Title: “Erfolgsfaktoren, Implementierung und Management von Markenkooperationen in Deutschland“ 

Author: Nicole Preininger   

Type of publication: Bachelor thesis, University of Applied Sciences Heilbronn (Fachhochschule Heilbronn), Germany 

Publication Date: 31^st March 2009 

Methodology: Classical academic & practitioner literature as well as qualitative research (expert interviews with representatives of 13 selected companies, consumer survey) 

Keywords: marketing co-operations, success factors, implementation, management, strategic alliances, brand partnership, co-marketing  

Abstract: In today’s complex and dynamic global markets it becomes increasingly difficult for companies to satisfy changing and more individual customer needs. Marketing co-operations can be an alternative to meet those needs, e.g. by sharing efforts regarding the development and marketing of new products and services. The number of marketing co-operations in Germany increases constantly (see development of marketing co-operations). However, only one third of all the co-operations are successful (see study results 2007). Therefore, the thesis focuses on success factors of marketing co-operations in order to deduce implications for a successful implementation and management. Based on the undertaken expert interviews and consumer surveys a number of success factors have been determined next to well established ones such as brand, target group and product fit. These include the anticipation of trends, the perceptibility of the co-operation’s products and the setup of a co-operation team. In addition, the paper points out potential implementation and management processes for the identification of potential partners and the development of added values for customers.       

Boost of H&M with famous designers
One of the most popular fashion chains worldwide is the example to begin with. The Swedish company H&M suffers a lot from the economic crisis and had to accept a decline in sales of about 7% during the last months. In order to push corporate figures back to the black, H&M actually announced two fashion-designer co-ops, both to be realised at the end of this year. With only few weeks in between, Hennes&Mauritz will offer exclusive shoes and accessories designed by Jimmy Choo (see article) and lingerie and knit-accessories by Sonia Rykiel (see article).

H&M started their concept of co-operations with fashion designers already in 2006, but particularly in the crisis year, the number of these partnerships rose up to 4, which is double as much as in the years before. The Swedish brand marketing directors know exactly about the potential and effectiveness of marketing co-operations and use them systematically to overcome the current downturn. I am sure that no handbag, pair of pumps or scarf will be left unsold during the designer days at H&M. And so, all in all, it is concept that will definitely lift up sales figures and will bear fruit in time of economic droughts.  

An opportunity for the small in the energy sector
The energy sector seemed to be quite resistant against any economic downturn or recession. Recent developments, however, show that this market is affected by the global crisis as much as any other. Single companies admitted a fall of stock up to 80% and announced saving programs with a volume of more than 1 billion Euros. The more big players suffer from this situation, the better the chances for small companies or those offering alternative energies – and even better along with co-operations with a strong partner.  

Two cases that demonstrate this trend are Lichtblick partnering with Neff and Mainova, which collaborates with IKEA Frankfurt. Both energy providers are rather small and focus on regional or ecological power supply. With the choice of their partners, famous German producer of household goods Neff and IKEA, world’s biggest furniture chain, energy suppliers found a good way to address the intended target group. The idea of the partnership between Lichtblick and Neff is to activate quality-conscious and environmental aware people. Mainova and IKEA, in contrary, are addressing citizens in and around Frankfurt area with a favour for IKEA and therefore, primarily interested in saving money.

Both concepts are different, indeed. However, the idea behind is the same: on the one hand finding a partner with a good fit concerning your target groups’ interests, situations and budgets plus being able to use the partner’s distribution channel, on the other hand developing a co-operation offering financial benefits - a very helpful instrument especially during a crisis - as well as the good feeling that while buying something you made a contribution for climate protection and regional support.  

Marketing collaborations as re-orientation for publishing houses
The publishing sector was hardly hit by the crisis. Having had to face severe problems during the last few years, the situation even got worse. In 2009 advertising revenues broke down in 2009 up to 20% and numerous restructuring measures had to be implemented. Publishers are now re-thinking their concepts and begin to discover marketing co-operations as an instrument to bring new ideas to their audience and to pull themselves out of the ongoing downturn. Evidence are statistics showing that the number of marketing co-operations in the publishing business are actually nearly four times as high as the they were one year ago, both offline and online. Among the many cases I just want to mention a few ones that, in my opinion, can be best exemplified for this trend. 

Footprint, one of the biggest publishers for tourism and travel advices lately announced an integration of its content in the online platform tripwolf.com. This enables people worldwide to access Footprint’s huge knowledge about travel via internet and encourages them to share their experiences with others in online communities.Other examples from Germany are co-operations between daily newspaper “Welt” and Lufthansa, as well as between fashion magazine “Maxi” partnering Douglas, Germany’s best-known retailer for perfume & cosmetics. All three being examples for good advised partner selection. Again, “same target groups” seem to be the keywords when planning Marketing co-operations. And it works. According to last days’ headlines about profitable quarterly figures, big publishing houses are on their way to recover. Marketing co-operations are doubtless not the only reason for this positive change, but they definitely made an essential contribution.  

During such difficult times companies have to be able to develop a different strategy, rethink their positioning and discover new ways for business, as marketing co-operations can be one. Especially in times of economic downturn, marketing co-operations offer several opportunities and benefits: reaching new market segments, raising customer loyalty, increasing presence in market and media, new or re-positioning of brands, differentiating from competitors and using existing distribution channels. The amount of created partnerships in Germany has increased about 38% compared to last year and the rise in single sectors was even higher. 

Marketing co-operations as an effective and successful instrument against the economic crises – a statement I will certainly agree to. As long as they are well planned, implemented and monitored in the long run …

The upward trend can be explained by the continuing tendency of companies to utilize marketing co-operations as an inherent part of the marketing mix, especially in the current economic crisis. It also shows that co-operations have become an established instrument to tap-in new markets, acquire new customers (also see the results of study “Marketing co-operations in a crisis?”) and to offer products or services with an added value for costumers. Since many marketing co-operations are still of short term and promotional in nature, a deepening in the co-operation engagement towards a strategic partnership can be a beneficial move in the long run.

Figure 1: Development of marketing co-operations in Germany
Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

Most co-operations established by media, computer & IT industry and with celebrities
Taking a look at the overall development, the newly established marketing co-operations in the respective third quarter of the last two years show a remarkable growth of about 40 percent per year (see figure 2). A glance at the industries with the biggest growth during that time periods illustrates how popular marketing co-operations have become especially in the media and IT industries (see figures 3).

Co-operations of computer & IT companies enjoyed the strongest growth between the third quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2009 (+152 percent), followed by co-operations with celebrities (+141 percent). A similar strong development can be observed for online platforms & services (+128 percent) and the media industry (+109 percent). The four industries grew 56 and 62 percent in the respective third quarters of the last two years. In this context, the share of the selected industries in relation to all industries accounted for 33 percent in 2007 and increased to 37 percent in 2008 and to 42 percent in 2009.

Figure 2: Annual comparison, Figure 3: Four strongest growing industries

Third quarter 2009 generated eclectic co-operation examples in Germany
To illustrate the plain numbers, it’s worthwhile to include some interesting co-operations examples from these industries within the past three months. Well created and credible approaches are, for example, the Nintendo advertisement campaign for the new DS i featuring the two German actors Moritz Bleibtreu and Christian Ulmen as well as a co-operation of BMW and Nuance. The latter involves the integration of language and music recognition software in the new 2010 models. Others are the co-operation of Axel Springer and United Internet for a joint celebrity platform Top.de, an “interactive celebrity platform”, and a partnership of MTV Germany and Facebook for the provision of Live Streams of MTV shows on its Facebook group page.

International co-operations of the last three months are not represented in the underlying statistics, but nevertheless worthwhile to mention as well. Interesting co-operations include Sony and Google, a sales partnership that allows the pre-installation of Google’s browser Chrome on Vaio notebooks, a partnership of Hasbro and Google to provide the biggest virtual Monopoly game worldwide based on Google Maps, and yet another co-operation of H&M with a designer, i.e. the “Queen of Knits”, Sonja Rykiel.

It can be expected that the positive trend towards marketing co-operation in these industries and across all others will continue. The question is, whether companies will also be able to “fill these relationships with life” in order to make them successful on the long run. We’re looking forward to see the results of the co-operations established and to many new ones in the last quarter of this year!

My name: Paul Fritze

My company: Audible GmbH - We provide audiobook downloads for iPods and other mobile devices for people who don’t have enough time to read all the books they’d like to read or simply for people who love audiobooks.

My position: Marketing Manager Co-operations 

Selected co-operations I worked on: Over the past 5 years I have mainly worked on co-operations with Apple and its affiliates to promote audio book downloads within iPod-possessing customers, who can and will most likely use our service. For example, we include inbox brochures with sold iPods and accessories to offer the customers free trials in order to try our service, without them having to pay for the first listening experience. Along with that comes email- and newsletter-communication to their customers. Also MP3 player manufacturers like Creative Labs, SanDisk and Cowon do partner with us including Audible with out of the box experiences, such as listening samples, welcome-messages, desktop icons etc. Garmin and TomTom as being companies that sell GPS-Devices with the audiobook playback functionality are offering different parts of our service to their customers, too. 

Relevance of co-operations in our industry: Audiobooks and especially audiobook downloads do not make a very large market in Germany, yet growing at a good pace. Therefore partnering with trusted brands such as Apple, Amazon and others is very important to us.
 

Our criteria for partner selection: Asking yourself a couple of key questions helps to decide about a partnership:

• Does the potential partner have the same values approaching a customer as we do?
• Does the partner have customers that fit our target group?
• Do we give their customers value with our service?

If we can answer all those questions positively, we might have found a potential partner to talk to. 

Companies/brands I would like to partner with: Many! Some are providers of broadband internet, airlines, Deutsche Bahn…  

Main challenges in establishing co-operations: To get a detailed understanding of what everyone wants, to compromise where it is possible, and not to forget the customer, who in the end should be served in the best possible way. Furthermore, to insist on the highest standards from all involved. 

Good practice co-operation examples: The work with Apple and its affiliates is continuously successful.

Bad practice co-operation examples:  -

DOs in co-operations: Do things. Adjust on the way.

DONTs in co-operations: Don’t choose partners by size and awareness, but by measures, that will help your company and serve the customers best.

The “next big thing” in co-operations: Media landscape changes a lot through influence of social media platforms. Everyone spending advertising money will have to adjust to that – especially when partnering with another company. 

Opportunities and risks of co-operations in the current economic crisis: There is probably no better time for new partnerships. Companies are tight on budget and are not willing to invest a lot in advertising. Partnerships can be a great alternative.
 

Contact:

www.twitter.com/audiblede
www.twitter.com/paulfritze

But now to the details of this co-operation: last year technology company HP and world-renowned designer Vivienne Tam created a special edition notebook. The new device is an ordinary HP mini notebook with a unique design and is targeted at fashionistas around the globe who use notebooks for daily work and like it that it suits their stylish outfit. It is the first time a computer company has partnered with a globally renowned designer. After the successful introduction of last year, the two partners have just recently announced a new design for the spring of 2010 (see picture below).

Vivienne Tam is a fashion brand, which has its home market in the US and a strong presence in Asia, but is not really known in Europe yet. The Chinese born designer characterizes her works as being suitable to all modern women of all ages from the High Society to Urban Teens who demand a beautiful design which is wearable, has superior quality but is affordable as well. Furthermore, she implements elements from her Asian background in all her fashion collections. Whether the entire target group can actually be activated remains questionable since a lot of “urban teens” might not be able to afford her style. Prizes for a Vivienne Tam piece range from around €100 to over €700. The same holds for the new “fashion” notebook, which is about 50 percent more expensive (in Germany) compared to similar notebooks in the same product category.

Apart from the considerable price premium for the HP Vivienne Tam mini notebook the fit between the two partners is good. HP, also convinces its customers with very good quality and above average looks at reasonable but yet above average prices. The company, which is the world-wide market leader among personal computers with a market share of 20 percent rightly identified the development of the market. Since many years now the company has been running a marketing campaign (“The computer is personal again”), which emphasizes the highly individual relationship people have with their computers. Due to the increased difficulty to gain share in the computer market this co-operation is trend-setting because it recognizes the call for more diversification and personalization among notebook designs. These factors have been predominantly ignored by the majority of PC and notebook manufacturers but actually become increasingly important as a market expert of DisplaySearch points out: “It’s critical to have that look-and-feel that touch presence. At the end of the day, the physical experience is very important”. This exterior appearance is particularly important among the increasingly popular netbooks, since they can be carried around easily everywhere and are therefore more visible than a lot of the bigger and bulkier notebooks. Thus, the HP Vivienne Tam partnership is a co-operation not only with a good fit but also with a good intuition as regards to the current trends.

For HP the partnership with Vivienne Tam is a smart move to tie in fashion-loving customers with a product with which they can personally identify with and for which they are willing to pay a premium prize in order to stand out among peers. The product is a complementation of each brand’s expertises which results in a netbook that communicates superior technological quality and fashionable excellence.
Other than in North America and Asia where customers are much more aware of the Vivienne Tam brand, it might take a while before the spark can leapfrog in Europe as well. Perhaps, the disposal of the Vivienne Tam HP notebook in Europe can also be interpreted as an approach for Vivienne Tam to enter various markets in Germany and elsewhere across the continent with her own shops.

The HP Vivienne Tam notebook is not the first example to make notebooks more fashionable and personal. In 2008 the Dutch company ego lifestyle and the luxury sports car producer Bentley created a high-end luxury design notebook in the shape of a women’s handbag (see picture below). Bentley appears to be the perfect fit for Ego lifestyle, since the company is designing, producing, marketing and distributing high-end luxury lifestyle consumer electronics. For its innovative, outside-the-box thinking Ego received the “Microsoft Fashion PC Award” in 2008. The award is supposed to encourage the development of highly personal, premium quality Windows based products. The big downside of the “Bentley notebook” is, it is not for everybody, as its price (€12.500) and its limited edition of 250 pieces demonstrates. In comparison to the HP Mini Vivienne Tam notebook, the “Ego for Bentley” notebook is in my opinion definitely an exceptional case as it is 20 times more expensive than the Vivienne Tam HP mini. Nevertheless, each of the new tech devices appeals to its particular target group likewise and demonstrate that the industry is on the right way to make the computer personal again.

MTV, world’s biggest music channel, agreed to a co-operation with Habbo, an online platform for teenagers where they can create their own avatar, meet and chat to friends and participate in discussions or other virtual interactions.  

Along with the MTV partnership Habbo offers its users several opportunities to discover the world of EMAs within the world of Habbo. Users can have a walk on the red carpet, have a look inside the virtual backstage rooms and even go on stage to have a quick dance. The absolute highlight, however, is the chance to win a virtual MTV Award powered by Habbo. How? By guessing who’s going to win an award in the various categories, voting for your favourite artist and hoping that you are right. Chances to win? The more often you vote, the more likely you’ll win the trophy. Why? You can put an EMA award on your shelf and see your friends’ jealous faces – even if it’s just virtually! 

Supporting a successful online promotion, the collaboration is integrated in both websites, mtvema.com and habbo.de (as well as habbo sites in other European countries) with a direct link to Habbo’s MTV group “EMA09”.   

