There comes a time when a brand needs to leverage its marketing strategy by doing something bold and exciting to capture the attention of untapped market segments. An effective way to give a brand the edge it needs is to partner with another brand to market its products. Partnership marketing helps brands form meaningful collaborations that provide lasting value to their audience and a great boost for the brand's growth.
Partnership marketing is a strategic marketing and
advertising partnership between two brands wherein the success of one brand
brings success to its partner brand, too. It is also called co-branding
sometimes. It can be an effective way to build a business, boost awareness, and
break into new markets, and for a partnership to truly work, it has to be a
win-win for all players in the game.
Due to the myriad benefits that this model brings, both small
and large companies in India and around the world can get
their money’s worth and get successful results. It has become an extremely
common practice as a well-chosen partnership boosts brand equity and awareness
for all parties. Let’s have a look at a few of the leading examples of the same.
*GoPro and Red Bull: Both companies have established themselves
as lifestyle brands that are action-packed, adventurous, fearless, and usually
pretty extreme. These shared values make them a perfect pair for co-branding
campaigns, especially around action sports. To make the partnership work, GoPro
equips athletes and adventurers from around the world with the tools and
funding to capture things like races, stunts, and action sports events on video
from the athlete’s perspective. At the same time, Red Bull uses its experience
and reputation to run and sponsor these events. While GoPro and Red Bull have
collaborated on many events and projects together, perhaps the biggest
collaboration stunt they’ve done was “Stratos,” in which Felix Baumgartner
jumped from a space pod more than 24 miles above Earth’s surface with a GoPro
strapped to his person. Not only did Baumgartner set three world records that
day, but he also embodied the value of reimagining human potential that defines
both GoPro and Red Bull.
*BMW and Louis Vuitton: The marketing partnership between BMW and
Louis Vuitton is a great example of brand giants coming together for a
joint purpose. Both their customers travel frequently and strive for
exclusivity, luxury and comfort. Hence, they decided to target their audience by
co-branding their retail products. These two
brands created a four-piece luggage collection, retailing for $20 000, which
was designed to fit perfectly into the trunk of the BMW i8. This is a great
example of an innovative marketing partnership that leveraged their shared
audiences’ values and desires to cross-promote their core product offerings to
a shared audience.
*H&M and Balmain: The Swedish retailer H&M has been known
to collaborate with a number of different luxury fashion designers. A noteworthy
example is when they partnered with the Balmain clothing collection in
2015. This collaborative clothing collection was launched on the
H&M website and their brick-and-mortar stores, which had long queues. Moreover, every year H&M collaborates with
such designer brands, allowing their customers to pay for designer clothing
items at a fraction of the price. By collaborating with a highly desirable
designer/brand, H&M was able to drive massive sales by using the desirability
of Balmain products from consumers who would not normally be able to afford or
access such a high-end brand. Balmain benefitted from a huge amount of awareness
and buzz around their brand that reached H&M’s huge audience of people who
value high-fashion brands.
*Uber and Spotify: Streaming app Spotify partnered with Uber to create “a soundtrack for your ride.”This
is a great example of a co-branding partnership between two very different
products with very similar goals to earn more users. In this example, riders
are seen waiting for an Uber ride, they’re prompted to connect with Spotify and
become the DJ of their trip. Users can choose from their own playlists to
determine what they’ll listen to.
This smart co-branding partnership
helps fans of Uber and Spotify alike enjoy better experiences thanks to the
app. Additionally, they might be more interested in picking Uber and Spotify
over competitors knowing they can enjoy their next ride listening to their
favourite tunes.
*Apple and Mastercard: Apple effectively changed how people perform transactions after it released the Apple Pay app. This app allows people to store their credit or debit card data on their phones, so they can use them without physically having the card with them. But in order for this app to succeed, it needed credit card companies to integrate with this technology. Keeping this in mind credit card companies also needed to be compatible with the latest consumer purchasing tool. To get ahead of its competition, MasterCard became the first credit card company to allow its users to store their credit and debit cards on Apple Pay. MasterCard not only showed support of a major consumer tech developer in this partnership — it evolved along with its own customers in how they choose to make purchases at the counter.