‘Just don’t let it turn into Disney’: Why brand partnerships need a better test

I’ve been running focus groups with cultural audiences for 17 years. A search through my endless transcripts would reveal one cultural institution’s name surprisingly often: Disney.

It would be drawn from comments such as:

“Just don’t let it turn into Disney”

Or

“The Disney-fication of it all is just wrong!”

It’s not long ago that a brand association between the National Trust and Disney would have been fantasy. But here we are, and next comes Pokemon. 

Whilst sponsorship continues to be difficult territory, especially for publicly-funded institutions, partnerships are increasingly accepted, even welcomed by audiences. So what has changed? What’s enabling cultural organisations to stretch brand partnerships?

Brand partnerships, ambassadors and influencers have become ubiquitous in modern life. But this is only a part of the ‘permission’ audiences are giving to cultural organisations to evolve. I propose three specific reasons for increased audience permission:

1. Audiences acknowledge the need for new income streams

We’ve found in our longitudinal tracker studies that in the main awareness of the charitable status of cultural organisations is increasing - even if the detail of structure is often unclear to the audience. The financial difficulties of major cultural institutions in the news signals to the public that the sector needs fresh strands of income. But at the same time, they are sensitive to price increases. Leveraging brand partnerships is seen as a smart solution.  

2. They recognise the increasing relevance

The alignment between the art world and high fashion is long established, with the Met Gala growing in eyeballs each year. It’s now standard that world leading fashion houses align with our national galleries: V&A x Burberry, Tate x Gucci, NPG x Chanel, Louvre x Louis Vuitton.

But alignment with lifestyle fashion points to a pivot in relevance to audiences - where they can actually participate and feel a benefit: Moma x Uniqlo, Tate x Swatch, V&A x Levis, Met x Vans, National Gallery x Dr. Martens, Science Museum x FatFace, Guggenheim x COS.

3. They value our authenticity

What we often hear by way of audience pushback is when partnerships are perceived to be inauthentic, irrelevant or subtly pushed as content. When we are explicit, we retain authentic brand equity. Audiences remain highly protective of culture. They notice when a partnership feels clumsy, cynical or bolted on. But commerciality itself is not the problem. Poor fit is.

The audience test is becoming more sophisticated: does this partnership make sense for the organisation’s purpose, values and role in people’s lives? Does it add value, or is it commercial noise?

Cultural organisations have more room to move, but permission is still conditional. For example, the National Trust partnership with Pokemon inevitably received robust criticism from the platforms it is accustomed to receive criticism from. But the defence came quickly. And the trust itself confidently articulated the value of the partnership to securing lifetime supporters and, by extension, the increased security of the heritage it is duty bound to protect. 

Partnerships as problem-solving for audiences

Where can brand partnerships go next? It’s sometimes hard to lift your head above the parapet and recognise the value of our sector. The cultural capital - internationally, nationally, regionally and locally - of even relatively small cultural organisations is of disproportionate value to potential commercial suitors. As a sector we are still in our infancy in terms of generating passive income from brand licensing.

But while the audience is giving us increased permission to exploit this cultural capital, we know too from our recent Reframing the Exhibition study that cultural organisations are increasingly ‘values-judged’ by the audience. They do not just evaluate an institution on its collection, but on its conscience. 

The most compelling partnerships will continue to lean into purpose. A neat case study in embracing this culture is from Lego. While a trail partnership with the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) was a fun way to interact with endangered birds, a new partnership with the trust builds in increasing social purpose, driving ‘sustainable play’. This is credible, on-brand and authentic to both sides.

But I see the next horizon as partnerships as problem-solving for audiences, where our cultural brands partner with commercial organisations in human-centred design thinking, rather than just a neat marriage of convenience.

Where problems in the daily life of the audience are designed out from, such as how we travel to culture, how we discover history, how we play with our kids, how we make time for art and how we afford it.

In an economic climate defined by fierce competition for time and attention, the question is no longer “should we partner?”. It is “are we choosing the right partners to build our future?”.

There is a risk in timidity, as others build the partnerships you wish you had.

Guy Turton is the director of the audience strategy consultancy MHM