With its format, MTV addresses young people with strong interests in music, lifestyle and stars. When knowing that 90% of Habbo users are between 13 and 18 years old for whom music is one of the most favourite pastimes, the music channel has found a perfect partner for promoting the Awards on an online community. The fact that over 14 million unique users are visiting Habbo each month is an additional benefit showing the enormous potential of this partnership. Habbo’s reasons for partnering with MTV are obvious. An integration of the worldwide most known, most famous and most powerful music channel in their platform is the best thing that could have happened to the teens’ community.  

For Habbo, though, this is not the first of-its-kind partnership. In the past, the doors to its virtual world were opened to American Idol, the popular US talent show, to “New Moon”, the second movie of the “Twilight” saga and to the band Tokio Hotel with appearance in Habbo communities across several countries, including the US, Spain, Italy and Germany. 

To my mind, this co-operation is lacking one important aspect, real life. Doubtless, Habbo is a virtual space, but both parties could have gone one step further by integrating “real” opportunities. Participating in the official voting for best act, group, video or newcomer or the possibility to win a ticket for the EMAs taking place in the O2 World are just some ideas.  

Nevertheless, Habbo’s “EMA09” is very popular with teenagers as the number of group members is nearly reaching 13.000 to-date. Either it is teenager’s fascination of being part of such an event, either the popularity of virtual worlds with them, either EMA as THE event of the year, either the chance to win a virtual award or the fact that both target groups are identical what makes this co-operation that successful. Maybe a combination of all. Anyway, great idea!

However, compared to other mobile devices such as MP3 player, mobiles, cameras or laptops the sales numbers of eReaders still get put back into perspective. The demand for eReaders in Germany, for example, is still relatively low. According to a recent PwC research 23 percent of Germans have heard about “Kindle”, “Sony Reader” and other eBook devices, but only 8 percent really know what an eReader is. In addition the price tag of around 300 dollar per reader doesn’t increase desirability for the mass-market. Nevertheless the forecasts by experts are promising: according to Sarah Rotman Epps from Forrester Research the eBook and eReader market has now hit a point where it is ready to break out of its niche and become a mainstream phenomenon.  

Co-operations - key factor to provide content and effective distribution channels

It is in the nature of things that the growth of the eReader market can mainly be made possible through successful co-operations between eReader developers and various partners. On the one hand developers have to co-operate with book publishers or libraries to provide versatile content for their devices. On the other hand co-operations with distributors have to be established to access nationwide distribution channels in each country.  

A company which has clearly identified the benefits of co-operations is Sony. To be able to compete with Amazon’s US market leader “Kindle”, Sony is co-operating with Google to provide more content for its “Sony Reader”. Now customers are not only enabled to buy their favourite book in the Sony eBook Store, they can even choose from over a million free public domain books from Google books. In Germany, Sony is co-operating with book trade group Thalia and book wholesaler Libri. Thalia offers Sony’s Reader in its bookshop nationwide. Additionally Libri provides eBooks on its platform “Libri.Digital” and distributes Sony’s eReader to booksellers throughout Germany. Through these two co-operations Sony established an efficient and nationwide distribution channel for their eReaders in Germany and, in contrary to Amazon, is able to offer German books to its customers. Another interesting co-operation, in order to provide eReaders with interesting reading material, is the one between iRex and Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble is the largest online book store. By co-operating with Barnes & Noble, the “iRex digital reader” gets access to the entire eBook online shop of B&N. That means that customers can choose from over 700,000 publications and iRex therefore has become a serious competitor for Amazon at least in the range of offered eBooks in the United States. 

Txtr reader – the German competitor to Amazon & Co.?

On the German eReader market the “txtr reader” is a promising alternative to “Kindle”, “Sony reader”, “iRex” & Co. Developed by a start-up company from Berlin and with a number of co-operations the “txtr” is able to offer the most comprehensive German range of digital content on its online platform txtr.com. Book wholesaler, full text data bases and content companies such as Ciando, Libri, Libreka and Ingram Digital are providing the commercial content for “txtr” customers. Furthermore project gutenberg is delivering free content and all documents uploaded from the community txtr.com are available for download as well. Another advantage of the “txtr” is that it is the first eReader open to all kind of document formats. Therefore it is not bound to a certain type of documents and thus opens for other co-operations in the future.  

Discovering the advantages of marketing co-operations

So it seems that establishing co-operations is a key factor of success for promising eBook ranges and effective distribution channels in the eReader market. However, it seems producers have not yet discovered the advantages of marketing co-operations in order to push awareness of eReaders within the broad public. As book enthusiasts will be the ones to decide about the future of eReaders, Amazon, txtr and co. should now focus on getting people in touch with the new technology. As shown earlier in the example of the German market, numerous potential customers do still not know what advantages the product brings and are thus probably not convinced to replace the good, old smelling book by a new electronic device.    

So far only Sony made a first step in this direction: The eReader producer and book trade group Thalia started a joint promotion to teach German Thalia customers about the eReader. In 230 Thalia stores people were encouraged to test the new eReader and experience the advantages: a paper-like display, the simple appliance, and the classy design. Furthermore, Sony employed readers who were interested in testing the Sony eReader before its official market launch. By doing so, Sony was getting people actively involved with the new technology, had the possibility to reduce prejudices and build interest in its new device. This direct and personal offline approach is likely to become more relevant within the next months in order to push eReader sales. Therefore, especially online companies like Amazon should start considering offline co-marketing activities, too.

The project in few words: for the next four weeks, Bon Jovi will have musical appearances, interviews and guest roles across NBC Universal’s many brands and platforms including shows like “Today,” “The Tonight Show,” “The Jay Leno Show”, “Saturday Night Live” and many more. The project will be capped off with a live concert on November 25^th.  

With world’s no. 3 media and entertainment company Bon Jovi made a very good deal. On the one hand they get the various platforms, channels and shows to promote their new album with NBC’s national and regional channels being available in 99% of US households. On the other hand   the band has the opportunity to address a much wider target group.      The majority of NBC viewers are between 16 and 54 years old, male and female. The “artist in residence” can therefore awake interest for “The Circle” not solely in the typical Bon Jovi fan, but also addressing a younger audience - the “not grown up with a Jon Bon Jovi poster on the wall” generation. It’s even not excluded that men will be convinced of the band’s guest and musical appearances.

 A statement of Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal pointed out the benefits:

“By assembling a unique mix of personal appearances on a variety of its brands, NBC Universal has the ability to offer Bon Jovi the opportunity to reach a wide audience in a variety of compelling ways, while at the same time making interesting, exclusive content available to the properties of NBC Universal.” 

However, there are also negative aspects of being “artist in residence”. Exclusive contract means exclusive NBC appearance and interviews. During the four weeks, Bon Jovi won’t be seen on any other cable programming or network than the ones mentioned in their contract. In a telephone interview last week, Jon Bon Jovi, the front singer of the band, commented as follows:

“Of course you usually try to be out there everywhere when a new album is coming out, so we have to sacrifice certain shows and relationships. We hope this doesn’t jeopardize any of them. But in a shrinking media environment, you have to kind of reinvent the wheel.”  

Critics may also arise as Jon Bon Jovi will be featured on “NBC Nightly News” – independent news getting dependent on the contract with Bon Jovi.  

Nevertheless, this partnership shows new ways and interesting approaches for artists and television companies to collaborate in favour of both. Artists are given a great platform and opportunity to address a much more diverse audience than they could compared to any TV campaign promoting their new album. And TV networks are able to fresh up their image and gain some exclusivity by signing an agreement with a popular band like Bon Jovi, being in demand by many other TV broadcasts.  

“Artist in residence” – a project of success? I’ll keep you posted when the lights are off and the show is over…

A limited edition of specially designed BILLY’s will be available in IKEA stores around the world from 1^st October 2009 to 31^st January 2010. Furthermore a “BILLY turns 30” book will be published, to inform about interesting facts and figures around the cult bookcase. In its home country Sweden, BILLY even had its own BILLY Lounge at this years book fair in Gothenburg, a place to relax and read some good books from the BILLY bookcase.  

But what would BILLY’s birthday be without some exciting co-operations? In Germany, for example, BILLY gets its own magazine insert. On 28 pages, BILLY and the German magazines “Brigitte” are combining social topics and individual experiences with the BILLY bookcase in an interesting way. Editors are getting rid of old role model ideas by discussing the changing gender roles of men and women,  for example, just like BILLY is getting ride of the mess in our homes. The “Brigitte special interest” can not only be found in the current “Brigitte” but also in other Gruner + Jahr publications such as “Stern”, “Gala”, “Schöner Wohnen” and “Geo”. But not everyone speaks in favour of this co-operation. Editors of other G+J publications are complaining that magazine inserts like this one, are mixing up editorial content and advertising in a way that people can’t separate anymore.  

In my opinion this co-operation is an innovative way of establishing advertisement as an added value for (potential) customers of both partners. The magazine insert “Brigitte special interest” is clearly branded and can be identified as advertisement. Additionally, it provides the reader with content rich articles and editorials. For IKEA this co-operation with Gruner + Jahr is an excellent way of reaching a very specific target group that doesn’t feel addressed by standard IKEA advertisement. The IKEA brand might be very appealing to younger people, but settled adults, for instance, might still be having prejudices towards its furniture’s “student image”. By providing this magazine insert in publications like “Schöner Wohnen”, “Stern” and “Geo”, IKEA is able to reach this target group in a different and more intellectual manner than with funny TV advertisements. 

Another interesting co-operation has been established by IKEA in the United Kingdom. IKEA UK is co-operating with “Save the Children” to help children around the world, by organising a two weeks book donation campaign. Customers are encouraged to donate a least five of their old books and will be rewarded with a £5 IKEA gift card. These books will then be sold in local Save the Children charity shops around the country. Also beyond this co-operation, IKEA UK is especially dedicated to promote BILLY’s birthday. In IKEA shops throughout the UK, IKEA customers will get entertained by the “Shakespearience”. Inspired by the world-famous author, real life actors and of course BILLY will be performing on stage. In addition IKEA UK is collaborating with the online community IKEAFANS.com. By sharing your BILLY story or pictures with the world you can win IKEA gift cards and the limited edition of BILLY bookcase. 

So now we know that BILLY tidies up our rooms, publishes magazine inserts to do away our old prejudices, helps children around the world and is an actor on the IKEA stage, but is there more to it? It is, since BILLY is going to business! Bloomberg L.P converted BILLY prices around the world into dollars and invented similar to McDonald’s famous Big Mac Index – the BILLY Index.  The index tells us, for example, that we can buy a BILLY in Dubai, the cheapest “BILLY country” by the way, for 47,64 dollar and that we have to pay 103,48 dollar in Israel, where it is the most expensive to live with a BILLY in our home.  

But of course BILLY cannot be an appropriate benchmark to reflect fluctuations in international exchange rates as it is not an everyday good and therefore less suitable to monitor price changes. But even if the BILLY Index won’t be able to compete with the Big Mac Index: for many BILLY stays the most talented bookcase in the world, which certainly made a lot of new friends from all over the world during its birthday.

From a marketing perspective it appears to be a good fit between both partners. Sobieski is communicated as a product, which is authentic and does not need exaggerated marketing activities to convince consumers. Instead, the company emphasizes the product’s superior quality, which has been proven in two well recognized blind tastings by La Revue du Vin de France, one of France’s top wine and spirits publications and by the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI). In both cases, Sobieski was ranked number one, beating all major international vodka brands. Bruce Willis on his part is a world-wide recognized movie star who is enormously successful but also authentic, likable and does not get caught up in superficiality. Based on the correlation between the two “brands” the future of the partnership appears to be bright and promising. 

Now, what do both partners expect from this deal? On behalf of Sobieski, marketing needed an endorser that consumers can identify with and who spreads the “truth about vodka” – that good vodka does not have to be expensive to be good. For Willis promotional appearances in Europe and Asia are a good opportunity to increase his popularity outside the US. Furthermore, compensations for the testimonial agreement were probably nice add-on, too.

On first sight, Bruce Willis appears to be the perfect match for the brand. He is a down to earth guy who can communicate the product’s quality with authenticity and hey…he drinks the stuff himself! On the contrary, Sobieski Vodka is promoted as a brand that needs anything but a celebrity to promote its product. The collaboration with Willis is therefore definitely a questionable move.  

Talking about money, here is the catch of the story, the Hollywood star recently invested in the abovementioned company Belvedere to rescue it from financial bankruptcy. This misery resulted from the takeover of Sobieski and other European spirit producers and can probably also explain the company’s marketing shift, which is characterized by several testemonial agreements. Presumably Willis was looking out for an opportunity to make a living besides shooting movies after so many years in show business. The movie actor is not the first celebrity who was involved in the spirits industry. The American Hip-Hop star Sean “Diddy” Combs created the vodka brand Ciroc together with the worlds leading spirit producer Diaego. The Rock musician and ex-Van-Halen singer Sammy Hagar sold his Tequila Cabo Wabo to the Italian company Campari two years ago. However, from marketing perspective Willis’ financial involvement also stresses his credibility brand ambassador.

In brief it can be noted that the partnership between Bruce Willis and Sobieski Vodka is a neat and credible example of a brand and an endorser with a good fit, with the goal to increase consumer identification with the product. Nevertheless, the company should question its “celebrity” marketing activity. Sobieski’s promise is to waive expensive marketing deals in favour of a product that supposedly does not need promotional reassurance of its quality as this is Sobieski’s “truth about vodka”.

While Google is still dominating the search engine market with a share of 65 percent in the US, Microsoft is market leader in the segments of browsers (67 percent) and operating systems (88 percent). In order to strengthen their position against the leader, the respective challengers utilize a well established tool: co-operations. In the following, we’ll introduce three of the latest co-operations. You can find more examples of Google and Microsoft co-operations here.

Google & Sony: sales partnership to fight Microsoft’s market leader Internet Explorer
Sony and Google have entered a sales partnership to push Google’s browser Chrome. The co-operation allows the pre-installation of Google’s Chrome on Vaio computers of Japanese consumer electronics producer Sony. For Google, this is a first of its kind deal. So far, almost every computer running Microsoft’s operating system Windows also had Internet Explorer as only browser preinstalled. First Vaio notebooks with Chrome have already been delivered. Now, Google is also in talks with other producers for additional deals. However, the deal with Sony is limited to Vaio PCs sold in the US and so far, there are no plans to install Chrome on computers sold in other countries.

Google Chrome was released about a year ago and its market share is so far only about three percent according to market researcher Net Applications. Google’s co-operation approach obviously aims to increase market share and to end the market leadership of rival Microsoft and its Internet Explorer.

Microsoft & Wolfram Alpha: striking back on search engine level with a content partnership
When it comes to search engines, Microsoft’s search engine Live Search never really had a chance against top dog Google. However, by relaunching its search engine under the name “Bing” with new features, Microsoft is now hoping to take on the big rival for real. In order to do so, Microsoft established a co-operation with the new expert search engine Wolfram Alpha. The content partnership allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates.

Wolfram Alpha aims to enable access to figure-related knowledge, e.g. by answering questions like “How many rainy days are there in Berlin?” or “What was the exact value of Microsoft’s stock on July 6, 2007?” But the search engine, launched in May, is still fighting with teething problems.

In addition to that, Microsoft takes advantage of yet another co-operation partner: Yahoo. As recently announced, Bing will substitute the Yahoo Search in the future. I’m excited to see which additional measures Microsoft will take in order to make “to bing” the new “to google”.

