The next era of brand partnerships has begun and it looks a lot more interesting for marketers than the last one. We are now in an age where skipping video ads, blocking digital ads, and ignoring the rest while multi-tasking is expected behavior. Influencer marketing and breakthrough creative ideas are still highly effective, but even #SponCon and #Ads are getting old for some. Luckily, as the marketing landscape is prone to do, things are evolving.
New platforms and different thinking from brands have started ushering in alternative approaches that I believe are here to stay. From advancing content marketing programs to embracing unlikely co-conspirators through to reinventing business models and product offerings, there is a lot happening in partnership marketing today that brands should be taking notes on. In this article, I’ll explore three areas where I see big opportunities for marketers in the coming years.
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
From Sponsors to Storytellers
Traditionally, brand sponsorships have consisted of fairly straight-forward activities like having a branded experience at an event or paying for product placements on a TV show. These will continue to be important ways to maintain presence with partners and their audiences, but a shift is underway. Brands are moving from aligning themselves with placements and content that fits their audience affinities to becoming co-creators and storytellers in the process.
On one end of the spectrum brands are taking advantage of the fact that almost every placement can become an ecommerce channel. Take The Container Store’s partnership with Netflix’s “Get Organized with the Home Edit” show as an example. This wasn’t your average product placement, but rather a carefully planned integration to have almost all organizing products used on the show come from their store. The deeper integration paid off, with sales jumping over 16% after the series premiered. Brands that embrace content that both entertains and serves as a shoppable experience will have more authentic and exciting ways to showcase their wares.
The other side of the new partnership landscape has brands leaning heavily into consumer interests to drive content creation. Beyond just sponsoring an event or content series, many are now actively producing and partnering with authorities to create their own storytelling. For example, Reckitt’s stain removal brand, Vanish, recently partnered with the British Fashion Council to create a documentary series on sustainable clothing for Amazon. As so many brands today struggle with the tension of maintaining a corporate posture while embracing cause marketing and other core beliefs, partners and content creators provide an avenue to lend credibility and authority to their content marketing.
Growth through Alchemy
Brands are always in search of growing their audiences, but at a certain point the usual interest-based partners will provide diminishing returns from an audience growth standpoint. To combat this, brands should consider looking beyond their direct category and into adjacent and even surprising areas. While some pairings may feel odd initially, it’s important not to let jarring juxtaposition get in the way of powerful partnerships.
A few exciting instances of this approach include Peloton’s partnership with music streaming ‘battles’ event company Verzuz, Headspace’s integration into Colgate toothbrush products, and Marvel’s crossover events with ESPN NBA broadcasts. Fitness fanatics and hip hop fans? Meditation and hygiene? Superheroes and sports? All of these collaborations might seem out of left field upon first glance, but beneath the surface is a savvy marketing strategy. In each instance, the brands are gaining access to introduce themselves to a new audience and providing them with a unique experience. The effect goes both ways - partners are able to promote their products and services and grow their own consumer base. Brands looking to grow their base and identify new buyers need to open their aperture on partnerships and look at properties and companies that may not have been previously considered - sometimes that’s where the best opportunities will be lurking.
Rewriting the Influencer Playbook
One of the more recently anointed pillars of marketing is influencer work. If you’re not working with influencers, and all their iterations (micro, medium tier, mega, etc.), then your brand probably isn’t getting very far on popular social networks. However, as the algorithms continue squeezing organic reach and promoting paid ad units or other new formats it’s becoming challenging for the typical set of influencer posts, videos and stories to drive as much value as they once did. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by marketers and new ways of deploying influencers and celebrities are starting to proliferate.
Commerce is fast becoming the name of the game for brands on social media and influencers are beginning to play a much larger role beyond tagging brands and products in content. This year, Walmart has leaned into social commerce fueled by influencers in a big way. On TikTok the retailer has developed shoppable livestream shows hosted by native platform creators leading to significant engagement and follower increases. Leveraging influencers in this way allows them to take a greater role in marketing efforts and participate directly in sales and product events - as platforms allow for new formats and commerce features, brands should consider these channels as a new way to activate influencers. In the case of a live “shop along” or commerce event, brands also get the benefit of more directly attributing sales to their investment in partners.
On the higher-end of marketing budgets, brands are still seeing value working with celebrities, but the tactics are changing. Celebrities are not only providing endorsements or appearing in commercials, but influencing product and offering decisions. In the case of Apple, they recently integrated celebrity audio content into their fitness and health products to encourage trial from fans. Elsewhere, we’ve seen McDonald’s have huge success creating new meals around celebrity partners like Travis Scott and BTS. This kind of thinking helps brands maximize the value and affinity an audience feels toward a celebrity by putting them in the driver’s seat of content or product offerings. It’s an attitudinal shift on the part of brands from top-down directives and negotiated agreements to inviting more open collaboration and creativity.
Finding the Right Fit for Your Brand
Certainly, several established models and approaches will remain. Brand spokespeople, celebrity endorsements, co-branded vehicles and more will of course continue to drive some marketing activations, but the new wave of opportunities emerging can’t be ignored. Especially for tactics focused on content, product and platform innovation, these new areas represent fresh ways to go to market that stand a better chance of engaging consumers than the old ways. Whether a brand is looking to drive preference, reach a new audience, or reinforce loyalty, new partnership approaches will become an important route to results.
Broadly, these new paradigms for partnership marketing represent a move from activations to experiences. Brands can now provide consumers not only with interesting content, but with more value and utility. Best of all, the nature of today’s marketing ecosystem and the increasing sophistication of consumers suggests that more deeply integrated partnerships will be perceived as more authentic and interesting than the run of the mill marketing tactics that are so widespread today. How will your brand seize the opportunity?
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