Looking for the one? Brand Partnerships That Work
The Perfect Pairing
You are probably seeing them more and more. Brand Collaborations are a strategic partnership between two or more brands with common goals. While there are some must do’s when it comes to planning and executing a great brand collaboration, the results and success when done right can be one of the most powerful tools a brand can use.
The Power of Partnership
What’s better than one of your favourite brands? Well, two! Marketing collaborations take two or more of your favourite brands and work together to make something innovative, creative, and mutually beneficial to both brands. These like-minded collaborations can be in the same industry or completely different but share the same goals. They can create events, products, product lines and overall sales offerings for a period of time. When executed well, these brand collaborations can be one of the most powerful tools for businesses, and they come with a ton of benefits.
Benefits of Collaboration
Brand collaborations create a win-win for both parties, including:
Brand awareness and leads - Increased brand awareness through sharing customer bases, audiences, social media and word of mouth. New leads will come as a result of increased reach and brand awareness.
Cost and resource sharing - Combine together each brand's budget, team, connections and resources to reduce costs.
Improve brand trust and customer loyalty - If one of the brands is newer, they can help gain trust through the established brand.
Boost sales and revenue - New and improved products allow brands to offer something unique and different. Unique product offerings and marketing campaigns entice leads to buy and promote conversions from those outside of their usual target market.
New expertise - If you are a new brand or more experienced, everyone will bring something new to the table. Whether ideas, lessons learned or best practices, a new brand will be able to learn from the experiences of the other more established brand. It brings a new perspective.
Innovation - Working with a new brand, as an established brand, shows you value innovation and are open to new ideas. When two great minds come together, it acts as an incubator for the most innovative, never-done-before type of ideas.
How to Avoid a Break-Up
As with any partnership, there can be differences or challenges. It is important to choose the right collab and create clear guidelines for the partnership to work. It will require clear brand distinction and a specific exit strategy if it’s just not working, to avoid brand identity confusion.
The most common issue found with marketing partnerships is misaligned goals. If both brands are not on the same page, confusion can arise. To avoid this, make sure there is open communication and transparency. From the very beginning, create goals together and do regular check-ins on progress to stay aligned throughout the entire process.
Every business is different and runs differently. This includes the company culture, processes, communication/management styles and more. This can cause tension that will affect the productivity and execution of the campaign. A strong working relationship is one of the most important parts of a strong and successful partnership. Brands need to be adaptable and identify the areas where there is common ground and disagreements.
Lastly, as with any business, there is a legal component that also needs to be discussed. Intellectual property and ownership of what was created and can be used need to be decided. It is very important to clarify the ownership and usage rights.
I Kinda Like You: Picking The Perfect Partner
As mentioned above, choosing the appropriate collaboration or partnership is a sure way to make the process a whole lot easier. You will need to look for a few things first. Firstly, decide what your goals are for the campaign. Then consider things such as audience and any shared commonalities with any potential collaborations. You will want to select a brand that shares goals and values. The right partnership is one where both businesses have aligned brand vision, mission and audience. Keep in mind the purpose of a great collab is to improve the position of both brands in the market.
There are steps you can take to start your perfect partnership search:
Identify potential brands that you could collaborate with. You will want to look for a few special qualities. The first is to look for leaders in the industry. They will have larger audiences and will have extensive experience executing strategies.
The second thing you will want to look for is compatible brands that have the same goals and values.
The last thing to consider is if they are in your industry or not. Oftentimes the most successful partnerships are in different industries where audiences come together.
Once you have done your research, evaluated the options, sent the proposal and selected the brand partner, it is now time to set your terms. Things such as expectations, goals, budget, timeline, intellectual property, responsibilities, process and verify the product or service.
It is time to build the dream team. At this stage, there will need to be a discussion on process, and communication styles, and assign specific individuals to work on the project concerns, and how they are tracking towards goals, needs, timelines etc. This may include resourcing project managers, designers, UX writers, content writers, backend developers, SEO specialists, marketers and more.