Google & hardware producers: entering new market segments by a set of sales partnerships
Google is now increasingly entering other market segments, which Microsoft has so far been dominating, namely the mobile and netbook market. With the operating systems Android and Google OS, the company delivers new products and again tries to find its way into the market via sales partnerships. On its blog Google names Acer, Asus, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, and others as (desired) co-operation partners.

Exploiting the full marketing potential of co-operations
Google and Microsoft are likely to continue striking new paths with partnerships. In this context, it would be desirable to also see more prominent joint communication measures within the activity catalogue with their respective co-operation partners. This would enable the two giants to stress new competencies in a credible way, while co-operation partners could take advantage of the enormous strength of the respective partner brand. The communicative potential of partnerships, however, is yet to be discovered by both of them, and even more importantly: by their co-operation partners.

Earlier examples of mobile phone providers partnering with luxury brands or the co-operation of LG and Iron Man show the popularity of this kind of co-operation. Sagem itself already co-operated with Porsche Design as well as Hello Kitty for the development of individual mobile phones. The company also gives the opportunity to customize Sagem mobile phones via the online platform Planet Sagem.

It will be interesting to see how the advertising strategy for the new Puma Phone will look like. As the idea of entering the mobile market is not really new, marketing measures should reveal some innovativeness in order to convince potential customers.

Beginning 5^th December 2009 Sonia Rykiel will heat up the cold winter by launching her exclusive range of lingerie and accessories in 1.500 H&M stores worldwide. In case you can’t get hold of one of the selected pieces in your H&M nearby, and here comes the news, you even can go to one of Sonia Rykiel’s major boutiques around the world where the collection will be available as well. And that’s not all. On 20^th February 2010 a Sonia Rykiel knitwear collection for women and girls will be launched in 250 H&M stores.  

So only three weeks after Jimmy Choo will offer his exclusive shoe collection in 200 selected H&M stores (also see article), Sonia Rykiel will continue H&M’s highly successful co-operation approach with her range of lingerie and accessories. We’re excited to see how H&M’s marketing approach for both co-operations will look like.  

On the long run, however, it remains to be seen if this is the right strategy to follow for the co-operating designers. By selling clothes off the shelf the exclusivity of premium fashion brands might get lost at some point, don’t you think? 

Further information: 

Sonia Rykiel teams up with H&M

Sonia Rykiel Fashion

Next H&M-Star: Sonia Rykiel (German)

With “Monopoly City Streets” the famous board game enters the virtual world. Although some rules have been changed – making the game much more interesting as you can place a garbage dump next your competitors’ buildings, for instance – one rule stays the same: the person who makes most profit out of his seed capital of 3 million Monopoly dollars wins the game. 

With this collaboration Hasbro, owner of the trademark “Monopoly”, and GoogleMaps are addressing an ongoing trend in behaviour: people are spending more and more time on the internet and classical gaming nights, as we know it from our childhoods, are getting rare. Still, I think the idea is great and both partners fit very well as they both embody innovation – although there’s 100 years between those innovations. Also, the co-operation shows an innovative way on how to connect a classical board game not only with an online community, but with the real-spaces part of the World Wide Web.  

With Monopoly City Streets Hasbro will certainly be able to address a younger target group, however, the games producer might also be capable of bringing together families again - maybe not at the same table, maybe not even in the same city, but a all around the world instead. Consequently, Google will again be able to strengthen its position as supplier of innovative applications. Overall, I’m sure that this gaming approach will attract a lot of players …fine with me, as long as they let me build my own castle with a great view onto the Eiffel Tower

Both brands launched a newly interior designed version of the smart called “smart fortwo édition Toile H” in line with the 10^th birthday of the smart brand. 45 pieces were available in 9 colours (for more pictures see here). With a price of 38.000 euros (48.500 US $), the price of the Hermès Smart Car is about four times as high as the one of its “usual” brother.

The idea originally came from two good friends, Dimitri and Karim, who won the Condé Nast Traveller’s Innovation & Design Award for the Hermès Smart Car. When asked about the origin of their idea Dimitri states:

“That’s a very nice story actually. Karim and I where in
Moscow celebrating the opening of a new Hermes store. The party was really good and with all the excitement the idea of the Hermes Smart popped out! We discussed this idea more seriously during the following weeks and people from Hermès and Smart were very enthusiastic! Then I went for my trip around the world and when I came back the Hermès car was being launched!“ (For the whole interview see here)

I like the idea behind that co-operation. Similar to earlier partnerships with Bugatti and Eurocopter, Hermès is again giving that certain something to an everyday item. Therewith, the brand enables its partners to address a more exclusive target group segment and taps new product segments for itself. The brand fit, on the contrary, is not as high as with Hermès’ earlier co-operation partners, as smart clearly has the image of a mass market car.    

However, by limiting the edition and putting an extraordinarily high price tag on the co-branded product these concerns are silenced, because these measures define the smart Toile H as an exclusive luxury product. Or do you think smart’s key target group would actually consider the purchase? For Hermès customers (especially women), on the other hand, this might be the car they have been waiting for. Or as commenter Ryan put it on the Autoblog “Considering the Birkin bag by Hermès costs upwards of $20k, THIS is a STEAL!!!”

Thanks for the hint, Julia!

The sales promotion offers different incentives, provided by OSRAM, LichtBlick and Siemens. Therefore, codes are included on FRoSTA packages, which give customers the opportunity to save three months of LichtBlicks base fee when changing to the “green” energy supplier. OSRAM and Siemens offer additional energy-saving prizes, for which customers need to register on the FRoSTA website where winners are regularly announced. 

FRoSTA’s intention with this co-operation is on the one hand to increase awareness of its image as a responsible, healthy and sustainable company. On the other hand, the company is able to address its target group, i.e. people who are pinched for time and looking for high-quality and healthy food, with special offers of interest. The obvious link between conscious eating and living has probably also motivated OSRAM, LichtBlick and Siemens to participate in this co-operation.  

The fit of this campaign and corresponding co-operation partners with the FRoSTA brand and its overall strategy is apparent. With the described measures FRoSTA can further strengthen its image as an interactive, sustainable and innovative company. Overall, the company’s activities provide the picture of a brand, which not only cares about peoples’ health and food quality but also about climate responsibility. FRoSTA’s participation in another climate project, the PCF pilot project in which the “CO2 footprint” of selected FRoSTA products is calculated, highlights this effort once more.     

However, the marketing potential of this co-operation is not fully exploited. Optimization was possible regarding communication, e.g. on websites of the partnering companies. That would increase reach of the campaign and enable FRoSTA to address more potential customers additional to convincing those who already bought a FRoSTA product.  

Nonetheless, this cross-sector co-operation is a good approach for an increase in customer awareness concerning ecologically produced electricity and energy saving opportunities in households. We are looking forward to new FRoSTA campaigns bringing more quick-win opportunities for increased health and climate responsibility in our lives.

The site also incorporates features that will allow consumers to compare pricing across models or participating dealerships, get tips and advice with a ‘buyer checklist’, and determine the value of their trade-in or whether their current vehicle may also qualify for government funded ‘Cash For Clunkers’ incentives. The fund subsidises new car purchases by paying customers a certain amount of money for the old car. 

While going through insolvency proceedings, GM has significantly decreased the number of ‘regular’ car dealers over the US. GM recently stated that a new distribution channel strategy is going to be announced soon. The co-operation with eBay might already be part of it and provides the opportunity for GM to sell new cars online. Opel, GM’s subsidiary in Europe, will not follow this example and sticks to its common distribution channel via Opel car dealers. GM’s strategy is supported by recent study results of J.D. Power & Associates, which shows that more than 75 percent of new-vehicle buyers used the web during their shopping and research process in 2008.  

Benefits seem to be clear for customers and co-operation partners. On one hand, customers get an easy access to information and good deals on new cars. On the other hand, eBay increases it sales and strengthens its position in the field of high purchase volume online sales whiles GM taps a new distribution channel. The co-operation is communicated via GM’s corporate blog, the eBay website, and a widespread PR campaign, which is discussed all over the media during the last days. However, one asks himself why the new cars are not also being sold through eBay’s core business, online auctioning. This would clearly put a new touch on buying new cars and raise even more awareness.

Altogether this team up seems like a fresh idea for both: GM and eBay. So far online car deals where usually limited to second-hand cars. It will be interesting to see in how far US-customers will adapt their purchasing behaviour for new cars to this new opportunity. Only one thing is clear: this kind of co-operation is new for eBay, too. So far, eBay’s co-operations were mainly placed within the field of customer services (e.g. shipping and payment co-operations), and an eBay mircosite of this dimension has never been seen before. Let’s wait and see how the two partners as well as customers will take advantage of this unique opportunity.

“We are trying to re-arrange the sesame grains on the Whopper buns in order to place the FC Bayern logo on our burgers.”  

Can this be true? We on our part are looking forward to see something like this:

In 2004 and 2006, Burger King already successfully collaborated with Bayern Munich goalkeeper Oliver Kahn for the “Burger King Kahn-promotion” and the presentation of the “We are soccer”-world championship burger.

McCharger served by McDonald’s and Elforsk 

An innovative example for this trend is the latest collaboration of McDonald’s and Swedish electricity supplier Elforsk. In July, both companies introduced the first charging station for electric vehicles (EVs) in Stockholm, the so called “McCharger”. The idea behind this project is quite simple and conclusive: while eating a menu at a McDonald’s restaurant one can recharge his/her car’s battery. With this pilot project both companies are able to test how    well this idea is accepted and how frequent it is used by EV owners. Although there are only few hundred EVs in Sweden up to now, a rise within the next years is expected offering a great market potential for this co-operation approach.  McDonald’s characterises this project as its own small contribution to a more sustainable mobility. It will certainly help the biggest fast    food chain worldwide to shift its image towards dimensions like “green”, sustainable and responsible, and to position itself as a company that takes care of problems evolving from climate change. If the McCharger concept is successful, further stations will be installed around South and West Sweden. Simultaneously to the one in Stockholm, another McCharger was installed in North Carolina/US, next to a newly eco-friendly built McDonald’s restaurant. This step into its home market indicates high relevance of the project for McDonald’s.  

Fast food versus slow charging

Despite the great idea and intention of making electric vehicles more popular and people more aware of a new thinking, there is one essential problem: time. With current technology, it takes up to 6 hours to fully recharge an electric vehicle. For a visit in a fast food restaurant, this really is a too long time. In order to reduce the recharge time to a level that is more suitable for a visit in a McDonald’s restaurant, Elforsk is going to invest about 900.000 euro for research & development during the next two years.  Another point that can be criticised is the unbalanced allocation of roles in this co-operation. While the McCharger can be clearly identified as a McDonald’s item by its typical McDonalds’s colouring and a logo, a visible co-branding of its co-operation partner Elforsk is missing. Moreover, one might think McDonald’s customers are the wrong target group for EVs. However, new McCafés, healthier menus, and additional environmental activities clearly show McDonald’s effort to address an older, more responsible target group (and to educate younger customers). Therefore, the co-operation suits well with the fast food chain’s overall strategy. 

Pilot projects on German streets

Similar pilot projects are emerging in Germany at the moment. Since April 2009, BMW Group is co-operating with Swedish energy company Vattenfall. With providing public charging stations in
Berlin and 50 Mini E cars for a selected number of testers, both partners aim to gain further insights in the topic of electric cars, i.e. with regard to user-friendliness and practicability. Smart and RWE will start a similar project in autumn 2009 in Berlin. The four companies participating in the projects have agreed on using the same plugs so that each Mini can be recharged at the spot of RWE and vice versa.

Furthermore, RWE has plans to engage in a co-operation with APCOA, a German parking garage operator. Their concept is to install charging station for EVs in 20 parking lots in Berlin in a first step, followed by other big cities in Germany.     

Co-operations for sustainability – hopefully a lasting trend

The trend towards co-operations in the sector of new energies for transportation and mobility is likely to continue with the increasing relevance of this issue. In my opinion, the example of McDonald’s and Elforsk is the most ground-breaking so far, because it gives people an understanding for the increasing relevance of this issue. However, this co-operation also shows that technology must first be further improved to become suitable for everyday use.  

All in all, these innovative collaboration projects provide the opportunity to advance progress in this field. Nevertheless, high attention can only be gained with a communication strategy of both co-operation partners emphasising the innovation, benefits and importance of this issue – especially through comparably innovative communication measures. When doing so, results will not only include advantages for EV owners and positive effects on climate and environment, but also the opportunity for companies to show their commitment and position themselves as “green” through state-of-the-art co-operations.

The decrease may be explained by the fact that a number of companies chose to continue and extend existing marketing projects in the current economic downturn rather than setting up new ones. But 290 new co-operations within three months in the German market is still a relatively high number. It shows that co-operations are not a “nice to have” add-on but an established, integral and important element of many companies’ marketing mix.

With this co-operation Starbucks aims to attract awareness for its newly developed ice cream. By using Facebook applications they are able to increase involvement within the target group and to gain knowledge about the target group’s preferences by evaluating the reaction on this application. Facebook, on the other hand, successfully creates added value for its users. 

This measure fits well with Starbucks’ overall social media strategy. The coffee house already maintains a fan page on Facebook, where users can discuss their needs, wishes, and latest trends. Currently, the page has about 3.5 million fans – a remarkable amount when looking at the success of other companies’ social media activities.  Through its activities, Starbucks is not only able to prove its social media competency, but also to collect valuable information about target group. 

This co-operation is yet another example for Starbucks’ widely spread co-operation approaches such as its recently discussed partnership with TV Show Morning Joe or its partnering with Apple’s itunes, climate change movie “Artic Tale” and several book publishers.

Starbucks fanpage

“Share a Pint of Starbucks Ice Cream” application

This time Microsoft will place ads and content on Xbox Live, the MSN portal and the Windows Live messenger service. In addition, there is a special Harry Potter digital zone, containing videos, scenes from the film, downloads, picture galleries and editorial content about the movie. There will be an online competition again, too. This time you can win a trip to Chicago to visit a Harry Potter exhibition in the museum of Science and Industry.

Microsoft aims to create a campaign that will attract a new and younger audience, while not excluding those who have grown up with the films. For this reason, the MSN portal and MSN Video service address a 12-to-19-year-old fanbase. However, the advertisements on Xbox Live showcase the “darker, edgier side of the film” and will target an older audience of 16-to-34-year-old males.

In Germany the movie will start on July 16th 2009. The premiere will take place on July 15th in Wiesbaden. In the meantime, Harry Potter fans can be curios whether this or a similar co-operation will be implemented on the German market, too. And if so, it will be interesting to see which kind of measures will be chosen to address the different target group segments.

Microsoft has also partnered with MTV and Sony BMG before.

The adidas Star Wars collection will include shoes, apparel, and accessories. In contrast to 2007, the new collection will consist of a limited edition line and a mass market footwear edition. Numerous iconic Star Wars characters and scenes from the movies will be integrated into the designs. Following the spring/summer collection there will be a fall/winter collection. Both will be available at selected retailers and in adidas Originals stores around the globe.  

The limited edition collection was presented for the first time at the Bread and Butter fair in Berlin. As the Star Wars collection forms only a small part of the overall adidas Originals spring/summer 2010 collection, adidas is not likely to promote the collection by above the line communication measures.  

