2026 Trend Report on Chinese IP Co-Branding

This article is republished with authorization from "Kepu 2Yuan" (Kepu ErCiYuan)

IP collaborations are evolving from a hot topic in the content industry into a key KPI in brand commercial competition. The most notable development in this shift is the full-scale rise of domestic ACGN IPs.

Ten years ago, the industry's vision of building IPs and making money from IP content itself has, through thousands of collaboration deals each year and over fifty commercial cases during peak seasons in a single week, gradually become an attainable reality. IP collaborations have been upgraded from occasional marketing events into a hallmark of brands' cyclical operations.

It can be said that today, the most intuitive measure of an IP's popularity is which brands it has partnered with, how much sales it has generated, and how many fans have voted with their wallets. Likewise, the most direct measure of a brand's market acumen is whether it can precisely capture trending IPs and quickly convert traffic into sales through high-quality execution, thereby further building its brand moat. IP collaboration is a three-way pursuit in which IP holders, brands, and consumers each get what they need and enjoy the process.

Kepu 2Yuan (WeChat official account ID: kpACGN) has been continuously following two-dimensional lifestyle consumption, and through multiple trend reports has witnessed emotional value reshaping the consumer market. We believe that pan-two-dimensional consumption is sufficient to support a hundred-billion-level industry, and "IP+" will indirectly unlock a trillion-level consumer market. As the "three pits" (Lolita, JK uniforms, Hanfu), designer toys, trading cards, and "goods" (merch) economy move from niche trends into everyday consumption, market attention is collectively shifting toward the IP licensing industry, which has a higher barrier to entry, broader reach, and greater commercial potential. There is no doubt that IP collaborations will be the most certain growth story in content and consumer sectors over the next two years.

However, for many industry practitioners, IP collaboration remains a familiar yet unfamiliar concept. We have seen it flourish offline in first- and second-tier cities and participated in discussions of related trending topics on social media, but when it comes to hands-on cross-industry execution, there is still no clear entry point. What industrial logic underlies this rapidly rising prosperity? And what replicable success paths exist?

In May 2026, Kepu 2Yuan (WeChat official account ID: kpACGN) attempted to systematically map out the development logic of the domestic IP licensing industry at its current stage, producing this 2026 "Domestic IP Collaboration" Trend Report. Starting from a macro overview of the industry and an in-depth interpretation of the industry chain, combined with analysis of current market conditions, this report focuses on dissecting a case library of 100 representative domestic ACGN IPs and 100 consumer brands that love IP collaborations, ultimately distilling trend insights into the development of domestic IP collaborations over the next two years.

Through this report, we hope to help IP industry practitioners and enthusiasts more clearly grasp this opportunity closely tied to "real money," find concrete entry points for commercialization, and enable more IPs to achieve a positive self-sustaining cycle from "content to commerce"; at the same time, we aim to help more brands deeply understand the enormous commercial potential within ACGN IPs, unlocking more new possibilities for cross-industry win-win outcomes in the future.

IP licensing refers to a commercial cooperation model in which the IP owner licenses its image, name, design, and other content rights to another party under contract in exchange for a licensing fee, covering forms such as digital goods, physical goods, themed spaces, and content adaptations.

IP collaboration specifically refers to short-term or project-based cooperation between two or more brands or IPs from different fields to jointly launch co-branded products or conduct joint marketing campaigns. Its essence is cross-industry co-creation that ignites the market within a short time, achieves mutual traffic generation and brand rejuvenation, and ultimately creates a "1+1>2" effect.

All IP collaborations are essentially IP licensing deals. But not all IP licensing takes the form of a collaboration. The IP collaborations this report focuses on are the most active and commercially promising form in today's IP licensing industry.

Over the past three years, collaborations around domestic ACGN IPs have developed rapidly and matured. Especially in 2025-2026, IP collaborations have become normalized, continuously generating industry buzz and becoming a required course for content operations and brand marketing. Their forms are increasingly diverse, integrating online and offline across all channels, covering all kinds of IPs and consumer brands, and successfully reaching consumers of all age groups who are happy to pay for them.

