Three ways to make your brand collaboration unforgettable

03 Feb 2026

At a certain scale, visibility stops being the problem. LEAP stretches across more than 138,000 square metres, and every brand is visible. Logos hang high and screens loop endlessly. But if you ask an attendee a week later what stood out, many of those details have already dissolved.

Meaningful moments and real interactions stay in people’s minds. The pop-up they queued for, the merch they kept, the drop they told their whole team about.

At LEAP, attention is abundant. But your challenge is to offer something that sticks.

1. Memory is the new metric

Audiences remember how your brand made them feel. So yes, you should definitely take great care over your logo placement and your demo loop length and your one-line pitch; but you should take even greater care of people’s emotional experience.

Traditional sponsorship is optimised for reach. But as we approach the fifth edition of LEAP, we’ve learnt that the most effective brand collaborations are built for resonance. They invite people to step inside, take part, and leave with a story.

This isn’t just our own theory though. Research from Event Marketer, for example, shows that 85% of consumers are more likely to purchase after attending a live brand experience, and 70% become repeat customers.

At LEAP, we know the collaborations people remember share a common thread: participation over passivity. If they have a chance to get involved, they won’t forget you. That might be a pop-up they can step inside, or a product they can take away with them, or a drop they queue for.

Moments like these turn attendees into storytellers – and turn your brand into part of the LEAP experience itself.

2. Pop-ups pull people in

Pop-ups work because they interrupt expectations in the right way. They feel a little bit exclusive, and they’re an intentional, thoughtfully designed way for the audience to become immersed in your brand (even if it’s only for a few minutes).

And we’ve found that the most successful pop-ups are experiential, rather than just promotional. They tell a story about ambition, creativity, and relevance to the future being showcased around them.

Instead of stumbling across them, people seek out pop-ups like this – and that behaviour is important. According to a recent event marketing report from Bizzabo, 78% of organisers believe in-person events are the most impactful marketing channel, and 80% say in-person events are critical to their success.

A well-designed pop-up earns curiosity – and curiosity is much stickier than awareness.

3. The power of merch that means something

Not all merchandise is created equal. It’s time to forget giveaways designed to be discarded before the flight home. The merch that performs at LEAP is designed with the same discipline as a product launch.

That means limited runs, thoughtful design, cultural relevance, and products that signal insider status.

When you get it right, brand merch becomes three things at once:

A walking advertisement across the venue
A post-event reminder that lives far beyond the show
A social signal shared well outside the LEAP ecosystem

So the best brand collaborations turn merch into media – something that carries a story.

Why limited drops create urgency

Scarcity focuses attention – so limited drops (physical or hybrid) introduce a sense of now. They reward early engagement and spark conversation across both the venue floor and social feeds.

Pop-ups and limited releases consistently outperform static activations because they’re time-bound. They generate higher engagement and social sharing precisely because they won’t be there tomorrow.

At LEAP, these moments create momentum. We can feel it on the exhibition floor and online; people talk and post, and in doing so they bring others with them. And suddenly, driven by that urgency, a collaboration becomes one of the event’s most talked-about moments.

LEAP brand collaborations are built on intention

In 2026, our CoLAB is designed for brands ready to move beyond traditional sponsorship – and into lived experience.

From pop-up activations and limited-edition merchandise to co-branded drops and digital amplification, CoLAB partnerships sit at the intersection of innovation, culture, and commerce.

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