I believe both brands go very well together as they both play an important role in pop/street culture and stand for high authenticity, originality and creativity. I am sure adidas Originals customers, especially boys, can’t wait for the Star Wars collection - especially for the limited edition line - to be available in 2010.

For further information click here.

“Twilight football” is a series of football tournaments in four different continents around sunset time in authentic places such as the castle of Tintagel, situated in a small village in Cornwall nearby the Atlantic coast, Venice in Italy, the Iguanzú Falls in Argentina). Participants of the tournament as well as photographers are selected through a series of local contests. The new camera is supposed to be able to grasp very delicate light and shadow interactions as well as all kinds of intricate colour complexions even in demanding situations full of motion and agility. Considering the setting of the campaign, sports/movement and sunset/complex lightening, it provides a good environment to illustrate the features of the new camera. Furthermore, the pictures and videos, which are taken, will be published by bloggers in various Web 2.0 platforms e.g. video diaries, Twitter.

The co-operating partner Fifa supports this event by providing nine referees that umpire the numerous games during the tournaments. Sony and Fifa announced the signing of a global partnership program contract in 2007 already. The contract will run until 2014. With the partnership Sony is enabled to “develop global marketing activities as official partner of Fifa World Cup” and thus to benefit from Fifa’s high profile. In return, Fifa receives financial compensation. For “Twilight football” Fifa was chosen to bestow the PR campaign with football credibility, relevance, and media attention.

Generally speaking, one can say that the campaign is original and complex. It requires extensive organisation when considering the geographical diverse locations, the local qualification tournaments, the promotional activities, and alike. The tournaments will create memorable brand experiences, will enable access to new target groups and generate high involvement among the participants. A disadvantage may be that the campaign primarily addresses males rather than females.

It will be exciting to see how much media attention the campaign ends up getting, to what extent Fifa gets involved and how far “Twilight football” is the theme of the overall product communication for Sony Exmor CMOS-Image Sensor cameras.

Here comes a little foretaste…

The breakfast co-operation – the first of its kind
Since Joe and his guests have been drinking their coffee out of Starbucks cups for quite some time already, speculations regarding a possible co-operation have already been going on for a while. Most viewers were convinced that this kind of product placements ensures MNSBC with some kind of financial compensation. However, until recently, no co-operation existed between the TV channel and the coffee chain. It was only a few weeks ago that the two parties actually announced their co-operation. The exact terms of the co-operation are subject to much discussion. However, rumour says that Starbucks pays MSNBC $10 million for the one-year deal. In return Joe, his colleagues and his guests continue to enjoy their Starbucks coffee in Starbucks cups during the show. Additionally, voice overs have been integrated in the show and the Starbucks logo as well as its slogan is from now on part of the show’s logo – “Morning Joe brewed by Starbucks”.

Two (bene)fitting partners…

• The economic crisis has made financial resources more valuable and more difficult to find and tap into than ever before, thus a well paying co-operation partner such as Starbucks is very attractive and desirable.
• Starbucks benefits from increased publicity via TV exposure. Having the product properly integrated into the show addresses the audience in a whole new manner. This way Starbucks hopes to expand its “just-quickly-grab-a-latte-to-go” customer base.

…and the possible hazards they face

• Critics of the co-operation argue that a truly sophisticated and intellectually demanding news show should abstain from making use of such advertisement techniques, since it undermines the credibility and integrity of the show.
• Besides that some crtics are also afraid that the co-operation will displease Starbucks current customers, since many of them are devoted Liberals, whereas Joe Scarborough, is a pronounced and well-known Conservative. Pessimists argue that this may cause a negative image transfer from the testimonial to the Starbucks brand. In how far this is a realistic threat is open to debate, since others claim that Starbucks customers cannot be classified on the basis of who they vote for.

Product placement – a US phenomenon?
Advertisement in the US enjoys significantly more freedom than here in Germany. Although the advertisement for alcohol and cigarettes underlie strict legal regulations, comparative advertisements, product placement, and alike are common practices. According to the New York Times the more relaxed US marketing environment is likely to gain grounds in Germany, since factors such as the numerous imported American TV series and varying laws within Europe (e.g. Italy has more lenient advertisement regulations than Britain or Germany) enhance this development. Moreover, a press release in the marketing paper Horizont (German) pointed out that from 2010 onwards it is likely that product placement will no longer be prohibited by law. The German TV channel RTL for example has already engaged in product placement logo designing. Moreover, experts cited in the article believe that product placement will become extremely popular and important in the next few years and are likely to make-up for approximately 10 percent of the channel’s financing costs.

The success of product placement, especially in co-operation with a news show still needs to be determined. The viewer reactions and rates in the case of “Morning Joe” will give us an idea of how popular this type of co-operation will become. Until then we can only wait and see and – in the case of Joe Scarborough – drink Starbucks coffee.

Monitoring the real estate market it seems to have become a trend to develop a brand for luxurious real estate in order to market it better. That way real estate agents hope to attain a competitive advantage, which in turn is hoped to result in a higher price.  

To set up a brand for a property it has to have real character and charisma. Architecture, design, name, the overall atmosphere and the emotions evoked in potential customers have to complement each other gracefully. An example for the importance of the name choice is the “Holzhafen” (German for “wooden harbour”) in Hamburg. Although nothing remained from the old harbour, the name “Holzhafen” triggers emotions that help to merchandise the offices. 

A new co-branding approach: real estates and celebrities

 Another increasingly popular way to create an identity and emotions for a real estate project is to establish co-operations with celebrities, well-known architects like Herzog and de Meuron, designers or other luxury brands. For instance, in Hamburg a part of the “Sophienpalais” was designed by Karl Lagerfeld. To promote the designed apartments a special Lagerfeld showroom was established. With this co-operation the fashion designer strengthens the luxury positioning of the property. Lagerfeld’s stardom and charisma from the fashion world rubs off and provides the property with a remarkable sense of exclusiveness.

A further example is Philippe Starck, a famous French designer. He furnished some of the apartments at Hafencity for Yoo. Yoo, a well established brand for luxurious real estate, sells properties planned by respected designers from all over the world, just like the Dwell95 in New York. These design apartments achieve incredibly high prices. 

Another great example for evoking associations of a real estate property with the help of celebrities is the following: One of the islands of “The World, Dubai”, a huge array of islands which form a model of the world, was given as a present to former Formula One pilot Michael Schumacher – a strategic step that increased the profile of the real estate even further.

A new co-branding approach: real estates and design brands

Generally speaking, design is a highly important tool to increase the exclusiveness of a certain property or object. Properties containing furniture by Vitra or bathrooms with mosaics by Bisazza for example, attain significantly higher prices than they would do without the brand names and the exclusiveness coming with it.  This type of co-operation seems to be an attractive tool as it enables the real estate agencies to raise awareness and increase the emotional value, which results in higher property prices. For celebrities, architects, designers and luxury brands again it is the perfect way to prove expertise in this field and to position their products more prominently.

From our point of view the co-operation seems very promising, since it is very original, well-integrated and addresses (in case of subscribers) the readers personally. Moreover, it has an intimate dimension to it, since it makes people aware of something they do in private and often subconsciously. Although intruding the privacy in a way, the co-operation does it in such a charming and delicate way that it makes most people smile. All in all a very refreshing co-operation approach.

                    Individualised jacket                                              Personalised doodles

    Backside of the jacket

Backside of the cover

  Placement insinde the magazine

The co-operation between H&M and the designer is the 6th of its kind since 2004 and second this year already. For this years spring/summer collection H&M had already engaged with Matthew Williamson. The collection has been advertised with a joint marketing campaign including TV commercials featuring the designer in April.

In May, H&M also co-operated with numerous celebrities for “Fashion against AIDS”, a global HIV prevention campaign. Stars like Katy Perry, Tokio Hotel, N.E.R.D and Yoko Ono designed clothes for a good cause.

This type of co-operation is extremely successful. Fashion chain Mango recently introduced a co-operation with Paulo Coelho. Pierre Hardy designed for Gap in 2007 and 2008. And as already pointed out in an article from 2007, many fashion brands has or had some kind of celebrity designing for them. How long this co-operation approach will manage to attract this kind attention is discussed in the article “High street fashion and couture designers. A lasting romance?” If you want to find out more about fashion in gerneral and more specifically about the latest Jimmy Choo hype, you should check out the stylist blog and the news.sky blog.

First of all, David Stern, NBA commissioner, realised that the NBA could still learn from the English Premier League negotiation skills regarding the allocation of media rights and deals. Second of all, both teams plan to expand their markets. As basketball is primarily considered to be “a US sport” and football is considered to be “a European sport”, both leagues believe that they will be able to gain popularity abroad. A good example illustrating how football may gain popularity in the States is David Beckham, who transferred from Real Madrid to L.A. Galaxy in 2007, causing a 750 percent increase in jersey sales, a 150 percent increase in viewer rates in the US, and a frequently sold out stadium during home matches.

Although the co-operation between the NBA and the English Premier League does not mean a continuous exchange of stars between Europe and the US, it does mean that both leagues will undertake various measures to strengthen their market positions in previously untapped markets. Finally, both leagues also plan to enter the Asian market. As neither football nor basketball is very popular in Asia, there are still a lot of potential fans to win over and buying power to make use of.

Besides the general goals of the co-operation not much is known yet about the actual length and measures of it. Let’s see how the two leagues will manage to find a common denominator and not end up fighting for fans and sponsors.

Corresponding to the zeitgeist Coelho meets the demand for “life guidance”, values and morals. Especially now that political and business structures are questioned and criticised for fostering greed, corruption and dishonesty, society asks for more moral guidance. It is fashionable to be more caring and value-oriented. One is encouraged to focus on the essential aspects of life and to adapt a more modest and humble lifestyle.

The co-operation makes use of this development and prints meaningful quotes from Coelho’s novels on T-shirts e.g. “The greatest blessing in life is having dreams to realize.” 40,000 T-shirts with six different quotes are available in 68 countries around the globe. The T-shirts are packaged in the form of a book, in order to differentiate the T-shirts from the main collection and to catch the customer’s attention. In addition to the collection the shop windows are also kept and decorated in a “Coelho” theme.

The co-operation grasps and responds to the current atmosphere very well. Note- and praiseworthy is that a proportion of each sold T-shirt goes to the Paulo Coelho Institute in Brazil and helps children and elderly in need. At the same time the co-operation seems to be a bit of a parody. First of all, mass produced T-shirts with Coelho quotes and “philosophically” decorated shop windows somewhat undermine the integrity and authenticity of the author. Second of all, profound sayings sold in commercial manners simply do not appear credible. Either way people in need receive help, which is always desirable but seldom the case.

According to The Observer there are two reasons for this development - one reason is cruel reality: fewer people can afford to indulge themselves in high-fashion. The second but equally important reason is that it is simply not fashionable during the crisis to spend so much money on luxury products. It is hip to be a recessionista! Be creative, reinvent your style, mix and match, and recycle what you got! That’s the guiding fashion slogan for now.

This “recessionista trend” makes co-operations between high street fashion retailers and luxury brands even more important than they already are. In 2004, Karl Lagerfeld and H&M were the first ones to engage in such partnership. A famous designer launching a collection for a high street fashion retailer. The collection was a huge success for both parties. On one hand Lagerfeld significantly increased his publicity and brand awareness in the fashion mass market. On the other hand, H&M strengthened its position as a fashion trendsetter. Moreover, the co-operation has been a huge sales success. Barely, any marketing co-operation in the fashion industry has received the same kind of attention as H&M’s partnership with Karl Lagerfeld. The demand for the collection outperformed the most audacious expectations. Customers were waiting in line long before the stores even opened.

The success of haute couture designers and fashion retailers working hand in hand has triggered a whole series of co-operations e.g. GAP and Pierre Hardy, H&M and Stella McCartney – just to name a few. But now, this development has acquired even greater magnitude against the background of the economic crisis. Famous designers such as Shipley & Halmos, Matthew Williamson and Jil Sander have all entered co-operations with fashion discounters H&M or its Japanese counterpart Uniqlo.

Well, it appears as if the recessionista does not have to abstain from fashion, but can continue to indulge in it at a lower price.

Combined products as image and sales driver

With the ingredient branding co-operation, Renault wants to highlight its high-quality standards, its technological progress, as well as its ability to provide “comfortable driving”. Since TomTom is one of the biggest state-of-the-art manufacturers producing navigation systems it fits perfectly into Renault’s brand concept. Furthermore, the co-operation enables additional value creation for the respective customers.

From TomTom’s point of view the co-operation with Renault is mainly a chance to increase the sales volume, since the market for portable navigation systems is highly competitive. By expanding into the market of integrated navigation systems, TomTom found an effective new distribution channel, which brings the brand ahead of its competitors. On a more general note, it appears as if co-operations with car manufacturers are a popular and strategically valuable step to take. To strengthen its first-in-class positioning, TomTom has also established a similar co-operation with Toyota. The launch is announced for the fourth quarter of 2009.

Marketing measures for the new Carminat TomTom

To promote their marketing co-operation, Renault and TomTom launched an advertising campaign all over Western Europe. In order to push sales, the Carminat TomTom campaign was kicked off with a promotion: Every Renault Clio bought until August 31^st has an integrated navigation system – free of charge. With the campaign Renault aims to position the new Clio in the highly competitive segment of small cars. The co-operation thereby helps to emphasize the innovative and dynamic character of both companies.

To further highlight the technological superiority, the Carminat TomTom was introduced at several technological fairs, such as the 79^th international motor show, Geneva motor show, and CeBit fair in Germany. In addition, Renault and TomTom published a series of PR measures e.g. press releases and this promotion video:

State-of-the-art products also demand innovative communication

Overall, the ingredient branding co-operation will help both brands to strengthen admired image dimensions and to increase sales. The innovative partnership fits well with the strategic concept of TomTom to expand its market leadership and with Renault’s goal to strengthen its positioning on the European market by to stressing its image of comfortable driving.  

However, the measures of the joint campaign are not as innovative as one might assume from the product. The TV commercial (German), for example, which is on air in Germany and France, appears as a classic automotive commercial and portraits the new Carminat TomTom car as the one way to have a stress-free driving experience. A more innovative advertising campaign, comparable with the released promotion video, probably would have grabbed more attention within the target group – especially, when complemented by an eye-catching print campaign. Also, some measures on social media sites or the set-up of a joint microsite could have helped to strengthen the positioning within the young target group. When it comes to the young segment, Ford is currently having the lead with this innovative co-operation – at least in Germany.

In the light of the ever changing business environment and in the course of the ongoing financial and economic crisis, Noshokaty, Döring & Thun examined how the usage of marketing co-operations has developed. The survey enjoyed a high response rate, which speaks in favour of an ever growing interest in this topic.

Key findings of the study highlight the complexity of the deciding factors in this field, but also the significance of the developments that were undergone. Selective major findings are:

• Despite the fact that marketing co-operations gained popularity they are still not utilised for addressing all marketing challenges that they could be employed for.
• The generation of additional value for the customer becomes main objective when establishing marketing co-operations. Thus, building customer loyalty has become top priority, followed by access to new markets and gaining new customers.

The study results have been made available on the website of Noshokaty, Döring & Thun . Mesh-box wishes pleasant reading!

