Fast Company recently published an article about how Doja Cat is changing the game for celebrity brand partnerships, so let’s go over some of the key points they made.

Doja Cat’s new JBL campaign is yet another example of how the artist successfully juggles her commercial and creative lives.

Doja Cat shared a TikTok video of herself in her dressing room. It’s simply a close-up of her holding a glittery, crystal-encrusted custom JBL Clip portable speaker and saying, “Jibble! Jibble! Jibble!”

This quickly went viral, drawing attention to the brand.

Although it is not how the brand pronounces its name, it translated into one of JBL’s most significant and successful social moments. This, combined with Doja Cat wearing the speaker on the red carpet, provided the brand with two years’ worth of social engagement in just three days.

Bill Wyman, VP of integrated marketing for JBL, says that in the past, when brand people would hear something like “Jibble, jibble, jibble,” someone would’ve called up and said, “She said jibble and not J-B-L, what do we do?!”

“Now, it’s perfect,” Wyman says. “It’s her. And if we tried to stifle that, it would really come across as someone shilling a product, rather than her really liking this brand.”

Doja Cat is merely “connecting with her fans,” he adds, “and we want her fans to be our fans, and the only way to do that is to let her be herself. That’s what unlocks the magic. This is the new benchmark for what partnerships need to look like, and for what partnerships can deliver.”

This week the brand launched its first official work with the artist. The new spot focuses on her fans, the very people with whom JBL is aiming to connect. 

This type of genuine connection between brand and celebrity is also part of the rise of celebrity stakeholders and investors, who give them a stake in the work they do for a brand. Drake and Dave’s Famous Hot Chicken Lemon Perfect.

For brands, it’s been about becoming less risk-averse in terms of worrying about whether a celebrity will say the fuck in public and more concerned with ensuring the ties between them are genuine.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this collaboration pans out in the long run.