Last but certainly not least, it’s time to plan your marketing strategy. The final step is planning your strategy and going to market with your collaboration partner. There are a few general things that you should consider at this stage:
Merge PR campaigns and leverage each other's established networks and host together
Organic promotion on each brand's website
Share social media reach: Collaboration posts on social media to reach a wider audience
Partner on publications: Newsletters and other media publications produced by your brand partner
Consider the discounts each brand could provide should it make sense to offer one
Promote your work together: Giveaways and competitions are common first-time practices for brands interested in collaboration marketing
Siblings or Dating?
Do the brands need to be in the same business or complementary? Not necessarily! Oftentimes it offers more of a benefit to be from different markets (goals must align though). Think about the market you want to reach and what their interests are. What is going to be a new idea that will excite that audience? Below we will look at some great collabs and why they work.
Kanye, Gap and Balenciaga
The Kanye, Gap and Balenciaga collaboration is an example of clothing industry brands coming together to create something unique. While these brands typically target a different consumer, they were able to align on goals to drop this clothing collab which had some hits and misses. Kanye wanted the clothing drop to be done in large black trash bags, and the Gap agreed. While it definitely drew attention, the functionality suffered with thousands of customers digging through and struggling to find sizes. However, the Gap brand saw their biggest sales of all time according to Gap’s CEO Sonia Syngal.
According to Sonia, “Our newest Yeezy Gap icon, the Perfect Hoodie, delivered the most sales by an item in a single day in Gap.com history … With over 70% of the Yeezy Gap customers shopping with us for the first time, this partnership is unlocking the power of a new audience for Gap, Gen Z plus Gen X men from diverse backgrounds.” (Adage, 2024)
Doritos and Taco Bell
Doritos and Taco Bell is a collab you have probably heard of from 2012. While it makes perfect sense now, back then it was one of the most clever collabs in its time with the Doritos Locos Taco. This collaboration worked well by taking two complementary items and creating something unique and new that sparked serious interest, shared each other's audience and pushed consumers to try the new item.
Now we will look at the creative and more unexpected collaborations.
Justin Bieber X Tim Hortons
Name something more Canadian than a Justin Bieber and Timmies Collaboration. I’ll wait…. This collab was well done and came with a merch line, new items and branding such as the play on Timbits becoming Timbiebs. Tim Hortons CEO, José Cil, said it was “one of the more successful traffic-driving initiatives in recent memory and outperformed our internal expectations.” (Fortune, 2022)
Chunky Dunky Nike X Ben and Jerry’s
Nike is well known for their Nike Dunks shoes. Ben and Jerry’s is known for their Chunky Monkey ice cream flavour. Put it together and you get Chunky Dunks shoes inspired by the Chunky Monkey flavour design elements. These limited edition shoes sold out immediately and are currently reselling for approximately $3000. This is a unique example of bringing two different industry brands together to create something with their iconic design elements.
Barbieque x Heinz
Last but certainly not least is Barbieque. Shortly after the widely successful Barbie movie and for their 65th anniversary, Heinz and the Barbie brand joined together to create this new item, Barbieque sauce. Only available in limited geographical locations, the beetroot-coloured vegan mayo BBQ sauce had fantastic branding with its bright pink colour and clever name. They maintained the Barbie font on the bottle and combined it with a classic Heinz ketchup bottle but pink! Not only the product execution but the social media branding and rollout were executed very well and captured the hearts of many.
Whether you want to get more eyes on your brand or excite your audience with something new, a collaboration done right can bring some record-breaking results and pave the way for more collaborations to come. Brand awareness, cost and resource sharing, innovation, new leads, and sales boosts and revenue are just a few of the many benefits of collaborations. It is important to make sure you choose the correct partner whose goals align with your brands and keep communication clear and open from the beginning. If you are thinking about a collaboration and need help with the strategy or don’t know where to start, send us a message, we love to help ideas come to life!
Sources:
https://queue-it.com/blog/product-drop-brand-collaboration-examples/
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-cobranding-partnerships
https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/should-your-brand-be-using-collaborative-marketing/