Collabs on collabs

LJ Gutierrez’s head is full of Pokémon, frozen pizza, and Legos. At Universal’s branding division, her 35-person team obsesses over musical side projects — such as a white-label pizza for which she’s recently locked in an artist partner. (“The frozen pizza industry has just skyrocketed through Covid!”) Brand partnerships exploded in the digital era, as fans’ lives moved online, and they’ve gotten experimental. UMG has offered a vegan baking class with Billie Eilish, orchestrated a Post Malone cover of a Hootie and the Blowfish song for Pokémon, and paired the Jonas Brothers with Lenovo for a virtual concert that fans could “control” from their screens, voting on songs and competing to design posters. Even as the pandemic ebbs, Gutierrez is confident partnerships will keep gaining: “Not everyone’s in the studio

together. So you’ll be seeing things in the future that tie into that.”