Co-Branding with Small Businesses
Author: Silvia Pencak
All the big brands are doing it, entrepreneurs are doing it, and even teenage school kids are doing it, but the chances of many small businesses doing it right are close to zero! Now, what on earth am I talking about? Well, today I’m going to share with you one of the most powerful techniques to strengthen your brand. So, strap in folks.
You are what you eat.
Have you ever seen someone eating fruits or veggies and thought to yourself – “Damn… that guy is definitely on a diet or something”. Or maybe you just saw someone wearing really cool Nike gear and you assumed they were seriously sporty. These are prime examples of what psychologists and marketers like to call – proximity influenced perception. Basically, as humans, our minds store things in a particular way, which allows us to cross-reference ideas, objects and places which are seen together in any way imaginable – LITERALLY. Some might even draw similarities between our brains and the way Google ranks pages. In the above cases we combined attributes of brands and PEOPLE together but what I’m going to show you is that you can combine the attributes of brands and BRANDS together.
Hang out with the baddies and become a baddie.
Mothers are so right sometimes, and this is just one of those times. Did you notice that Apple iPods have teamed up with Nike? It creates a radically different and innovative identity for the team. I can almost certainly bet, that after visiting this website, you’ll no longer see Nike or iPods in the same way. This allows them to do several different things:
- Nike can Attract Apple’s market segments
- Apple can Attract Nike’s market segments
- They can cross-sell their customers to buy each other’s products and MAKE MORE MONEY.
- Finally, it allows them to refurbish their brand and attract people who may be ‘in between brands’ or simply seeking innovation, with this smashing product combination.
Interested? All you have to do is find a product or service which can compliment what you sell and make sure that they have a positive brand image and are selling to roughly the same consumers. Finally, make sure that this company has a strong identity which matches yours. Now you have a company that you can team up with to develop complimentary products with.
You can do Anything… Almost
If you lived in Australia during the nineties you might remember back when Metway and Suncorp were two different banks. However, Suncorp struck quickly and took over Metway. Then to minimize the effect of alienating the Metway customers, Suncorp decided to Co-Brand the names Suncorp and Metway together – effectively creating, Suncorp Metway. As time past and people adjusted to the new Co-brand, and integrated attributes of their perception of Metway into Suncorp. Finally Suncorp is slowly removing Metway from the equation, leaving the website titled just plain old Suncorp. Albeit, not all was taken away… when the brands merged, perceptions about the two brands also combined and they have continued to change over time. If you are going for a takeover or your brand needs some lovin’ how about using Co-Branding to these effects:
- Increase customer perception of your service
- Diversify your market into different segments
- Increase brand recall
- Get some PR buzz flowing
- Change your brand Identity
- Steal someone else’s customers.
This may be difficult for most small businesses to achieve in a physical marketplace but it is a lot more practical on the Internet. If you happen to own a website and you buy a competing or complimentary website, why not follow what Suncorp or Nike did? In the end, if done right, you will win out with a fantastic increase in your total brand value.
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