Interestingly, the University Mannheim questionnaire is based on a fictive firm situation in order to evaluate, under which conditions people tend to set-up a marketing co-operation. The questionnaire addresses professionals who have been involved with marketing and/or co-operations before. As this study helps to further broaden the theoretical knowledge about marketing co-operations, we would appreciate your participation by filling in this online questionnaire (English). It will take approximately 15 minutes and an Amazon voucher worth 20€ will be drawn among all participants. Many thanks in advance.

[Susanne Ewenstein]: As an agency specialising on marketing co-operations we received numerous enquiries with regards to the latest trends and best/worst practice examples. In order to meet this demand, we decided to establish mesh-box. But frankly speaking, the blog is also a great opportunity for us to show our expertise and experiences in the field marketing co-operations and it enables us to stay in contact with people sharing this special interest.

2) Mesh-box is turning two – how did the blog develop?

[Susanne Ewenstein]: Mesh-box has developed very well. The number of users is increasing continuously and the feedback we have received so far was very positive. Furthermore, we have expanded mesh-box throughout the last two years: 1) We have a newsletter which we send out on a quarterly basis. 2) We have launched a German version of mesh-box summarising all posts in German and 3) we have introduced an interview series with marketing experts. An interesting development is also the fact that although mesh-box aimed at being an interactive platform it has become more of an information source to our users. The explanation for this is probably our target group. Most of our users are in executive positions, university professors and lectors and are not among the very active users of web 2.0 applications.
Concluding I can say that I am very happy with how our “baby” has grown-up and how it has become a healthy little “toddler”.

3) On a more general note – what are your thoughts on co-operations?

[Susanne Ewenstein]: Throughout the past, co-operations have established themselves as an important marketing tool. This especially becomes apparent, when looking at the number of new co-operations (200-300 per month in Germany only). Another development is the variety of co-operations – they have become more and more cross-sectorial. Considering the fast-pace changes and the growing complexity in the field, it now is a true challenge for marketing experts to keep track of what is going on on the market.

The topic marketing co-operations has also gained increased attention in the academic field, as we realised through the growing number of university students asking us for an expert interview for their thesis. In the course of this development we have also decided to publish our own theses series. More information on this once this is finalised.

Furthermore, I think that marketing co-operations have reached a new quality standard, since a more systematic and professional approach has been adopted. This also includes that many companies – especially with a strong sales orientation – have bundled co-operation experiences through new departments solely responsible for developing and managing co-operations. Even NGOs are increasingly using marketing co-operations for their purposes and have become more and more professional. Good examples are Oxfam and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

4) What do you think are the future prospects of co-operations?

[Susanne Ewenstein]: The times in which two co-operating businesses have received attention simply because they co-operate have passed. Nowadays co-operations have to be innovative and the measures put into place under the umbrella of the co-operation need to be original in order to attract attention.

During the ongoing financial crisis co-operations are – as all other marketing and sales activities – often questioned. However, as the article “Marketing and co-operations in turbulent times” shows, co-operations can be a very effective tool to address and overcome the challenges presented by the economic downturn. Currently, we are evaluating the data of our study “Marketing co-operations in a crisis?” which investigates in how far businesses effectively use the potential of co-operations and what their impression is with regards to its effectiveness. I can’t wait to see the final study results.

5) What can we expect from mesh-box in the following weeks?

[Susanne Ewenstein]: We will publish the key results of our study “Marketing co-operations in a crisis?”. Besides that, in the upcoming weeks we will focus on the topic “Total costs of co-operations”. Moreover, the next newsletter will be published in June and the new marketing co-operation trends for Q2/2009 will be published in July. You can see there are several reasons to drop by mesh-box in the next few weeks.

Susanne Ewenstein is editor-in-chief of mesh-box.com and senior manager at the Berlin based agency for marketing and co-operations Noshokaty, Döring & Thun.

The decisive factor for Wikipedia to agree to this co-operation is its values: To make information globally accessible at no cost. Since a growing number of people make use of the internet via telecommunication devices, such as their cell phone, this co-operation appears to be a sensible and important step to take, in order to remain on top of the technological progress. Orange in turn publishes Wikipedia content on its mobile and web portals. The provider hopes that this way some of Wikipedia’s clean-cut reputation will rub-off and increase its own credibility. Under the umbrella of the co-operation both parties also intend to expand the services and functions they offer.

The co-operation is the first of its kind, and thus it will be interesting to see how it will work out and whether this will trigger a series of this type of co-operation.

Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

Crisis advances number of co-operations significantly
Since the beginning of the economic and financial crisis the number of marketing co-operations has risen by 35 percent from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008 alone, and another 5 percent until Q1 2009. Thus, marketing co-operations have recently become an ever important marketing instrument as they also pose cost saving potentials (e.g. though shared communication costs).

Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

New & innovative marketing co-operations
Check out this co-operation of MyHammer and Praktiker if you are interested in an example of innovative marketing co-operation approaches in times of the crisis.

MyHammer and Praktiker are two German companies that decided to adapt a proactive approach and tackle the situation via co-operation. Praktiker is a hardware store selling tools and outdoor furniture all over Germany. MyHammer is an online brooker bringing together high quality tradesmen and service providers with people looking to get all kinds of jobs done properly and according to their needs. Contrary to MyHammer, Praktiker serves the “Do-it-yourself” mentality and sells the necessary tools to fix the garden and the house.

Source: Joint microsite of MyHammer & Praktiker

In the middle of the economic crisis both companies realized the potential advantages of a co-operation. Although MyHammer and Praktiker cater to the needs of a similar customer base they complement each other rather than compete for each others’ customers. While MyHammer caters towards customers that need or provide services, Praktiker provides the customers with necessary D.I.Y. tools. This enables both companies to benefit from the synergetic effect that is created via the co-operation. More precisely, it is the joint development of a new marketing concept and implementation of co-marketing measures with which MyHammer and Praktiker aim to maximise profit. Each company creates incentives for its customers to make use of its co-operation partner via strategic marketing initiatives. Their first co-marketing initiative is a campaign that was started only days ago: Praktiker grants MyHammer customers that received gardening services for more than 200 € with a 20 € Praktiker voucher. The online platform and service provider MyHammer in turn ensures Praktiker with online publicity.

The hardware store Praktiker and the maintenance provider MyHammer use the time signified by challenge creatively and decided to work closely together rather than to compete. It will be interesting to see where this innovative marketing co-operation will lead to and what kind of co-marketing initiatives will follow.

Only very recently, the foundation decided to co-operate with Viacom, the parent company of MTV, BET, VH1, and Nickelodeon. Just two weeks ago Mr. Gates and Philippe P. Dauman – Viacom CEO decided upon concrete implementation steps regarding their co-operation. The main aim of the co-operation is to raise awareness and essentially to prevent irresponsible behaviour. The plan is to alter the storyline of famous TV series such as E.R. and Law & Order. After alteration the plot contains issues such as drug use, HIV/Aids, the consequences for school drop-outs, and alike. In a subtle way the series illustrates the dangers of irresponsible behaviour, and thus alarms its audience.

This type of co-operation has several advantages in comparison to the conventional NGO marketing campaigns. First of all, it reaches out to a much wider audience. Meaning, people, who are usually not exposed to campaigns addressing these issues, will also be confronted with them. Second of all, the co-operation reaches out to an audience that may not be so receptive to the “typical” NGO marketing. Third of all, the rather subtle and indirect fashion, in which the problems are brought forward, may be more effective. They are disguised as part of the plot and not so much as an omnipresent danger. Finally, stars such as George Clooney address the consequences of irresponsible behaviour and that way act as role models. Evidently, the co-operation is also beneficial for Viacom, e.g. in terms of image maintenance.

Generally speaking this new type of co-operation between the US entertainment industry and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation appears to be very promising. The only potential danger is that the issues addressed in the TV series go by unnoticed, since they could be considered to be simply part of the storyline. Apart from that the approach to place relevant messages within existing and attention getting media is very innovative and deserves support.

Karsten Kilian, specialist in the field of brand management, emphasizes that “marketing co-operations with a celebrity are a simple and efficient advertising method – as long as 80 percent of the relevant target group is familiar with the celebrity’s name and appearance”. Besides, the branding expert points out, “there has to be a clear personality fit between the brand and the celebrity”. The research associate at the University of St. Gallen is devoted to the analysis of brand personalities and author of the book “Marke unser” (Brand’s Prayer), which introduces outstanding cult brands like Apple, Harley-Davidson, and Mercedes-Benz. Moreover, he has built up Markenlexikon.com, the largest portal on brand management in the German-speaking world. The website is dedicated to all aspects of brand building, including the role of famous faces for companies. Here, Karsten Kilian distinguishes between five types:

• Accidental Spokespersons: People who have reached an enormous value not just in their own “industry”, but across industries, e.g. high value “brand” Barack Obama, whose added brand value for company Blackberry is estimated at 50 million Dollars by analysts.
• Company Representatives: A company’s founder, leader, or an outstanding employee can each function as famous faces for the own brand, e.g. Bill Gates for Microsoft or his competitor Steve Jobs for Apple.
• Celebrities: The most popular embodiment of a brand, e.g. Bruce Willis for Veltins beer or Jude Law for Dior perfumes.
• Characters: Enriching a brand profile with a company-owned brand character, e.g. the Michelin Man, or a licensed character, e.g. Tom and Jerry for the energy giant EnBW.
• Licensors: Embossing a brand with the own name, e.g. Kate Moss for Topshop (also see earlier post) or Steffi Graf for underwear.

Evidently, there are many possibilities to advertise a brand with a well-known testimonial. The key factor for a successful brand alliance, besides joint measures, is to find a personality that matches the aspired brand image. With strategic tools like “mapping”, “positioning models” and “fit analyses” a false choice can be avoided. However, a person standing in the spotlight always bears the risk of negative image transfer. A recent example is Verona Pooth, a famous German testimonial for several brands, who has lost two of her advertisement contracts because she is suspected to commit tax evasion. Typically, a famous face can add a unique value and refresh a brand positively, like recent co-operations between Moët & Chandon and Scarlett Johansson or Procter & Gamble and Til Schweiger illustrate. Brand expert Karsten Kilian grasps the essence of this marketing trend by emphasising that “nothing is more trustful than a brand made out of flesh and blood.”

Title: Co-Branding as a strategic brand alternative within cross-marketing

Author: Julia Kemper

Type of publication: Diploma Thesis, University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Dortmund), Germany

Publication Date: 27th January 2009

Methodology: Combination of classical academic literature and practitioner literature, additional expert interview with Angela Hund-Göschel of the agency for marketing & co-operations Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

Keywords: co-branding, cross-marketing, co-marketing, marketing co-operation, brand management, corporate branding

Abstract: The purpose of the thesis is to evaluate the hypothesis that co-branding will be established as a long-term alternative in brand management. The thesis begins with a detailed analysis of brand management and cross-marketing. Afterwards the author takes a closer look at co-branding within cross-marketing and discusses the advantages as well as the risks of co-branding. The academic analyses combined with co-branding case studies of Porsche Design Group with Rodenstock, Adidas and Poggenpohl led to the conclusion that the importance of marketing co-operations is constantly increasing and that innovative co-branding concepts will be an alternative approach within brand management in the future.

In order to see how this attitude and implementation approach of German companies has developed ever since and against the background of the current recession, Noshokaty, Döring & Thun is now conducting a new survey with the title “marketing co-operations in a crisis?”

The study is available in German and English here on mesh-box. Your participation in the study would contribute to finding out about the role of marketing co-operations in times of a recession and help others to learn from your experiences. Many thanks in advance.

Let’s look at cost cutting. Activities that are not directly related to sales are usually affected the most. Marketing budgets have been reduced significantly. Only few exceptional companies follow an anti-cyclic strategy such as Audi or Beiersdorf, who boosted this year’s marketing budget in order to transform the crisis into an opportunity.

However, for many companies marketing investments have become ball and chain, as can be seen when looking at the discontinuation of numerous sponsoring partnerships like car brand Volkswagen and “Deutsche Oper” (German opera) as well as the three banks ING, RBS and Credit Suisse and their Formula One partner teams.

Prof. Anton Meyer, Chief of the Marketing Institute at Munich University says: “It is a mistake to cut down the marketing budgets in times of crisis. The crisis is a good opportunity to strengthen market shares and to build customer confidence.” and therewith emphasises an assumption that many marketing experts and recent studies agree with: Now is the time for companies to act. Cost efficient sales measures combined with a well-focused company strategy are more important than ever before. Considering the context, co-operating can be an attractive and effective tool in terms of a company’s strategy – unfortunately many companies have not yet realized the potential advantages of joint measures. Furthermore, there are three major misapprehensions that might explain this situation:

• Misapprehension No. 1: Marketing co-operations are not sales relevant
  It clearly depends on how a co-operation is planned and implemented, but generally speaking marketing co-operations can be effectively utilised and by that generate increased sales. This can be achieved, for example, by benefiting from the partners’ direct access to specific target groups.
  A good example is a co-operation of comdirect bank and retail chain Tchibo in Germany, in which comdirect markets attractive banking products exclusively via Tchibo’s online and offline shops – with great success.
• Misapprehension No. 2: New marketing co-operations are an additional cost driver
  It hardly makes sense to look at marketing solely from the cost perspective. It is rather the ratio between costs and generated benefits of the selected marketing measures that matters - especially in times of recession. Here, new opportunities like marketing co-operations can reduce costs, since co-operating partners can share their respective costs, e.g. by splitting advertising budgets of joint measures.
  In Germany, the coffee brand Senseo and online dating platform Neu.de have done so for years. They successfully advertised an innovative coffee machine system in combination with the general concept of ‘trying new things’, i.e. finding new love.
• Misapprehension No. 3: The establishment of co-operations takes (too) much time
  Co-operations can be established within short time periods, when adhering to a set of relevant principles: Hands-on co-operation offers, parallel talks with several potential partners, a concept where both partners and their customers win at the centre of interest (“Win-Win-Win”), clear definition and focus on a clear set of specific measures as well as close alignments during the implementation. By adhering to these points, a co-operation can be established and implemented within a few months rather than quarters.
  In reaction on the market slowdown and consequential actions of the German government thereon, US car brand Ford, for example, recently established a co-operation with MySpace Germany for promoting Ford’s model “Ka”. The co-operation aims to raise awareness within the young, urban target group by integrating Ford in the second season of the web soap “They call us Candy Girls” starting in April.

So, even during a recession there is no point for decision makers to halt new business activities and to refuse new projects. Right now, it can be a mistake to think in (over)simplified categories, particularly if it abstracts away from solid marketing opportunities. The realignment of the present marketing strategy and consideration of new marketing prospects are essential steps before executing cost cuttings.

In any case, a categoric refusal of new business prospects will neither help in positive economic situations nor in a crisis. Accordingly, we are not simply arguing pro co-operations, but pleading for a fact-based approach of assessing all opportunities: In a crisis, “doing the right things” becomes even more important.

As the partnership also helps Skype to reach more users and Nokia to give an added value to its costumers, this co-operation really allows a win-win-win-situation. Skype COO Scott Durchslag says: “Collaborating closely with Nokia to preload and integrate our software onto their devices will benefit the many Nokia customers who already use Skype, as it makes Skype easily accessible and simple to use on the go. It will also bring Skype new users who love Nokia’s Symbian S60 experience.”

