Influx

Ralph Lauren spent the last few decades building one of the strongest US fashion brands through brilliant marketing, advertising and branding.

It’s now letting others access these skills through the formation of a new entity Global Brand Concepts its first assignment is the creation of a new brand called American Living for JC Penney.

This deal probably includes part ownership of the brand and allows Ralph Lauren to benefit from expansion into the mass-market department stores.

Offering specialty and department stores access to its services makes sense. These stores have dozens of so called private label “brands”, which are usually poorly executed marketing concepts, so there’s a gap for someone with the marketing skills of Lauren, to step into.

In the UK, Channel 4 allows its own internal creative unit, 4Creative to work for other clients. The team built a stellar reputation and D&AD awards for their work for their in-house client.

Here’s a recent promo spot it created for the UK debut of Ugly Betty.

Interestingly, the head of the unit, Richard Burdett, used to work at Saatchi.

Are there any other brands doing this?