The vibrancy of IP collaborations is driven by market demand. As emotional consumption has become a topic of shared focus in the mass consumer market, products that provide emotional value more easily receive positive market feedback. Combining ACGN IP imagery with traditional products creates novelty while satisfying needs for personalization and emotional identification, making IP collaboration one of the most direct and efficient ways to fulfill emotional consumption.

For the content industry, IP monetization has long been a difficult problem to solve. Collaborating with brands to break out of the core fan circle and achieve commercial returns is a path that domestic IP copyright holders have explored for the past decade. In recent years, domestic IPs represented by Black Myth: Wukong, Ne Zha 2, LABUBU, and Honor of Kings have successfully broken through, ending the monetization deadlock and establishing IP collaboration as a widely recognized new-generation commercial growth opportunity.

For brands, partnering strongly with IP holders is a must if they want to embrace youthful trends and meet the demand for emotional value consumption. IP collaboration has gradually evolved from an early-stage marketing gimmick into a routine tool of brand strategy and product innovation, its operation is developing toward professionalization and scale, and it is driving growth across the entire licensing market.

IP licensing and IP collaboration are not entirely new concepts; their cooperation models and execution logic resemble traditional merchandise development and celebrity endorsements. Looking at the global market, overseas IP collaborations are also common. What's different is that this time, the market focus has shifted to domestic ACGN IPs. With the rapid rise of China's pan-two-dimensional content industry, domestic IP collaborations are receiving unprecedented attention and possibility, and are redefining the cross-industry commercial story belonging to Chinese culture.

The realization of IP collaboration activities depends on the coordinated cooperation of multiple parties across the industry chain.

IP holders, also the licensors, provide the IP resources needed for collaborations. Representative companies include Tencent Games, NetEase Games, miHoYo, and China Literature.

Brands, as the licensees, are responsible for combining the IP with their own products and completing design, production, and execution. Representative companies include KFC, McDonald's, Luckin Coffee, Master Kong, and Alipay.

Channel partners are mainly responsible for the marketing and sales of co-branded products. Typically, marketing and sales channels are led by the brand, while IP holders also participate in promotion and do a small amount of distribution. Promotion is mainly online, including official social media accounts, influencer marketing accounts, and IP content ad placements.

Sales channels fall into two broad categories: online and offline. Online channels are mainly official e-commerce platform stores, distributor stores, and livestreamer shops. Offline channels include distribution networks at various levels, themed stores, pop-up events, and more.

Social media is the signature communication channel for IP collaborations: IP holders, brands, and channel partners use social media to rally target consumers to participate in IP collaboration consumption, and use social media to gather market feedback and engage in more communication with consumers.

Based on over 500 collaboration cases from the past decade, we selected the 100 most valuable and representative domestic ACGN IPs at the current stage. Based on this Top 100 Domestic IP list, we summarized the characteristics shared by currently standout IPs.

The top 100 IPs mainly come from five categories: games, animation, comics, novels, and character IPs. Games account for the largest share and have denser collaboration cases with first-tier brands; among animation, comic, and novel IPs, those widely recognized by brands are mostly top-tier original works or IPs with multi-format content derivative development capabilities — in other words, novel IPs that have gone through comic and animation adaptations are the most favored, which is consistent with the head structure of China's domestic animation content industry. Character IPs are few in number but frequently produce phenomenal hit cases, mainly originating from designer toys, sticker/emoji packs, and short video; such IPs generally possess strong operational capabilities.

​Click to jump to the detailed Top 100 IP list: 2025 Top 100 Domestic Two-Dimensional IPs

The top 100 IPs fall into three mainstream types: explosively popular, nationwide viral hits such as Ne Zha 2, Black Myth: Wukong, and LABUBU; evergreen national IPs with broad fan bases such as Honor of Kings, Havoc in Heaven, and Happy Landlords; and top titles in niche categories with strong fan purchasing power, such as Love and Deepspace, Heaven Official's Blessing, and Fei Ren Zai.

Successful IPs share many common traits: first, they have stood the test of time, content, and user accumulation. Over 90% of these IPs have life cycles exceeding 5 or even 10 years. New IPs find it hard to start collaboration deals in the short term, unless they have a resource-rich, powerful producer, or an extremely high profile plus market favor from business teams plus bundling with classic IPs.

