“Magnum ice cream is truly the It-girl accessory this summer,” cultural commentary account @PopCultureGal posted on X earlier this month.
Fresh off an appearance at Rhode’s summer pop-up in Mallorca, Magnum is having a moment. The ice cream brand just popped up at the beauty brand’s two-week beach club activation, serving up ‘Lemontini’ Magnums by the sea. It was a major success for the sweet treat brand, with influencers plastering the yellow ice cream all over socials, and those not present posting that they wished they were.
“Even people who didn’t have the Magnums were making content, saying ‘We wish we were in Mallorca with a Rhode Magnum with Hailey Bieber,’” says Magnum’s fame, partnership and experience lead Gayathri Renil, who helped put the pop-up together. “It created lots of UGC [user-generated content], people talking about wanting to be part of the [brand’s] universe.”
With so many options on supermarket shelves, consumers are spoilt for choice — and hard to sway. Magnum has experienced this firsthand. When the brand launched in 1989, there weren’t many “adult ice cream” options, says global brand director Tugce Aksoy. These days, competition is stiff. “All of a sudden, you need to be able to protect your original status,” Aksoy says. This is why consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands are increasingly looking to other industries — especially fashion and beauty — to stand out and get consumers talking.
It also gets them shopping. Over the last two years, Gen Z consumers have increasingly swapped luxury purchases for ‘little luxuries’ in the form of gourmet food and drink offerings. Fashion brands were quick to catch on. Collaboration interest from fashion and beauty players is up because of this shift, Aksoy says.
This has, though, resulted in an oversaturation of food x fashion crossovers. Last year, Kate Spade collaborated with Heinz ketchup on a capsule collection, while Chopova Lowena debuted a bag with a Hellman’s mayonnaise holder. Fendi sent leather Chupa Chups down the runway. Earlier this year, ready-to-wear label Melke debuted an entire collection of Hidden Valley Ranch clothing, and Burt’s Bees lip balm teamed up with Mike’s Hot Honey on a new flavour. Also in May, before popping up at Rhode’s beach club, Magnum went viral via a Charli XCX ice cream party at Cannes Film Festival, which was a reference to the Vivienne Westwood 1994 runway moment where models cracked into Magnums mid-catwalk.
“In the Ozempic era, even indulgence has to feel curated, photogenic and hyper-staged,” says Dan Hastings-Narayanin, deputy foresight editor at consultancy The Future Laboratory. “Ice cream, croissants and sweets aren’t just treats anymore; they’re props in a visual language of lifestyle aspiration.”
The risk is that CPG products remain as such — just props — which does little for their reach and desirability. How can brands ensure that a CPG-fashion (or beauty) crossover enhances aspiration on both sides?
A Gen Z play
As is now well documented, Gen Z will spend on food, be it a $20 Erewhon smoothie or a jar of $80 Flamingo Estate spicy strawberries at a Mytheresa pop-up — even if it’s beyond their means. But as consumer spending tightens, amid continued economic and political uncertainty, there’s room for lower priced CPG brands to tap into this younger crowd and benefit from the fashion-meets-food craze.
“For CPG brands — especially in food and drink — these partnerships offer a shortcut to premiumisation,” Hastings-Narayanin says. “In a cost of living crisis, brands face a split: either offer clear value for money, or elevate their positionings through cultural capital. Collaborating with fashion and beauty helps them do the latter.”
At founding, Magnum’s primary consumer was a 30-something woman, Aksoy says. Now, in a crowded market, the brand is looking to reach younger consumers, which is a harder sell. “Gen Z is born into a world where they go to a supermarket, they see 10,000 other brands,” Aksoy says. “They didn’t grow up with us. We need to almost reintroduce ourselves, and the way to reintroduce is through what they know very well and what they love very well. We are trying to speak their language.”
What’s different this year is how attuned Magnum is to Gen Z’s cultural mood, says Hastings-Narayanin. “By aligning with figures like Hailey Bieber and Charli XCX, Magnum tapped into two figures who currently embody the zeitgeist — each in their own, culturally fluent way,” he explains.
Also key is the recognition that cultural industries — fashion, beauty, film, music — are no longer siloed. “The younger generations don’t think in silos, so while [fashion, beauty, food and drink] are all distinct categories, to them, they just fall into the ‘lifestyle’ bucket,” says Jennifer Creevy, director of food and drink at trend forecasting agency WGSN. “If it resonates with them, they go all in.”
Renil echoes this: “Now we’re seeing that people in their early 20s don’t pick one thing that they love — it’s not as single-minded as it used to be.”
Context is key
The idea for the Rhode crossover stemmed from Bieber’s own Instagram story. Last summer, the Magnum team spotted the model’s story of a pink-speckled Magnum alongside a Rhode blush. “When we saw they were doing their first brand trip, we thought, maybe we can provide an experience here,” Renil says.
The Westwood recreation was Charli XCX’s idea. It worked because it signalled a longer engagement with this cultural landscape, Hastings-Narayanin adds, building trust and signalling brand longevity.
These points of reference are what many CPG-fashion and beauty crossovers lack, experts say. Having a referential point lends activations credibility by displaying insider knowledge and contributing to culture rather than borrowing from it, says Emily Gordon-Smith, content director at trends intelligence firm Stylus.
A CPG brand doesn’t need years of history to make a collaboration make sense, though. Take Kate Barton, whose New York Fashion Week show was sponsored by Goldfish. A seemingly random tie-up makes sense when you look to Barton’s work: a pillar of which is her acrylic fishbowl bag with a goldfish inside. At the show, attendees munched on Goldfish crackers, which also filled the bags on the runway.
For these crossovers to work, brands need to go further than slapping a supermarket label on a luxury product, say experts. Brands need to build out physical manifestations of the tie-ups, particularly since the point of such collabs and crossovers is for fashion and beauty brands to tap into the senses — taste, smell — that CPG products evoke. It’s the sensory pleasure that breaks through, Gordon-Smith says. “Here, the sun-soaked, beachy wraparound taps ultimate summer lifestyle aspirations,” she says.
Tapping into Rhode’s aesthetic (or the glamour of Cannes) also grants Magnum what Hastings-Narayanin calls a “halo of exclusivity”. “It’s not everywhere — but everyone can see it,” Aksoy says of the Lemontini edition.
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