But what is a benefit for consumers isn’t always a good deal for providers. The reactions of several mobile phone operators during the last weeks showed that they fear a loss of their business as international calls are usually quite profitable. So even before the co-operation has started, Skype and Nokia have heavy objectors. So far, international telecommunication companies have shown their rejection in varying ways. Some of them consider prohibiting the use of VoIP-Software entirely within their contracts or to integrate blocking software. Others publicly think about excluding Nokia mobile phones with integrated Skype-software from their product portfolio. (Does anyone else feel reminded of the times when the big record labels reacted on the availability of DRM-free music, e.g. in Apple’s iTunes store?)

It seems the heavy reactions are somehow an indication for the potential impact the partnership could have on the future of telecommunication, especially with regard to the benefits it provides for users. But instead of blocking a trendsetting application, which already has more than 400 million users, providers could rather start developing new business models. The three-year partnership between Skype and Hutchison 3G in Britain, for example, proved that an integration of Skype can also be beneficial for a telecommunication provider when billing the transferred data volume.

But instead of that, smaller telecommunication providers are now opening negotiations with Skype on international level. They see their chance to win a unique selling point and to consequently gain market share from larger competitors. Simultaneously, some German telecommunication companies responded to the debate by adjusting contract conditions to the disadvantage of costumers, e.g. by banning VoIP. In the context of the ongoing trends and developments in communication technologies, a better answer would have been to give consumers the advantage of choice, don’t you think?

Title: Efficiency and effectiveness of marketing co-operations – performance measurements based on a structured input-output-evaluation

Author: Petra Branz

Type of publication: Diploma Thesis, University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Offenburg, Medien und Informationswesen), Germany

Publication Date: October 2008

Methodology: Combination of use of classical academic and practitioner literature, additional expert interview with Simon Thun of the agency for marketing & co-operations Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

Keywords: Brand alliances, marketing alliance, co-marketing, marketing co-operation, co-branding, brand management, co-advertising, strategic alliance, corporate branding, sponsoring

Abstract: The efficiency and effectiveness of marketing co-operations depend on a variety of parameters and were hardly measurable and therewith almost not comparable between companies to date. There already have been qualitative approaches to measure marketing co-operations. However, so far there has not been a method that includes all facets of marketing co-operations based on quantitative parameters. This thesis results in a sample structure consisting of input (effort) and output (return) measures, which serves as a framework for possible performance indicators. As the approach for measuring performances of companies are generally identical, the sample structure is a useful addition to existing measures and a good basis for an integrated performance measurement for the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing co-operations.

Finding the right partner for a marketing co-operation is not always easy. But a range of partnering platforms have emerged during the last years that help identifying and getting in touch with potential partner companies.So for instance Marketmarket, a German online portal for B2B marketing & sales co-operations, and online platform Introniche. There are also industry-specific partnering events, e.g. in the biotech industry such as BIO-Europe and BioEquity, where companies can meet potential co-operation partners. A similar event for companies across all industries was organised by the DDV (Deutscher Direktmarketing Verband e.V.) in 2006. The event called “MaCon” (i.e. MarketingConnections) was a get-together for marketers, to enter private talks with other brands about prospective co-operations.

Recently, an upcoming co-operation event has grabbed our attention: The CO-BRANDS 2009, organised by the agency connecting brands. The approach of this event resembles the one of the “MaCon”, but wraps it up in a more innovative concept of “co-operation speed dating”. Decision makers of 100 top advertising companies will meet in up to 10 private talks of 25 minutes each. After 25 minutes, they change seats just like in a normal speed dating event. To assure talks are successful, connecting brands is using matchmaking software, which analyses co-operation profiles of attending companies and suggests adequate dialogue partners prior to the event but the companies can also request “dates” with matching companies.

The program of the “speed dating” event is as follows:

08.15-09.00 Check In
09.00-09.30 Reception
09.30-10.15 Key Note
10.15-10.45 Networking Break
10.45-12.15 Rounds of Talk 1-3
12.15-13.30 Business Lunch
13.30-15.30 Rounds of Talk 4-7
15.30-16.00 Networking Break
16.00-17.30 Rounds of Talk 8-10
18.00-20.00 Dinner
20.00-23.00 Open Bar

The event takes place in the EAST Hotel in Hamburg on April 20th 2009. Companies interested can find more information on the event website www.co-brands.de (available in German only). Registration is still possible via this link. We, on our part, look forward to hearing about how well speed dating works in the business/marketing co-operation context.

Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

My name: Michael Hartwig

My company: General Motors Europe

My position: Head of European Marketing Communications Opel/Vauxhall

Selected co-operations I worked on: None since I started the assignment at GM Europe. Different engagements in my previous jobs in the automotive industry and ecommerce.

Relevance of co-operations in our industry: In general, I believe that the right connection of fitting partners can lead to very valuable synergies. This has always been and will always be important to the industry as such. In times of declining budgets the more evident question will be: What’s the real impact on the business? Sales oriented co-operations will be more important than purely brand related ones. Still, every brand that wants to be recognized with a crystal clear profile needs to think about energizing the territories they want to occupy. They need to cover an authentic brand experience. We should tell the audience that we know what they need and understand their way of living. But a brand should never tell them what fits to their live. Especially the more postmodern milieu will be offended by that since they want to be seen as people who exactly know themselves and what’s good for them and what not.

Our criteria for partner selection: Before we liaise with partners we conduct a detailed and profound brand foundation. Our values and things that we believe in as a brand should certainly show strong and relevant overlaps.

Companies/brands I would like to partner with: Here we are very open to partner with other brands, preferably European or even German since this is something that would support one of our strong core values “German inventiveness”. Preferably strong consumer brands.

Main challenges in establishing co-operations: Main challenge is the consumer take-out, key messaging and a crystal call to action or understanding. Comprehension is key. They have to fit to both companies and they need to bring out the best of the two worlds.

Good practice co-operation examples: Nike - Apple.

Bad practice co-operation examples: Any pure sponsoring based cases. There are tons of examples out there.

DOs in co-operations: Secure the budget - make it happen - on both sides. Also in terms of headcount and dedicated people on the project. Stay credible in all you do, but surprise the audience.

DONTs in co-operations: Don’t meet up with a brand that is far too aspirational for you. Then you loose your genuinity.

The “next big thing” in co-operations: Build really really really integrated cases that work on the varied disciplines in your marketing mix.

Opportunities and risks of co-operations in the current economic crisis: In the current situation only very strong co-operations will have a chance to make it to market. Sales orientation and true relevance for the target group are key.

The measures of Ford and MySpace include a casting call for a guest appearance in the series. Advertisements were placed on MySpace and resulted in a specially created brand community. Moreover, the “Candy Girls” will be driving a Ford Ka in the season.

To renew its young image and to emphasis the “urbanity” and “coolness” of the Ford Ka, the company decided that the “Candy Girls” community was the ideal target group. By co-operating with MySpace Germany, Ford is also able to position itself in an innovative environment with a broad community. The average age of MySpace users is 25, but the web soap addresses an even younger audience. In fact the average age of the “Candy Girls” is between 18 and 20 years.

The last season was watched 1.9 million times by users and the “Candy Girls” had remarkable 700.000 page views, thus a certain reach within the target group is guaranteed. But one must admit that the quality and content of the soap are not appealing to everyone. This might also be the reason why Ford communicates the co-operation almost exclusively via MySpace: to avoid a negative image transfer with regards to its older target groups. But at the latest with the start of the new season of the series in April, we will find out whether this co-operation pays off for Ford and Ford Ka.

Happy New Year 2009! We hope it’s not too late for best wishes and kick of another exciting editorial year of marketing co-operations with Hunter, a long-established brand for traditional British Wellington boots, which is a good example for the successful implementation of an international co-operation.

In collaboration with the well-known charity organization WaterAid, Hunter organized an online auction in order to sell Wellington boots that are signed by different celebrities. The auction aimed to raise money for WaterAid’s endeavours in Madagascar where the organization provides safe water, sanitation as well as hygiene education. During the British Glastonbury music festival last year, several celebrities like Kate Moss, Peaches Geldorf, Lily Cole, James Blunt or Kelly Osbourne were asked to sign Wellington boots. The limited edition was later sold in an online auction and revenues were invested in Madagascar.

This marketing co-operation provides a high value added for both partners. On the one hand, Hunter is able to position itself as an innovative leader in the field of festival shoes. Moreover, Hunter’s international brand recognition has increased due the yellow press, which spread pictures of stars wearing Hunters like wildfire. On the other hand, customers are able to demonstrate social responsibility by buying “charity boots” while feeling “en vogue” wearing the same brand as Kate & Co.

By engaging in another co-operation, Hunter is now trying to address another target group besides music fans. By partnering with the exclusive shoe brand Jimmy Choo, which stands for sophisticated and classy shoes, Hunter will be able to offer another limited edition of exclusive boot. The shoe combines the quintessential design elements of Jimmy Choo with the original British tradition of Hunter - a fusion of fashion and function. This makes the “Wellies”, how they are called affectionately, not only roadworthy but also an accepted fashion accessory.

Interestingly, the shoe is solely distributed by Jimmy Choo, in boutiques or on its website and therewith only available in America and the UK. This is part of Jimmy Choo’s strategy that aims to preserve the exclusiveness of the brand. Moreover, Jimmy Choo wants to position itself in the highly competitive “It-shoe” market by showing its uniqueness and intends to create a younger and more modern brand image. Due to this co-operation with a high-end fashion designer, Hunter is positioning its Wellington boots in the world of fashion and gets rid of the traditional image of plastic boots.

With all of these measures, Hunter is able to create a total repositioning of its brand as well as a high value added for its customer, WaterAid and Jimmy Choo. So let’s see where Hunter’s soft spot for marketing co-operation will lead the brand next - whoever it might be who will be “hunted” next, we’ll keep you posted…

Another year went by so fast and the mesh-box team is about to go on Christmas holiday, but of course not without giving you a short sum up on what has happened in the field of marketing co-operations. Also, 2008 has been an important year for mesh-box and its team and we would like to share the review on this development with you. 

So what was the news in 2008? Well, a lot! We kicked of the year with a little reinvention of mesh-box: the big relaunch in April brought an enhanced lay-out and a new structure with three categories: co-operation examples, articles and facts & figures. Simultaneously, we introduced the mesh-box newsletter with latest information on marketing co-operations. We could also engage experts in the field of co-operations like Marco Sewald of SEB Bank for our new interview series. Also, we could discover a number of relevant theses, e.g. on the topic of co-branding. In 2009, we’re planning to find even more interesting interview partners and theses for you. Last but not least we could again provide you with the latest facts and figures about marketing co-operations in Germany, which clearly showed that the trend towards marketing co-operations is stronger than ever. Where it was about 700 marketing co-operations in 2007, we could count more than 900 in 2008! On mesh-box we picked out the most interesting ones for you… see what has happened: 

• In January adidas & Diesel start the campaign for their joint denim collection “adidas Originals Denim by Diesel” - the beginning of a long term partnership
• In February it became clear that Panties & flowers on Valentines Day - the beginning of a long-term partnership between Fleurop and Palmers can be a great gift when bought in a nice little set from Palmers and Fleurop.
• March showed us that co-operations can not only be utilised for marketing purposes, but at the same time raise money for a good cause, like the Global co-operation of MTV and The Body Shop aims to prevent AIDS.
• April brought us two gigantic partnerships: Live LG like Iron Man – a multi-channel marketing co-operation utilised all sorts of media and measures for a 360 degree activation of potential viewers for the film version of the comic. Only days before, adidas and Samsung jointly launched a mobile training system, a side kick to Nike’s and Apple’s existing partnership and a great co-developed product for every sports enthusiast.
• In May, IKEA entered the virtual worlds of Electronic Arts and
• in June we found a good example on How not to do it - a bad practice co-operation measure by Amazon and McDonald’s
• In July we could see a darling of the Germans supporting a good cause: Michael Schumacher supported Bacardi’s “champions drink responsibly” campaign.
• In August we had to ask: Is The fragrance of love - a senseful co-operation?
• In September a great example on co-operations from the financial sector was posted: Fortis bank in cross-marketing deal with Senseo coffee.
• In October we could see how Procter & Gamble docks laundry to fashion – with fashion being a trend that was continued throughout the year.
• Also in November it was the Fashion talent Svenja Jander that gives new glamour to Pfaff sewing machines.
• And, from a short trip to the US we brought you  Yet another Starbucks & iTunes initiative in December.

To successfully establish and manage co-operations is a great task – that’s why we try to provide you with some insight into this complex topic, e.g. by introducing book recommendations like the New book on co-operations with a “Cool Factor”  , short summaries of theses like the New Master Thesis on Co-Branding as a Tool for Strategic Brand Activation and expert articles like Marketing co-operations in a nutshell or A co-operation comes to an end. What’s to consider? to you. 

As you see, 2008 has been a great year for co-operations and we hope for the year of 2009 to bring up more innovative and interesting partnerships. The mesh-box team is looking forward to report on the latest marketing co-operation examples, facts, figures and articles to you also next year and hopes to hear more from you. 

So, we would like to wish you a Happy Christmas, a lovely holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Title: Cooperative Brand Management – a conceptual guidance for a target-oriented use of Co-Branding strategies

Author: Katharina Lang

Type of publication: Master’s Thesis, University of applied sciences: Berlin School of Economics, Germany

Publication Date: November 2008

Methodology: combination of use of classical academic & practitioner literature and interviews with German marketing researchers as well as company representatives from Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, Noshokaty, Döring & Thun, Pickmeup

Keywords: brand alliances, marketing alliance, co-marketing, marketing co-operation, co-branding, brand management, co-advertising, strategic alliance, corporate branding

Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to develop management guidelines for the target-oriented use of co-branding strategies. The thesis covers a detailed analysis of the different types of strategic and tactical brand alliances, particular risks and chances as well as potential success factors. The theoretical investigation and the case studies of two selected Apple alliances led to the conclusion that there is no panacea for the success of a co-branding strategy. The results showed clearly that the decision for the type of co-operative strategy depends for the most part on the different co-branding aims that each partner attempts to achieve. As an orientation aid, a conceptual framework was designed that guides through the different stages in the management process of building brand alliances.

The benefits of the co-operation are manifold:
1) Starbucks customers get a free song/video on the iTunes Store and a music recommendation.
2) Starbucks can increase “shop floor traffic” by giving customer an incentive to visit their coffee shops and boosts sales.
3) iTunes activates users, luring them with a free download offer to the iTunes store. This will not only activate existing iTunes customers but result in many new registrations.

Moreover, there is a fourth party benefiting from this initiative. The artists/labels, as awareness of the artist will be increased on a large scale.

For further information on this collaboration check out press release at:

http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=857

The paper was submitted for his degree as an Executive Master in Marketing & Advertising at the Solvay Business School in Brussels and is available online at http://introniche.w3point.be/en/about/publications.

Title: Brand Alliances

Author: Sam Desimpel

Type of publication: Master thesis, University: Solvay Business School;
Université Libre de Bruxelles,/Belgium

Publication Date: December 2008

Methodology: the paper has been written inspired by classical academic & practicioner
literature as well as interviews with Belgian marketing professionals.

Keywords: Brand Alliances, Trade marketing, web 2.0, brand alliances 2.0, affiliate marketing, Marketing cooperatives, marketing alliance, marketing partnership, marketing joint venture, co-marketing, marketing co-operation, cause marketing, cause related marketing

Abstract: The brand alliance paper first covers the different advantages and disadvantages of strategic and tactical brand alliances with close attention to rules of thumb on how to organise a good brand alliance and of the regal frameworks applicable to brand alliances. In the second part, the paper discusses the similarities between a brand alliance and the web 2.0 philosophy and lays out a possible framework for a brand alliance 2.0.

