https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9_AQdj0vDQ&feature=youtu.be
Co-branding is a strategy that involves a strategic alliance of multiple brands. Co-branding, also called a brand partnership, is when two companies ally to create marketing synergy.
Co-branding involves strategic alliances in which two (or more) brands unite to reach common goals and achieve short-term sales objectives. Whether it’s a co-brand on a single campaign, product or long term partnership, these partnerships mean sharing in the reward, whether that’s leads, awareness, new customers or just brand building. By leveraging each other resources, you both get to maximise the results through engaging content that both of your audiences will love.
Co-branding allows both partners to get more bang for both your bucks.
It’s a win-win
Who should we Co-Brand with?
To pull off a successful co-branding exercise, you’ll need to align with a brand or individual that makes sense for your brand and share the same long term vision and values. You don’t want to partner with Shell if you’re Patagonia because you can confuse consumers unless the link between the two brands is immediately apparent, sensible, and easy to understand.
Two brands celebrating the human experience through great storytelling
A great example of a co-branding partnership is GoPro & Red Bull together; they “Celebrate the human experience through great storytelling”. Both portray a specific lifestyle filled with action-adventure, taking this to the edge and being fearless. Their shared values have made them a perfect fit for a partnership.
Redbull and GoPro’s partnership becomes much more than the camera’s and energy drinks.
GoPro doesn’t just sell portable cameras, and Red Bull doesn’t just sell energy drinks. Instead, both have established themselves as lifestyle brands. With a co-brand of products and events, again must importantly each brand benefits from the perceived endorsement of the other.
What are some of the pitfalls of Co-Branding?
Co-branding does, however, come with its own unique set of challenges.
Getting the ball rolling
Reaching a co-branding agreement can be time-consuming and complex; both brands have to manage their brand image. Generally, negotiations involve lengthy negotiations and complicated legal agreements. Whatever arrangements the brands come to, neither must have a differential or financial advantage over the other. This can be a delicate balance and is easiest when there is an obvious fit between the two brands.
Brand balance
Co-branding may create confusion for less well-known brands. A consumer may know one brand and be inclined to buy it but then be put off by its combination with another they are not as familiar with. Piggybacking off an association with a lesser quality product can damage a new brand.
Loss of control
Lack of quality control provisions when co-branding, asset management, activation monitoring, and a flawed approval process can result in dilution or even loss of control by ether brand. Collaborative brand management and a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities established from the offset is imperative for success.
Is this co-branding opportunity right for your brand?
Organisational distraction
We all love something new and shiny. But is this co-branding opportunity a good idea for your brand? Sometimes brands can focus on the next thing rather than look at the bigger picture of their brand. That’s why it’s so important to understand exactly who your brand is and where you are going. Having your brand vision in place means evaluating if each opportunity is right for you.
What happens when Co-Branding doesn’t work?
Shell and Lego
One of the lengthier co-branding partnerships that failed was between Shell and Danish toy company LEGO. The corporate relationship between the two power brands goes back decades and continues to be fruitful for both. LEGO got some real-world authenticity onto its race cars and gas station sets, while Shell was able to endear itself to customers from a very young age.
Everything’s not awesome.
For decades the partnership was a success, but as LEGO toys emerged from the basement and became a global children’s entertainment brand, Greenpeace noticed this partnership and believed that it was not quite right for children to play with toys that display the name of a petroleum company that had a history of questionable environmental practices and was pursuing aggressive oil drilling in the arctic. Greenpeace released a widely watched and shared YouTube video that criticised the partnership by enveloping a picturesque LEGO arctic with thick, unforgiving crude oil… all to a melancholy rendition of The Lego Movie theme, “Everything is Awesome.”
It’s a great example of a company’s brand values not matching up with each other and their customers. It received far more than 6 million views to date, prompting Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, Lego chief executive, to take action breaking up the co-branding and went on to attack Greenpeace for targeting Lego rather than Shell, saying that this strategy “may have created misunderstandings among our stakeholders about the way we operate”.
let's team up to make co-branding work...