Prioritising partnerships in today’s market is a fantastically effective strategy for reaching new audiences, increasing brand awareness, making budgets work harder and most importantly gives you a chance to get even more creative.

Partnership marketing is all about working with brands who share a similar customer profile and offer the potential to introduce your offerings to their existing and loyal customer base. Whether your objective is new product development, brand extension, new channel entry or new customer acquisition, the benefits of partnership marketing are significant. Shared resources, access to marketing and added value for customers are just some of the benefits of partnership marketing.

The best examples tend to support the idea that partnership marketing should look to push the boundaries and be relevant to your customers wants, needs and interests. Take the Dave Man Chair for example: TV channel Dave installed ‘Man Chairs’ in Burton stores in their recent campaign. The idea? Knowing the Dave audience, male, 16-34, ABC1 – young, upmarket men and the Burton customer closely aligned there was an opportunity to take Dave off screen and in-store. A ‘Dave Chair’ was placed in high footfall Burton stores for the men to wait in while their other half does the shopping! The result? Introducing Dave to new customers in store and providing added customer benefit to the Burton shopper!

Finding the right partnership is the most important stage in the process. Firstly, robust initial planning is central to getting the best results. Your brand objective needs to be clearly defined, you must know exactly what you want to achieve before considering the best partner for your brand. Equally your brand values are central to your customer relationship so any potential partner should be aligned to these and certainly not contradict them.

Pairing two brands through a partnership is a great opportunity to get creative.

The central point should be your product pairing’s point of difference. What space does the pairing open up for the creative? Pairing the two brands’ assets will create new opportunities for exciting, newsworthy creative and BIG ideas. Whether it’s events, packaging or advertising, partnership advertising offers an opportunity to make use of the two brands involved, and develop a synergic outcome that is truly >GREAT.

The final test?

Great thinking and great creative is worthless without great in-market execution. For this to be achievable, messages should be clear and undiluted, resulting in positive development of reputation for the two brands. All areas should be closely considered from a legal, contractual and practical point of view so as to ensure that risk of negative outcomes is minimised, and your brand and its values are protected at all times.

Ultimately, a great brand partnership comes from the perfect pairing and creative in-market execution than grabs your customers’ attention and creates brand loyalty.

Our latest campaign for Highland Spring is a great example of a perfectly aligned partnership.