The fit between the two co-operation partners seems flawless, as both represent a deep passion for sewing. In its 146 years of history, Pfaff has always had innovation, competence, performance and quality in sewing as its key principles. Young professional Svenja Jander again states that she has sewed passionately ever since her childhood and represents a rising number of young fashion talents. The authenticity of the partnership arises from the very unique characteristics of the young talent: her uncompromising passion for sewing and her high quality standards. It makes her preference for the brand credible.

The partnership clearly shows that it does not always need big names like Madonna as testimonials. With this co-operation, Pfaff will reach young fashion designers as well as young hobby and/or professional tailors, mainly within Germany - a quite specific but highly relevant target group. But if the objective is to address a broad target group globally, than yes, a partnership with a superstar like Madonna is much more sensible.

Pfaff should utilise this co-operation in innovative measure to approach its small and very specific target group. Along the co-work, the company should also grab this chance to pimp up its homepage – making it more interactive - to better serve the younger audience. Until now, Pfaff already improved style and content for parts, mainly by integrating colourful flash applications. The company now also communicates itself as official supplier of Germany’s “The next fashion talent” on its homepage, but the co-operation with Svenja Jander, however, is so far not visible at all.

In consequence, an integrated marketing campaign that features Svenja Jander prominently and that promotes Pfaff’s homepage with Svenja related content seems necessary to fully exploit the collaboration’s potential. I am curious to see how this collaboration develops.

Google can now feed its virtual library with English publications of Bertelsmann daughter Random House, the world’s biggest book publisher. As a start, all new publications will be archived. It can be expected that Bertelsmann’s German publishers Heyne, Goldmann, BTB und DVA will be brought on board in the medium term.

For users of the Google Book Search this implies a considerable added value, as the full-text-search function gives them access to far more digitized books. A mere entering of keywords or text passages leads them to books with appropriate content. Undoubtedly, Google successfully enlarges its book search offering through this partnership. David Drummond, chief legal advisor of Google, notes that „this is the beginning of a new era in accessing digital informations”. At the same time, Random House benefits through the partner program because it helps to boost sales via links to bookstores, online retailers and publisher’s websites. Moreover, scanned books can also be downloaded to the screen immediately when the respective payments have been made.

Nevertheless, this networking program evokes critics: It is likely that small publishing companies - that are not listed in Google’s Book Search - experience a competitive disadvantage and it is questionable if Google’s Book Search will ever manage to include enough abstracts to make the service really work. What do you think?

Daniela Wieser of the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) in Innsbruck/Austria has written a diploma thesis about co-branding. You find a summary of the study below. For further information, contact the study’s author Daniela Wieser under da.wieser (AT) mci4me.at

Title: “Stellenwert und Perspektiven des Co-Branding - Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Analyse”

Authors: Daniela Wieser

Type of publication: Diploma Thesis

University: Management Center Innsbruck (MCI), Innsbruck/Austria

Publication Date: July 30, 2008

Methodology: The empirical analysis consists of a comprehensive company survey carried out in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and expert interviews of different consultant firms (Noshokaty, Döring & Thun, Institute of Brand Logic, htp St. Gallen, impalawolfmitbiss, Brandmeyer Markenberatung, Goodbrands, SEMPORA Consulting)

Keywords: Co-Branding

Abstract: Purpose of this paper is to show that co-branding is the central and topical focus of brand management in a time of growing product and brand diversity, stimulus satiation of consumers and loss of clarity of brand profiles. In saturated markets with more and more interchangeable products, companies are looking for ways of differentiation. Brand strategy replaces, in science as well as in application, more and more the classic way of brand extension. Companies are trying to create synergetic partnerships to create products with a dual quality standard. The consumer can satisfy two needs with one purchase. The sometimes difficult decision between brands becomes easier. The results of the company survey and the expert interviews show that co branding as a strategy has not yet reached its peak. The main goals of such co-operations are to gain access to new markets, to create a positive image transfer and thus to create more value for both brands involved. The selection of a well suited partner as well as stringent and comprehensive planning and execution are the main components of a successful co-branding strategy.

My name: Marco Sewald

My company: SEB Bank Deutschland

My position: Director, Head of Strategic Cooperation Management

Selected co-operations I worked on: Since I’m leading the Strategic Cooperation Management department at the SEB Bank, I am constantly dealing with co-operations. In the past years my department has set up marketing partnerships for instance with the swedish ferry company StenaLine, the telco provider o2, the travel provider Berge & Meer, the federal police union and the publishing company vorwärts.

Relevance of co-operations in our industry: For retail banking, co-operations have become an integral element of the marketing mix. Marketing partnerships are a powerful sales tool, especially when the respective partner has an attractive customer base that can be directly addressed. I cannot think of any player that can afford not to use co-operations for addressing new target groups, creating leads and winning new customers. We have to go beyond traditional media/ communication and sales channels, especially when addressing younger target groups that are increasingly difficult to reach via traditional media/communication. Furthermore, partnerships that include joint brand communication can increase brand awareness and can influence the brand image positively. We also use partnerships to offer little extras to our loyal customers.

Our criteria for partner selection: In our department, we evaluate potential partners on the basis of ten selection criteria. However, as our department has the clear objective to generate leads and to win new customers, four questions are of particular importance:

• Does the partner have a customer base that is relevant to us (in terms of size, demography, regions)?
• Does the partner possess the required communication channels to directly address it?
• Does the partner’s target group significantly overlap with our target group?
• Does the partner plan communication campaigns with attractive integration opportunities?

Companies/brands I would like to partner with: There are a few… Ikea and H&M would be great!

Main challenges in establishing co-operations: Many partners struggle to get the required support, since co-operations are in many cases (especially when no dedicated co-operation department is in place) on-top projects that colleagues have to do in addition to their regular workload.

Good practice co-operation examples: Our partnership with StenaLine AB in Germany is pretty successful.

Bad practice co-operation examples: The partnership with the German advisory association for elderly people wasn’t as successful as expected (low business impact, few activities).

DOs in co-operations: Always double-check on both sides if the resources required for implementing all planned measures are in place. Sometimes, it helps to be a bit pragmatic.

DONTs in co-operations: Don’t spend too much time on jointly developing a gigantic, detailed catalogue of joint measures. Once a co-operation concept was developed and a mutual understanding of the co-operation logic and deal established, run a pilot. Get started and check if the partner meets your expectations before spending much time on long-term preparation. Then you can simultaneously and jointly develop the co-operation further.

The “next big thing” in co-operations: The online integration of partner content becomes easier through tools like widgets and work well for pilot activities. In the banking sector there are those “newly-born” partnerships between governments and banks that cause quite a stir at the moment…

Title: “Co-Branding as a Tool for Strategic Brand Activation - How to Find the Ideal Partner. An Explanatory Case Study in the Fashion and Design Sector”

Authors: Natalia Dorozala and Antonia Kohlbrenner
Type of publication: Master thesis
University: School of Economic and Management, Lund University/Sweden
Publication Date: May 30, 2008
Methodology: Multiple Case Study - Interviews with expert consultants and company representatives (adidas, BMW, BMW MINI, Diesel, H&M, Opel, Philips, Sharp, Volkswagen, Noshokaty, Döring & Thun)
Keywords: Brand Building and Brand Activation, Relationship Marketing, Strategic Alliances, Affinity Partnering, Co-Branding, Consumer-Brand Relationships

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the interdependencies within the process of partner selection in the fashion and design sector and the emanating criteria for finding the ideal co-branding partner in order to use co-branding as a strategic brand activation tool. The study results showed that partner selection depends decisively on the different co-branding aims and incorporates the crucial step when using co-branding as a tool for strategic brand activation. The co-branding aim and the corresponding partner lead to various types of relationships, which, in this study, are anthropomorphized to connect the world of marketing and branding to real life. Fashion and design brands have proven to be particularly eligible as co-branding partners for brand activation due to their innovative and trend-oriented nature.

According to Kash Shaikh, marketing manager at P&G, women actually spend $1,500 a year on dry cleaning, whereas 65 percent of those clothes are machine washable. Years of research were necessary, so Shaikh, to invent detergent products that preserve the shape and colour of clothes after repeated washes. Now, P&G send out the message that the new detergents help cutting down on dry cleaning bills by keeping clothes looking new up to 30 washes. As part of the co-operation, Ann Taylor Loft alert customers to the products’ benefits with posters and fitting room decals throughout the stores and an eight-page magazine which contains tips on how to keep clothes looking fresh. Chief marketing officer Robert Luzzi of Ann Taylor Loft notes that the partnership is incredibly relevant to their customers. Apart from delivering an added value (a free detergent sample), Ann Taylor Loft benefits of increased awareness through “Tide and Downy Total Care” print ads in fashion magazines such as Elle and InStyle, which include the Ann Taylor brand.  These activities come along with a series of in-store events with celebrity stylist Jorge Ramon, who makes several appearances throughout the campaign. Thus, Ann Taylor Loft customers get free personalized styling tips.

On the part of P&G the store chain was chosen as Ann Taylor is one of the few upper-class retail chains that has a relatively high percentage of washable products. Additionally, there is a high fit of their target groups as they both appeal to budget-conscious women who are interested in fashion.

Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

In some cases, marketing co-operations simply phase out unnoticeably in the course of time without causing a stir. This is often the case, when no new budgets are allocated, the performance has not reached the objectives, the belief in the co-operation’s success is missing or the performance has not been tracked properly, the responsible persons change jobs and the new person in charge focuses on different tasks. In other cases, co-operations terminate all of a sudden. Such situations can have several reasons: The management of one of the co-operating companies has changed and now pursuits a different strategy, the allocated budget is suddenly locked or the partner brand faces severe image problems.

Our experiences have shown that co-operations that slowly phase out in the course of time do require in most cases little management effort and collateral communications to finish off decently. Although this might not always be the most efficient approach and exceptions occur, of course (so for instance when co-operations involved complex business processes, many different business interfaces and high number of customer interactions). The sudden end to co-operations, however, runs the risk of severe brand damage and negative consumer experiences. It requires a solid management of the termination process (to smoothly separate the mutual business activities) and a clear communication strategy (to stop people from speculating, to avoid negative user experiences and wrong expectations).

It is certainly understandable, that generally little effort is being allocated to the termination of something that has no future and thus presents little opportunity to distinguish oneself from others in the working environment. But co-operation managers should always analyse the risk related to an unmanaged co-operation termination: meaning for instance image damage, negative user experiences and speculations in the market. Managing the termination of a co-operation professionally can address these risks.

Before you hop onto the next big project, analyse what is at stake here and see if it is worth running the risks of abandoning the co-operation to its fate or not. In addition, the documentation of key learnings of the co-operation engagement including an overview of the people involved, their responsibilities and a list of future contact persons might also be a sensible thing to do.

In the fast-moving and highly competitive, global high street fashion business, retailers face a lot of challenges. They need to regularly provide special incentives and occasions to draw customers to their shop floors. They need to strengthen brand awareness and their fashion positioning. They need to enter new markets and address new target groups. Thus, they need to differentiate themselves constantly from competitors. In the last years, fashion retailers have increasingly turned to “high fashion” designers and trendy/famous celebrities to address these challenges.

H&M might not have been the first fashion retailer to collaborate with fashion designers, but they were the ones who rolled out this strategy most consistently and professionally. Four years have passed since their first seasonal design collaboration with the iconic Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld. While H&M announced one collaboration after another with impressive frequency (e.g. with Italian desiger Roberto Cavalli, pop icon Madonna, Stella McCartney, Dutch designer duo Victor & Rolf, pop princess Kylie Minogue, and now even with Comme des Garçons), other retailers started to follow H&M:

Karstadt & Kostas Murkudis
Gap & Pierre Hardy
Karstadt & Kaviar Gauche
Topshop & Kate Moss
Mango & Penelope/Monica Cruz
EASTPAK & RAF SIMONS
s.Oliver & Anastacia

H&M seems to be uncontested with their strategic and long-term approach to partnering with couture designers and celebrities while other companies experiment with one-off collaborations. They launch new seasonal collaborations regularly and activate them comprehensively (e.g. promoting the collaborations on a global scale with billboard posters, TV- commercials, dedicated websites, press events/fashion shows, videos of the respective designers/celebrities, etc.) creating a huge buzz in the fashion world.

The question for them and others is how long this concept will remain successful. I believe these forms of collaboration will continue to be a popular tactic within the fashion industry’s marketing mix. In the short run, we will see many more fashion retail chains engaging in this field. But it gets increasingly difficult to create an equal amount of awareness with design partnerships compared to the early collaborations. They benefited greatly from their first mover advantage, and the PR effect and store traffic/sales impact were huge.

Nowadays, it is more challenging to capture the public imagination with another cameo by a famous designer, model or actress. The seasonal collections with designers will need to be increasingly distinct from the mainstream collections and should clearly reflect the signature style of the collaborating designer. They require an even more powerful activation and present a clear value proposition to the customer. On the other hand, fashion companies are running the risk of confusing customers with too many design partnerships in the market. In the long run, new innovative partnership concepts are required to achieve a similary high impact. A famous name will hardly be enough…

H&M + Karl Lagerfeld (Key visual):

H&M + Karl Lagerfeld (TV ad):

H&M + Roberto Cavalli (Print ad/poster):

H&M + Madonna (Personal invitation):

H&M + Madonna (Print ad):

H&M + Madonna (Promotion material):

H&M + Stella McCartney (Key visual):

H&M + Stella McCartney (TV ad):

H&M + Victor & Rolf (Key visual):

H&M + Kylie Minogue (Key visual):

H&M + Comme des Garçons (Key visual):

H&M + Comme des Garçons (Internet presence/screenshot):

Gap + Pierre Hardy (Editorial):

Karstadt + Kostas Murkudis (Key visual):

Karstadt + Kaviar Gauche (Product label):

Topshop + Kate Moss (Event promotion):

Topshop + Kate Moss (Internet presence/screenshot):

Topshop + Kate Moss (Online integration):

Topshop + Kate Moss (Shop window):

Mango + Penelope/Monica Cruz (Billboard):

EASTPAK + RAF SIMONS (Key visual):

s.Oliver + Anastacia (Key visual):

For further information:

www.grigri.cn
www.designer-jones.blogspot.com
www.iamnotabookofanswers.blogspot.com
www.insidefashion.com
www.labelleetleblog.wordpress.com
www.sheabutterball.blogspot.com
www.londonoa.wordpress.com
www.modelvita.com
www.davelessio.blogvis.com
www.nymag.com
www.pablochester.typepad.com
www.insider.asos.com
www.phylly.spaces.live.com

For further information go to: www.google.com

The main idea is that your banker at Fortis invites you to come and discuss your investment
profile, not over a cup of coffee, but over a cup of Senseo premium coffee. That aside, there
are as many investment profiles at Fintro as there are coffee flavours at Senseo.

The campaign is mainly print, run in the belgian financial press.
That aside, Fortis has bought and installed 2.500 Senseo machines for all offices.
People who show up for get a free Senseo coffee, an investment chat, some coffee to take home
and a chance to win one of hundred Senseo coffee machines. More details can be found in this online leaflet.

