Brands Collaborating With Pop Artists Will Be 2019’s Hottest Trend

Bryan Karas

January 3, 2019

One trend that marketer’s really don’t think about is how much the younger generations – by younger generations we’re talking the 15-30 year olds – love streetwear and pop art. And it’s making people tons of money.

In the beginning, streetwear was just the style of urban youth and no one really thought anything of it. But now, celebrities – and not just rappers – are rocking the streetwear look. It’s trendy enough that even luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton have dedicated new clothing lines to capture a piece of this market.

Virgil Abloh, an artist/designer, became the artistic director at Louis Vuitton back in March 2018. Since then, his streetwear influence has gone global – especially in Asia. His own brand Off-White came out of nowhere and is the epitome of how the business is capitalizing on this trend. Young people love it.

And this same thing is happening in the pop art world. Tons of artists have graduated from doing graffiti on the street to putting art on the canvas.

One of the most famous pop artists of this generation is Shepard Fairey. He started Obey, a thriving streetwear brand, and was made internationally known by creating the Obama “Hope” poster artwork.

It’s pretty evident that streetwear and pop art are staples in today’s culture.

There’s even a huge event every year called ComplexCon – this convention and festival brings together pop culture, music, art, food, style, sports, innovation, activism, and education. Just go to their Instagram account to get a sense of what’s going down.

So streetwear and pop art are hot right now but how can marketers take advantage of this?

Let’s say you’re a credit card company tailored to college students. Collaborating with a pop artist, who has huge Instagram influence on young people, to exclusively design a limited amount of credit cards would be one way to reach your target audience.

Belvedere Vodka did that exact thing. They built a canvas out of a few hundred Belvedere bottles and French pop artist Jisbar worked his magic. Once completed, the boxes were removed and each box had a little section of the larger piece of art. Hermes and Diesel also tapped him for collabs.

It’s a combination of following a trend – pop art, streetwear, etc – and influencer marketing. Because an artist on Instagram, whether they have been featured at ComplexCon or The Palace of Versailles, is an influencer.

Marketer’s wanted a way to reach the younger generations…well here you go. Expect to see a lot more of this in 2019.

Google Is In The Audio Advertising Game and You Should Be Too

It’s pretty simple. If the best companies and the best marketers in the world are doing something you should too. It’s always best to learn from the pros. Spotify advertising and other audio platform advertising is going to be huge this year so it’s best to get in now.

Brands Consistently Celebrate Every “National Holiday” Ever

The real holidays are finally over but with social media it seems like almost every week there is some new “national holiday” we need to celebrate. Whether it’s National Martini Day or National Donut Day, some brand will hit the jackpot on social media. Burger King did just that…

Paid Advertising: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Our friend, Andrew Chen at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote a great piece on how startups who are addicted to paid ads will get killed. He talks about scale and saturation and if you don’t have the building blocks to a great brand you will only make it so far. Totally worth a read.