Second, quality IPs have high recognizability and strong symbolization. Rather than collaborating on the work itself, brands mostly collaborate on popular characters, and at minimum on iconic items. IP collaboration places particular emphasis on distilling content into symbols, facilitating the conversion from visuals to physical products. IPs with hard-to-distinguish faces, rough art, or unclear personalities find it hard to complete collaborations even with some popularity — even producing a basic IP style guide can be a challenge. Excellent IP collaboration cases rely on high-quality customized design; simple sticker-slapping models will soon be eliminated.

Most importantly, IP collaboration depends on the driving force of mature copyright holders. At the current stage, doing IP collaboration well most likely requires a strong, resource-rich, experienced copyright holder to lead and drive. For example, game IPs are concentrated among publishers with multiple hit games such as Tencent, NetEase, miHoYo, Hypergryph, and Papergames; anime and web novel IPs rely more on platform holders such as Bilibili, Tencent Video, Youku, iQIYI, and China Literature; character IPs are commonly found under copyright holders with massive professional IP operation capabilities, such as Pop Mart, Qizhongji, Dayu Network, and Seventh Impression Culture. IP collaboration heavily consumes a brand's capital and resources, and strong copyright holders can complete resource matchmaking, communication coordination, and product supervision more efficiently.

At the execution stage, brands' main considerations in choosing an IP for collaboration fall into three areas: first is popularity and reputation — everyone wants to chase hit IPs, because traffic equals sales; second is decision-maker preference — at present, the information gap between brands and IP holders is large, and they don't understand each other's industry operations well, so “like = understand = easy to work with” becomes a common mindset, and except for a very few top IPs, most collaboration decisions still hinge on gut feeling; another important factor is herd mentality — brands naturally prioritize IPs with successful cases and positive reviews and sales buzz searchable on the internet, which allows them to quickly match needs, reduce cooperation risk, and improve efficiency.

Shifting perspective to the brand side, from among over 200 popular brands that have run IP collaborations, we selected 100 brands with three or more collaboration experiences with domestic ACGN IPs, forming the Top 100 Brands list.

​Click to jump to the detailed Top 100 Brands list: 100 Brands That Love “IP Collaborations”

The industry distribution of these brands shows certain patterns, with slight changes from a similar roundup we did four years ago. First, the food service industry has grown significantly and become the sector most fond of collaborations — mainly fast food, new-style tea drinks, and coffee, such as Luckin Coffee, Cotti Coffee, HEYTEA, Nayuki, Pizza Hut, and KFC. This category has many and dispersed store locations and fierce competition, requiring periodic product updates. IP collaboration has become an important way to create freshness, provide emotional value, and enhance the consumption experience.

Food and beverage categories were early entrants into IP collaboration and have maintained a high level of recognition for it over the past five years. Compared to food service, these products have longer cooperation cycles, with main models like custom packaging, themed gift boxes, and limited-edition merchandise. Brands such as Oreo, Master Kong iced tea, Master Kong, and Cornetto have launched “classic product + IP collaboration” offerings beloved by consumers. Also, food and beverage brands love setting up booths at anime and game conventions — they are the FMCG category doing youthful marketing best.

Games that love collaborating with brands also like to link up with other IPs as the brand side. Especially Tencent Games and NetEase Games, with titles like Honor of Kings, Peace Elite, Eggy Party, and Yuanmeng Star. Casual games and cultivation-themed games also like to collaborate with domestic animation IPs. Common in-game collaboration forms are virtual assets such as skins, items, and themed events.

Internet platforms, beyond basic virtual asset collaborations like app skins and voice packs, prefer large cross-category or multi-IP projects, such as Alipay's card-collecting event with 18 IPs, Meituan/Taobao Flash Purchase + food service + IP events, and JD/Taobao + FMCG + IP events.

Many 3C digital brands have long maintained product lines tightly bound to ACG, but due to high unit prices, relatively long production cycles, and more complex purchase decision paths for premium 3C products, collaboration cases are relatively few compared to FMCG. Common collaboration outputs include co-branded gift boxes, custom shells, system themes, and ad placements.

