Collaboration in the chocolate factory

One of the most publicly collaborative brands in New Zealand right now is Whittaker’s, who over the last two years has collaborated with a number of other New Zealand companies, sometimes causing voracious social media buzz and unprecedented consumer demand.

“It’s about developing Whittaker’s into other indulgent areas,” says chief marketing officer Philip Poole. “Through the collaborations, we can innovate together. L&P, hundreds and thousands, Jelly Tip, Lewis Road are all very innovative and exciting products, so if you get the collaboration right, one plus one is bigger than two.”

For Whittaker’s, the collaborative process started internally, searching for ways the company could innovate both its product and its marketing. Then it expanded outside.

Poole says companies looking to collaborate on products “have to be very careful in terms of the brand fit, and ensuring the partner has the same ambitions and motivations in producing a quality product.”

After the first few collaboration successes, working alongside other brands has become part of the Whittaker’s brand, Poole says, and now when a new collaborative product is launched, customers immediately start speculating about what will come next.

When the Jelly Tip chocolate, a collaboration with Tip Top, was released in June this year, #whittakersnewflavours started bouncing around Twitter.

Whittaker’s now receives a steady flow of pitches for collaborative products, but is careful about who to partner with.

“Having done a number, there’s a certain expectation of what are we going to next,” he says, “but we wouldn’t do anything for the sake of doing it. Collaboration is part of the brand strategy, but collaboration has to be adding to the wealth of the brand. It has to meet the criteria. We would never do a collaboration just for the sake of doing it.”