of The Creative Condition Podcast, Ben Tallon recalls his own skewed entry into the rarefied world of art-brand coupling, after launching Lend Me Your Ear, an exhibition with music photographer Andrew Cotterill in Covent Garden. “I was developing this new hand lettering brand, and what we did was celebrate the purity and identity of each of these musicians, and find the essence of what endeared them to their fans.”

We got our heads together, got a pitch together, and it was one of the most creative open briefs I’ve had, and it was by far the most commercial brief I’ve had.

One fan who saw the show was Ben Lambert of branding agency PB Creative, who bought a print and recognised in Tallon’s ink and paint-splattered lettering across Cotterill’s iconic images, a quality he wanted to bring to his clients at Lynx/Axe. “What Ben had tuned in to was the textural aspects of my work – the paint strokes and ink marks – that I was bringing that to the fore to capture what it was that made these musicians so pure, in a very abstract mark making style. So we got our heads together, got a pitch together, and it was one of the most creative open briefs I’ve had, and it was by far the most commercial brief I’ve had.”

Above: Artist Ben Tallon's collaboration with Axe/Lynx

And while he admits that plenty of artists would not go within scenting distance of a brand like Lynx, he was more than happy to engage – for one thing, he had bills to pay. “I believe you can express something very pure and put that in the commercial world and make that work,” he affirms. It just doesn’t happen very often.

I believe you can express something very pure and put that in the commercial world and make that work.

As Leonie Ellis opines, “The debate of ’selling out’ surely lies with the end creative result and why that partnership even happened,” rather than working with a brand per se. She points to the likes of the Keith Haring Foundation as a prime example of successfully licensing artwork to provide grants for children affected by HIV/AIDs.

Above: Artist Scott Naismith is working with Johnnie Walker to co-create with AI bespoke bottles of Blue Label for customers.