Overall, brands that love IP collaborations share these commonalities: first, they operate in fiercely competitive tracks with fast product marketing iterations, strong personalization demand, and high market sensitivity — "IP+" becomes their means of differentiated competition; additionally, their consumer bases and internal teams are young, knowledgeable about ACGN culture, and greater understanding facilitates collaboration.

Although IP holders don't always lead when collaborating with brands, they still have basic considerations, such as budget and cooperation model, brand tone, and user fit. For IPs just starting with collaborations, categories like input methods, app skins, transit cards, milk tea, and fitness apps are entry-level brands that can serve as breakthrough points for initial trials. They have rich collaboration experience, high acceptance of various IPs, and relatively low barriers to cooperation. Notably, brands that previously preferred overseas IPs have steadily increased their acceptance of domestic IPs in recent years, making them an alternative for top-tier IP business development.

Who pays for IP collaborations? Behind the trillion-level market is a diverse audience, and each brand, each IP, and each collaboration event will have a different consumer profile. Based on multiple data sources and case observations, we summarize the group's characteristics as follows:

IP fans are the foundation of IP collaboration consumption, especially willing to pay for limited-edition bundles that include IP merchandise. Brand-loyal essential consumers are active participants in IP collaboration events, whose purchase decisions are influenced by the novelty of the collaboration, leading to conversion. Herd-mentality consumption is a scenario IP collaboration events hope for, commonly seen with viral IP collaborations, such as multiple cases involving Ne Zha 2 and Black Myth: Wukong. These consumption scenarios satisfy personalized consumption needs, especially allowing consumers to share experiences on social media and gain emotional value and social capital.

IP fans are a double-edged sword. They are tolerant but opinionated: toward IP collaboration events, they will actively support, sincerely cheer, and spontaneously spread the word, but they will also voice dissatisfaction at collaboration events that disrespect or mishandle the IP, potentially triggering a group reputation crisis for the brand. They are doting yet professional: carrying fan identities, they are relatively conscious of how individual behavior represents the group; they are willing to pay a small "IP+" premium for love, but not blindly. Most core ACGN consumers have rich experience with IP collaboration purchases and can distinguish sincere collaborations from cash grabs, taking cost-performance into account.

Overall, the core consumer group for IP collaborations is concentrated in first- through third-tier cities and the 15-35 age bracket, with an overall female proportion higher than the male one; specific figures vary considerably depending on the IP's attributes.

Based on multiple channel sources and data from over 500 IP collaboration cases, we believe the IP collaboration consumer market has an estimated potential of reaching the trillion level. Over the next three years, IP collaboration will become an indispensable marketing model for first- and second-tier consumer brands, especially in FMCG, deeply integrated into product design, marketing promotion, user operations, and other links.

Over the past three years, the total number of IP collaboration cases has exceeded the sum of the previous decade. According to statistics, since 2025, the number of collaboration cases per quarter has maintained roughly 20% year-over-year growth. Over 50% of IPs and brands with multiple collaboration experiences have continued to increase investment in the past two years, and the frequency of IP collaboration rollouts has risen significantly. Meanwhile, about 30% of new brands and 50% of new IPs have launched IP collaboration business and completed their first attempts within the past three years, with more brands and IPs currently in ongoing negotiations for collaboration business.

The main collaboration formats of IP collaboration include virtual assets such as skins, items, and digital card faces; physical goods covering food service, food and beverage, cultural/creative merchandise, and themed gift boxes; themed stores, integrated spaces combining dining, interactive experiences, and product sales; pop-up events focused on emotional value and immersive experiences, mainly limited interactions and product sales; and themed cultural tourism — large offline immersive experience projects with richer content integration.

Currently, the relatively dominant party in IP collaboration remains the brand. Cooperation cycles usually divide into short cycles of 7-30 days and long cycles of 1-3 years, depending on the brand's category and marketing goals. Co-branded products generally carry a premium, commonly 10%-30% above the original product's price. Average transaction values vary significantly by category: FMCG and food service are mostly under 100 RMB; virtual goods range from 9.9 RMB to several thousand RMB; offline experience events often use a combination of 100-300 RMB tickets plus product sales.

