Beauty meets chocolate: Will the MCoBeauty x Cadbury collaboration be a sweet success?

Some brand collaborations make perfect sense. Others make you look twice.

Brand collaborations are where two or more brands work together to create a new product that achieves a common goal and share mutual benefits. From Coca-Cola flavoured Oreos to Nike and Tiffany sneakers, brands invest millions of dollars to produce collaborative products to generate buzz and excitement.

The latest collaboration that has consumers talking brings together Australian beauty brand MCoBeauty and well-known confectionery brand Cadbury, owned by Mondelēz International. Launched exclusively at Woolworths, the limited-edition range spans both chocolate and beauty products, including a Cadbury Dairy Milk watermelon chocolate block inspired by MCoBeauty’s watermelon skincare range, alongside Cadbury-themed beauty products such as an eyeshadow palette and lip peptide treatment. Who said chocolate had to stay in the confectionery aisle?

While Cadbury x MCoBeauty may seem like an unusual pairing, food-inspired beauty products are not entirely new. Many consumers will remember Lip Smacker's Coca-Cola and Fanta flavoured lip balms from the 2000s, suggesting that food and beauty have crossed paths before.

While some consumers are eager to give collaborative products a try, others may question whether chocolate and beauty products really belong together. But getting people to talk about a brand collaboration is one thing. Getting them to purchase it is another. This is why the important question is not whether collaborations can be successful, but how successful they are across key audiences and how consumer responses influence that outcome.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute investigated 19 real brand collaborations involving consumer packaged goods, durables and luxury brands. Results show that more than half of consumers have merely a neutral response when asked how likely they are to buy the collaborative product if it were available to them, meaning they neither strongly reject nor strongly embrace it. In other words, not everyone will love or hate a collaborative product. For many consumers, the response sits somewhere in between.

Among those with stronger reactions, rejection is more common than enthusiasm, with consumers up to 2.5 times more likely to reject collaborations than embrace them. Only four of the 19 collaborative products tested attracted more enthusiasts than rejectors, and all four involved consumer packaged goods brands.

Read the full article in Adnews.