The Hobbit was a great success in Brazil that grossed 46.9 million(in Reais) and part of that success was its Co-Branding marketing campaign between the movie The Hobbit and the Brazilian Pepsico’s Toddy Chocolate brand.
Based on our conversation with Bruno Delul, creator of this campaign. Bruno has 15 years of experience with cross-brand marketing and has also worked on projects like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Smurfs.
Co-branding is a strategy in which two or more companies come together to offer a special service or product to their customers. A brand collaboration is a more informal relationship between brands, where they work together on a short-term project or campaign.
An easy way to understand Co-Branding is the partnership that Mcdonald’s has with companies that own the copyright of pop culture characters for Happy Meals or its partnership with other food brands to create a limited edition product.
How Co-Branding Drives Success for Brands
To gain a better understanding of the mutually beneficial nature that this type of strategy should possess, let’s examine the Apple Watch Nike+ co-branding campaign, which aimed to promote a new product. Through this campaign, we can obtain a comprehensive perspective on the win-win relationship inherent in such strategic collaborations.
For Nike, the association with Apple, the world’s wealthiest company, represents an instant gain. So in this case, let’s shift our focus and analyze the collaboration from Apple’s perspective to understand the benefits it brings.
New Audiences
An alliance between companies is a great idea to increase the brand’s reach to a certain target audience for both companies. For example: A company that wants to reach more young people, for example, can ally itself with a business consolidated with this group, while “lending” something of its credibility to this ally.
Apple is known for its minimalist, sleek, and sophisticated approach to product design, focusing on simplicity and functionality. Its target audience primarily consists of urban dwellers with a technology-oriented lifestyle.
These individuals seek a modern aesthetic in their everyday lives rather than having an exclusive focus on sports or outdoor activities. That is why this new product is aimed at the public that consumes technology and sports, making this overlap of the target public of the two companies reach the portion that has these interests in common.
Credibility
Partnerships between companies strengthen their reputation and bring mutual benefits. The association with a credible company contributes to the presence of the business. It is essential to offer something in return, establishing a win-win relationship.
We are already talking about how Apple’s audience is characterized by high-performance technology that is more urban, and not very sporty, so the way to bring credibility to this product as resistant, durable, and outdoorsy was to create this partnership with Nike. This brings us to the next topic.
New Creative Horizon
Integrating different brands involves limitations and complexities in creating a cohesive campaign that successfully combines several brands and entities. However, these limitations can be the key to creativity in combining the campaign.
We know that the approach that Apple has with their commercials is very clean and objective, as is the whole proposal of the brand, in this partnership, we can see a dynamic and even comical approach as we can see in the commercials below.
These innovative combinations pushed Apple beyond its comfort zone in a positive manner, showcasing the adaptability of its products while effectively promoting the new offering.
3 ideas on how to use co-branding smartly
The Perfect Match
Finding the brand that matches perfectly is one of the most important steps in this marketing strategy. Both brands need to share common goals and determine how the joint campaign can help achieve those goals and even look for brands that have complementary products or services.
Brand Integration
Identifying the synergy between the two brands can take several factors into consideration. Identify the points in common and make the overlapping of the public target to find how to captivate the general public of both companies plus the segment of the public you want to reach.
This is the most complex step for this strategy because the idea developed cannot hurt any of the brands involved, nor the consumers of both brands. Creating a cohesive campaign that successfully combines multiple brands and entities, but how these limitations can be the key to creativity in your campaign.
In the campaign for The Hobbit, we can see a great example of the integration of the two brands and the generation of thematic products for both companies.
Multi-Platform Approach
It’s important to strategically consider all available marketing avenues and develop a synchronized approach that encompasses both offline and online media channels. For instance, you could leverage mascots by featuring them in movie theaters and TV commercials. Encourage consumers to capture and share pictures on social media, creating buzz and promoting the movie.
Co-branding marketing is a powerful strategy for companies that want to expand their reach, increase sales and strengthen their market presence. Through strategic partnerships, brands can access new audiences, leverage the credibility and reputation of other companies, and explore new creative horizons.
However, for co-branding to be successful, it is crucial to find the perfect match between the brands involved. With common goals and a shared vision, the companies can create a joint strategy that benefits both.
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Dealing with social media influencers is not always easy. Actually, most of the time, companies and influencers can’t communicate clearly, as there is a lack of a cultural, linguistic, and social bridge that connects both.
When it comes to Latin influencers, this communication barrier is even bigger. Not only because many people in countries like Brazil or Colombia don’t speak English, but also because these countries are highly multicultural, with cities with completely different styles, slang, social and cultural movements within the country.
In the case of Brazil, this aspect is so strong that there are even completely different cultures within the same city, in big metropolises like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.
It is really hard to keep up with the constant changes in pop culture and in the internet world, so contacting an agency whose job is to always be updated about what the influencers are doing, how is the stability in the country, and more important information for your company, is the best strategy.