Successful IP collaboration requires a good match between IP, brand, and consumer group — positioning and caliber determine the cooperation model and who holds pricing power. Common cooperation models include resource exchange, licensing fee buyout, guaranteed minimum + revenue share, and IP holder buyback. According to reports, for IPs on the market with popularity, case history, and fans, licensing fees for a single deal in a single category generally range from 500,000 to 3 million RMB; the exact amount fluctuates considerably based on cooperation content, matched resources, exclusivity, public opinion risk, popularity timing, and character preference — top IPs cost more, with prices exceeding 5 million or even reaching the tens of millions. As the industry matures and breakout cases multiply, IP holders' bargaining power continues to rise.

Breakout events around popular IPs can often drive a cognitive upgrade across the entire IP licensing industry, stimulating brands' and IP holders' willingness to engage in IP collaboration activities.

Counting the representative classic cases of recent years: there are nationwide spectacles, like Luckin Coffee x Black Myth: Wukong's “the whole internet is the Destined One” and Mengniu x Ne Zha 2's must-watch Spring Festival ad film; there are niche-category sensations, like Redmi earphones x Genshin Impact's Klee mini backpack that got hotly traded on secondhand markets, HEYTEA x Light and Night sparking social buzz about otome game girls “registering marriage” with their “2D husbands,” and 2233-chan x Wujiang pickled mustard's pink mustard-tops-rice contrast meme; and there are cases with breakthrough significance within the domestic animation circle, such as McDonald's x The King's Avatar, Cornetto x Mo Dao Zu Shi, and Pop Mart x Fei Ren Zai.

Collaboration events don't always achieve the idealized mutual pursuit; more often they are a process of both sides seeking understanding and respect through磨合-style adjustment. Due to insufficient preparation, loose channel-end management, or poor fan communication, quite a few negative breakout events have occurred. Some collaboration deals run into unpleasant situations, such as material leaks, insufficient stock, internal reselling, improper messaging, and pricing controversies — “public apologies” to fans and consumers have become a high-frequency move.

Collaboration failures hitting trending searches are also common, such as the most notorious incident where a Hushang Ayi customer service agent mocked players of Light and Night during their collaboration, and this year's China Post x Snowbreak: Containment Zone collaboration suspended over content controversy, with the game even being reported and shut down. Collaboration is not simply traffic amplification; it is more about joint management of brand reputation and IP value, requiring more professional operations investment across multiple fronts.

In 2026, whether IP collaboration can be done, what to do, and how to do it has become a topic of shared concern for IP holders and brands — it is also, besides games, one of the IP content industry's tracks closest to money. Kepu 2Yuan (WeChat official account ID: kpACGN) approaches from multiple industry perspectives to outline ten major trends for domestic IP collaboration in 2026, hoping to provide reference for all parties' practice.

Over the next two years, IP collaboration will enter a new stage of explosive growth: more IP holders and brands will enter the arena, more new collaboration projects will accelerate their rollout, and repeat deals and re-runs will become more frequent. IP collaboration activities will shift from randomness to normalization, further developing toward scale and serialization. Multiple consumer brands are expected to establish dedicated teams to efficiently develop IP collaboration business, and IP holders will strengthen their commercialization departments or entrust third-party professional agencies with deal negotiations.

The explosion of IP collaboration comes with calm: high-quality development becomes inevitable, reflected in continuous optimization across cooperation models, product design, marketing, public opinion management, and other links. With more cases, data, and accumulated participant experience, IP collaboration will professionalize while differentiating. IP holders and brands have clearer needs and more room for choice; the matching precision between product positioning and IP audiences' purchasing power is improving, and the era of blind experimentation is ending.

The head effect in IP collaboration will persist long-term: fan scale and stickiness are directly tied to purchasing power. Except in rare cases, top consumer brands with capital, resources, and supply chain management capabilities will usually prioritize head IPs for collaboration, and IPs with existing success cases are also the safe choice for newer brands starting collaborations. For new IPs to get a slice of the IP collaboration pie, they currently can only rely on hard content and word-of-mouth strength or leverage from a powerful producer. During a period of rapid industry growth, head concentration is normal — only with top-tier, comprehensively powerful IPs breaking through can more IPs be given the possibility of collaboration.

The total number of head IPs is limited after all — we've tallied repeatedly, and there are only around a hundred selectable IPs at present; some top IPs have collaborated with over 50 brands, and there's a bit of aesthetic fatigue. IPs are running short, but demand from brands across industries keeps growing, so the nostalgia wave for classic IPs is becoming an important supplement to the collaboration market. Examples include CCTV Animation and Shanghai Animation Film Studio's classic IPs like Journey to the West and Calabash Brothers. Classic IPs have high national recognition, broad audiences, and appeal to all ages; tested by time and relatively low-risk, they are excellent options for brand collaborations.

Brands with high market sensitivity cannot avoid the topic of IP collaboration. In an increasingly competitive consumer market, brands face the test of upgrading differentiation strategies. IP collaboration satisfies the dual needs of sales growth and brand building simultaneously; its cost-effectiveness, replicability, and market feedback have been repeatedly validated.

Over the next two years, more brands will upgrade IP collaboration from a routine marketing tool to brand strategy, thinking at the early product design stage about how "IP+" can meet core users' needs, ensuring the co-branded product's design, quality, and details both attract core fans and fit mainstream market aesthetics. By choosing IPs with matching tones to build unique brand perception among consumer groups, they will seize the initiative in market competition oriented toward youthfulness, personalization, and emotional consumption.

Although the concept of emotional consumption has been discussed in the industry for years, the current pace of consumer product development still fails to adequately meet consumers' strong demand for emotional consumption. So-called emotional consumption has long gone beyond simple sticker products, photo check-ins, and social media showing off — it requires deeper spiritual resonance with consumers. Therefore, whether IP collaboration, emotional consumption, or immersive experiences, more IP-integrated creative expression is needed.

Consumers long to be understood, recognized, and accompanied — not to be clout-chased or exploited. For most domestic IP holders and brands, IP collaboration is a trend they've only joined in the past couple of years. But the core pan-two-dimensional consumer group, as natives of the mobile internet era, has already witnessed over a decade of IP collaboration development in China's consumer market — from overseas IPs to domestic games, then to novels and domestic animation; consumers have paid for all kinds of collaborations and naturally stepped in many pitfalls along the way.

It's fair to say that the growth rate of today's mainstream consumers outpaces the supply side. Facing the potential flood of collaborations in the coming explosion phase, they possess relatively professional and rational discernment and will pay for emotional value more precisely. For different collaboration projects, consumers will weigh IP background, product quality, and brand sincerity simultaneously; impulsive consumption driven purely by doting will drop sharply. "IP+" can only catch the eye — it's no longer a guaranteed buy; product quality itself will return to the core of purchase decisions.

The industry's trailblazing phase is over, and IP collaboration's viability has been broadly validated. Head brands and head IPs have essentially worked out their own stable cooperation models, and will next explore more flexible, more innovative deep cooperation on the basis of continuously improving efficiency. What attracts consumers in IP collaboration is not only the IP itself, but the IP-integrated creative expression.

As the early head players' experience spreads, the whole industry's cooperation processes will accelerate their formalization, significantly shortening new entrants' adjustment cycles. This will be another core driver of the market's explosive growth to come.

IPs benefit from the internet's wide reach, and co-branded physical goods are destined to move toward online-offline integration. Currently, IP collaboration is still in a trial phase for many brands; considering cost and geographic constraints, most IP collaboration activities' offline investment is limited. But past cases show that viral IP collaboration cases cannot do without the boost of offline immersive experiences. Retail stores can also try using "IP+" to attract traffic and break through. Take the recent transformation results of "goods" (merch) stores in many Chinese commercial complexes — although some merch stores now show fatigue, the core reason is that small standalone retailers struggle to secure more IP endorsements; non-essential merch alone can't sustain long-term operational vitality, and the IP + everyday consumer goods model can precisely break this limitation.

Currently, IP collaboration offline activities are concentrated in first-tier cities and second- and third-tier cities with relatively strong two-dimensional atmospheres, but in reality, whether urban white-collar workers or small-town youth, demand for emotional consumption keeps growing. ACGN, spread through the internet, has a huge fan base in lower-tier markets; this group's needs have not been met, and most of them still feel freshness toward IP collaboration. As more brands enter and accelerate channel penetration leveraging supply chain advantages, a true nationwide IP consumption wave can be expected.

IP collaboration depends extremely on word of mouth; social media has undoubtedly become the main battlefield, carrying the dual possibility of word-of-mouth fermentation and crisis eruption. Mastering social media communication logic helps successful IP collaboration cases ride the wind; at minimum, one needs proper public opinion monitoring to avert brand crises.

The channels for voicing opinions about IP collaboration online are increasingly diverse: IP holders and brands announcing collaboration news, news bloggers aggregating collaboration information, review bloggers purchasing co-branded products, vent-account bloggers reporting collaboration problems… In an era where everyone is a self-media creator, every consumer can speak up online and, thanks to IP tags, spread rapidly within their circles.

Going forward, IP collaboration remains an important metric for various fan communities to discuss, chase, and even compete over and judge. But that's not a bad thing — for brands, sincerely treating IP fans, carefully ensuring product quality, and pricing reasonably will yield returns far beyond expectations.

IP collaboration is a two-way empowerment of brands and IPs. IPs give brands a differentiated edge and reasonable premium space in fierce competition. As cases accumulate and baseline data on consumer purchasing power and acceptance is gathered, subsequent IP collaboration premiums will also become more rational. Pricing will be calculated comprehensively based on multiple factors such as collaboration creative depth, product quality, emotional resonance, and value-added services, maximizing efficiency.

For IPs, long-term value management demands particular attention. Every collaboration's outcome affects its future pricing power. Although some IP holders remain relatively weak in negotiations today, the scarcity of head IPs will gradually grant them bargaining power, and quality IPs will become increasingly valuable.

The commercial logic of IP collaboration as a whole is shifting: previously it was more that IP holders wanted to partner with brands for exposure and revenue; now brands equally need the empowerment of IPs' popularity and tone. Amid the shifting pricing power between IPs, both sides can move from clout-chasing toward becoming better versions of themselves.

Rapid market growth comes with multiple risks, mainly concentrated in the following areas: first is copyright protection — many details not discussed during negotiation later produce disagreements that interrupt projects, increasing costs and creating hidden dangers for future cooperation. Pirated products related to popular IPs replicate quickly, requiring effective control to reduce losses.

Public opinion management is a major test, especially the backlash from negative publicity that harms both IP and brand. In this regard, watch for issues like material leaks caused by excessive hype, pricing controversies, homogenized sticker designs, hunger marketing, rampant scalpers and daigou, and false advertising.

For IP holders and brands, the timing and rhythm of collaboration deals deserve serious attention now. If collaborations are too frequent, each deal's memory cycle may be extremely short, making it hard to accumulate brand equity. Meanwhile, too many collaborations cause aesthetic fatigue, make quality hard to guarantee, and erode consumers' trust and patience for future collaborations.

The growth significance of IP collaboration has long extended beyond commercial interests themselves.

Looking back over the past decade, the domestic ACGN IP collaboration industry has transformed from seeking cooperation to choosing partners, and from passive licensing to mutual co-creation. Once, many domestic IPs with sufficient popularity had to grope through merchandise development alone, self-funding manufacturing, with cross-industry collaboration deals hard to come by. Now, we see numerous head IPs competing to collaborate with consumer goods giants at home and abroad, sparking heated discussion across the global internet; we see traditional culture IPs entering young people's daily consumption with a brand-new posture; we witness global brands paying for domestic IPs and promoting IP collaboration projects as flagship brand marketing events.

Behind all of this is the growth of China's young generation of consumers. They have propped up and supported domestic IP collaboration products with real money. Expressing attitudes through purchases and spreading love through sharing, they have built the market's recognition of the value of domestic IPs. Their choices are quietly changing global brands' perception of Chinese culture — no longer confined to stereotyped element tags, but toward a more vivid, richer, and more meaningful contemporary Chinese narrative.

IP collaboration is not only a commercial achievement co-created by Chinese culture, consumer brands, and consumers; it is also a deep fusion of traditional cultural genes and contemporary context. From online to offline, from industry to culture, from commercial value to emotional connection, and further from the Chinese market to the world stage — in the future, IP collaboration will continue to demonstrate the global value of Chinese IPs, steadily widening the narrative radius of Chinese stories.