Personally, I think this is a very good way for a beleagered bank, which is rumoured to have alienated a lot of
clients over the last months over credit woes, to show a warmer side by partnering with a coffee brand
that stands for quality, warmth and friendliness. Cross marketing at it’s best, even if the two brands do not seem to have a direct fit.

And a good coffee is always welcome.

Best regards,

Sam from IntroNiche

Undoubtedly, both partners fit well together as they both address technical oriented consumers that are keen on novelties in the electronic segment. Especially to FON this cooperation provides increased awareness in a new high potential target group. The fact that wireless routers are placed aside from game equipment in retail stores, enlarges FON’s distribution channel and communication possibilities. While enhancing user experience on the PSP they can strengthen popularity of Wi-Fi culture among gamers. For Sony’s target group, however, PSPxFON implies a significant added value. From now on, they can join the wireless network community, almost everywhere in Japan. Furthermore, they accomplish the image of a convenient, media savvy-device.

Until now, this service is only available to PSP owners in Japan, and there’s no word on whether Sony intends to go global with their FON partnership. I am looking forward to see, whether Sony plans to roll out of the cooperation concept to other countries with other potential Wi-Fi providers.

 The collaboration provides added value to the customers of both companies and generates a competitive advantage. To Amazon TiVo provides an additional distribution channel which facilitates impulse purchases and to reach new target groups. For TiVo this might be an incentive for suppliers to decide to list products on the online marketplace.  

I think it is a good example for a co-operation as it results in benefits for both partners and their clients. In regard to the general tendency to TV digitalisation I wonder if this innovative application will have success in the long run.

We hope you find this useful. Let us know what you think…

Why? There are several motives for establishing marketing partnerships:

- To access new markets and points of sales
- To increase awareness
- To address new target groups
- To build-up/strengthen the brand
- To strengthen specific image dimensions
- To provide added value to new or existing costumers
- To reduce marketing expenditures
- …

With whom? The general compatibility between two partner companies is core to the success of marketing co-operations. To identify a partner with an adequate fit, it is necessary to conduct a “fit analysis” which is based on a set of questions (depending on the kind of co-operation envisaged) like for instance:

- Does the potential partner have access to a relevant target group?
- Does the partner offer added value for the own target group?
- Does the partner provide relevant distribution/communication channels?
- Does the partner brand fit to ones own brand?
- Are both brands in the same „brand league“?
- How is the personal chemistry between the companies?
- …

How? The process of establishing marketing co-operations can be summarised in three main stages:

1.Conceptual phase:
- Co-operation concept that both partners agree on (including for instance a
theme for the co-operation)
- Transparent contractual agreement that outlines both partners’ contributions
and objectives
2.Establishment
- Internal coordination regarding feasibility
- Development of a business case
- Specification of joint measures
3.Implementation
- Permanent dialogue between partners to facilitate streamlined project
management (also to avoid discrepancies and misunderstandings)
- …

Watch outs When developing a co-operation the following should be avoided:

- Insufficient/irrelevant added value for customers
- Unclear/imprecise objectives
- Inadequate fit of the collaboration partners
- Lack of resources & consistency within managing stage
- Insufficient preparation
- “Rupture” between the three phases
- Sporadic instead of ongoing dialogue of the two partners
- …

Taking a closer look at this partnership it seems questionable whether both brands fit together that well. Here are a few aspects that made me wonder: 

1.) In fact, the coupons do not represent a benefit for the female users as only men have to pay to be a member of the platform. As a result only men receive an added value out of this promotion. 

2.) There is no denying that the addressing of new target groups is often one main motive for establishing marketing partnerships. The core target group of neu.de consists of lifestyle-oriented women and men, who are older than the predominant juvenile ck customers. Moreover, ck does not specifically target singles which means that many coupons deflagrate as they reach individuals that are already in relationships.  

Hence, the question occurs: What was the criterion of this partner selection? According to perfume producer Coty, the idea came up in conversations between executives of neu.de and the Coty product management. “It is just because they know each other” - that could be the reason why the co-operation lacks a clear strategic focus. 

It seems that the partners developed their co-operation concept by a quirk. Even if a co-operation opportunity comes up that seems attractive, it should never be established without a thorough fit analysis and an investigation regarding their potentials and risks. Apparently, the chemistry between the companies is good and was decisive for collaborating. What seems to be an advantage, however, can also become an issue at a later point. The friendship deal of both partners let them act in good faith that a stepwise proceeding is unnecessary. Nevertheless it is fact, that an insufficient preparation and missing contractual agreement containing both partners’ contributions and objectives in the beginning could cause discrepancies and misunderstandings later on. 

In the end, it remains to be seen, if neu.de can generate new registrations through this partnership and inversely ck can increase awareness and sales of the perfume they promote on neu.de.

The corporate social responsibility campaign was launched in April 2008. The first phase of “Champions drink responsibly” includes advertising, consumer engagements, public relations and digital media. 15 to 20 seconds adverts with Michael Schumacher on TV, cinema and online media are broadcast in more than 40 countries worldwide. A print campaign is to follow featuring statements from Schumacher like “If I go out for a drink someone else does the driving” or “A word of advice if you’re going out tonight. Taxi.”.

 
Print campaign

  
See the advert

 All elements of the campaign can be found on www.bacardilimited.com and on the microsite www.championsdrinkresponsibly.com.To further showcase its social responsibility commitment, Bacardi signed the so called “European Road Safety Charta”, which aims at halving the number of traffic deaths on European roads by 2010. 

“Champions drink responsibly” is not the first campaign supported by Michael Schumacher. Since his retirement in 2006 he got heavily involved in road safety initiatives like the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) Foundations “Make Roads Safe” campaign or the “Commission for Global Road Safety”. 

To me, the partnership is based on a good partner-fit. This jointly developed campaign highlights the Bacardi’s dedication to raising awareness and implementing measures against driving under the influence of alcohol. Besides Michael Schumacher is an absolutely trustworthy testimonial for this campaign reaching a broad audience with his messages.

Screenshot of the microsite

Website of the Bacardi Germany initivative “Driver’s Corner”

Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

Here’s the story: Ryan Spoon ordered Myoplex Light (a diet product) on Amazon. When he opened his Amazon parcel he found not only the ordered diet product, but also a McDonald’s coupon for a free McDonalds Southern Chicken sandwich and a free Southern Chicken Breakfast biscuit.

Couponing can be a very effective marketing instrument. But only if you do it right. And this case it wasn’t done right. This target group - individuals on a diet - couldn’t be more inappropriate for McDonald’s coupons. It’s a cruel temptation. A gym day-pass would have been much better. So either the segmentation did not work or Amazon didn’t segment at all (which is even worse) and put the vouchers in all parcels. In either way, I’m sure this couponing did not reach the aimed objective and might have even had a negative impact.

(This is an example of the booklet)

The DRIVE & RUN booklet informs about where to go running in thirteen German cities. Every running route has its own route description and map and can be easily reached by car. A short description of the cities is given, too. The booklet also contains additional information about running events, running shops and other relevant recommendations concerning running in general. And not to forget: it also includes several ads like for the BMW 1 Series convertible, BMW efficientDynamics and for RUNNER’s WORLD subscriptions. The booklet is promoted on the BMW and RUNNER’s WORLD Website. bmw.de and runnersworld.de but can only be ordered on BMW’site. BMW has leveraged the booklet thoroughly, as a communication campaign was developed for the BMW 1 Series around this running booklet (see banner example on Spiegel.de below).

The booklet is a nice give away but its main potential lies in the use of the content for other communication measures. The idea of offering running routes is not particularly new, though.  Nike has been quite active in this field for its Nike+ products (e.g. on http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/index.jhtml customers can share their running routes). 

From my point of view, this co-operation seems to have mainly two objectives: For BMW to strengthen the positioning of the BMW 1 Series as a product for active, ambitious and (young) professionals; and for RUNNER’s WORLD to increase awareness of its brand – particularly within the target group of professionals and eventually to sell subscriptions. Given that BMW has integrated the booklet in a range of online communication measures, it is very likely that RUNNER’s WORLD increases its awareness even beyond this target group.

(This is the front page of the Runner’s World Magazine)

The special edition is named after the street Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré (Fbg) in
Paris, where the headquarters of Hermès are located. 

It is not the first time the French luxury fashion brand Hermès is involved in car design with Bugatti. Both brands are rich in tradition and address an exquisite target group with its luxury products. Co-operations between them go back to the 1920s when Ettore Bugatti asked his friend Émile Hermès to produce suitcases and bags matching the design of the first Bugatti Royale. 

The Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Fbg par Hermès combines exclusive design and premium technology. Gabriele Pezzini - responsible for the exclusive design - integrated the unique Hermès style into the vehicle. There is a range of Hermès typical design features, so for instance the door handles, which are reminiscent of handles used on Hermès trunks. Furthermore the purchase price of € 1.55 Mio includes a unique Hermès trunk with ones initials.  

The brands fit well together as they both play in the same “brand league” and address a HNW, design-oriented target group. Consequently this co-operation offers a chance for both companies to strengthen and enforce their positioning as one of the most exclusive, premium brand’s in the world.  

It is nice to see that the traditional friendship between a “car-loving saddle maker and a horse-loving carmaker” leads to a co-operation like this, where the combination of design, technology and passion of two luxury brands result in such an exclusive product. 

As the both brands are integrated in the product name, it can be assumed that the Hermès brand will play a vital role in the marketing of the car. I look forward to this autumn, when this co-branded Bugatti is launched. Not because I consider purchasing it (I wish!) but I’m curious how it will be marketed. 

Marketing cooperation can definitely benefit lager corporations, as the examples on Mesh-Box amply illustrate.

Cooperation provides value to small and medium companies with less marketing muscle however as well.

Here’s an easily implementable example of a cross-promotion between European two start-ups:

• Myngle, an online marketplace to learn languages
• the Compare Group, an online price-comparison operator

Both companies target regular internet users in Europe, in casu the Benelux and Finland for the Compare Group.
Given this fit, there’s a definite benefit from a co-operation.

Myngle is focusing to attract quality traffic to it’s site.
The Compare Group is also looking for incentives to increase the retention rate of it’s existing user base.

Both companies posted a classified ad on an online platform for cross-promotion called IntroNiche and consequently found each other. A deal was swiftly negotiated where essentially Myngle sponsors free language courses on it’s platform which will be given away in a contest organised on the different website of the Compare Group. More details of the deal can be found here.

Sponsoring contest or raffles organised by other companies with free samples and trials of one’s own company is a classic co-marketing tool used by small and medium companies.

There is however something less classical about this deal as both parties have found each other on an online platform.

One of the main hurdles for marketing cooperation is the time and effort it takes to source the good deals.

Some newly created online platforms intend to assist companies in their search for matching partners.

Some of the more known examples are banner-exchanging platforms such as Spottt.com, Entrecard and the german language equivalent version Kikabu.

Next to that, there are also some platforms with a broader marketing co-operation scope.

These platforms enable all kinds of online and offline marketing cooperations - not just banner exchanges.
Examples areBrandTorrent.com, IntroNiche.com and german language equivalent MarketMarket.eu.

All three platforms are free to use. They have all been recently created and still need to reach the critical mass needed to be off full value. However, the example above illustrates the determined co-operation marketeer can already make deals on these platforms.

(Disclosure: the author of this post is the founder of IntroNiche.com by the way. But you may have figured that out already…)

From now on the Londoner fashion designer is responsible for the formal appearance of the football team, the trainers and other Manchester United officials for the next three years. The first creation was presented in June at the final match of the Champions League. In 2006 Paul Smith already dealt with the subject “football”. On time to the World Cup he designed some t-shirts and footballs. Some of those can be seen here

This is not the first co-operation between a fashion designer and a football team. As already in 2006, we will see the German national football team also in 2008 at the European Championship in suits and accessories of Strenesse, a German fashion label. The Italian national team gets its clothes from Armani. Beckham & Co. are equipped with Dolce & Gabbana outfits for the public appearances aside the football ground. 

Designers are popular co-operation partners for the rich and famous. At the occasion of film or music festivals, like the Oscars or the Grammy, one sees singers, actors and other VIP’s in fancy dresses and luxurious jewellery on every red carpet. According to the Fashion Coordinator for the Academy Awards Patty Fox the red carpet at the Oscars night is the most important catwalk for all designers. If you wonder where they get the beautiful outfits from – just buy a tabloid paper like UK’s Heat magazine or a fashion magazine like Elle the next day and you will be informed in detail on who was wearing Chanel, Valentino, Dior etc.

Those co-operations with celebrities give the golden opportunity to designers as they can present their products to an international audience. The VIP’s benefit from the glamorous image of the fashion labels. Moreover they do not have to pay for the fashionable clothes, as they get those dresses and suits for free.  Fashion labels have started professionalising this relationship by remunerating celebrities for wearing their clothes -  thus this huge international publicity for their brand is guaranteed  (… and appearances are not dependent on celebrities’ “moods” anymore).  For a long time now, equipping celebrities for official events is an established marketing instrument in high-end fashion. Let’s see how those kinds of co-operations will evolve. But for now – let’s watch the boys play football.

After co-operations with Ford and H&M, Electronic Arts continues to integrate brands from the everyday real life in their games and thereby Electronic Arts meets the players’ demand to further evolve and personalize the Sims world. Moreover, it is a means of differentiation and an additional revenue generator for the game company. In return, IKEA gets access to relevant target groups and increases Sims players’ involvement with the IKEA brand and its products. I think overall a fairly good co-operation concept as it also offers added value for users!

The partnership was originally established in 2005 to jointly develop a report that identifies the risks that climate change poses for the financial services industry. Since then, Allianz Group continuously invested in sustainability projects and implemented numerous measures concerning environmental protection. These activities led to some significant results e.g.: Allianz reduced the consumption of electricity by 20% and the consumption of gas by 40% within two years. Besides, Allianz was voted “Best in Class” within the “Carbon Disclosure Project”, due to a reduction of 5% of their carbon dioxide emission between 2005 and 2006.

Encouraged by those positive results, the Allianz Group decided to intensify this partnership and signed a three year master agreement with the WWF in September 2007 under the motto of the World Economic Forum “The power of collaboration innovation”.

Interview with Joachim Faber, member of the board of management of Allianz SE: 

Allianz.com News: Last year, Allianz formed a partnership with the WWF. What’s it about? 

Joachim Faber: The WWF is one of the largest and most international organizations that has dealt in depth with the issue of climate change for a long time. We’ve been working with them since summer 2005, when we released a joint report estimating the risks of climate change for the financial services industry.

Since September 2007, we’ve been cooperating not just on a project basis, but based on a firm three-year master agreement. One of the main goals of our collaboration is to precisely quantify both the direct and indirect effects of climate change on the Allianz Group – in other words, including the possible repercussions and risks for our very diverse financial investments.  

Why do you need outside support for that? 

Faber: Outside support is a routine affair for any company, no matter what the sector. The only unusual aspect is that this support is from a non-governmental organization.

But it’s exactly that independence which makes the partnership with the WWF so valuable. The WWF is one of the institutions with the most extensive knowledge on climate change. And it’s a good thing to have a sort of “sparring partner” so we can develop further – both ourselves and as a company. We don’t have to be of the same opinion on all matters to achieve that result.  

In what direction would you like to see Allianz develop? 

Faber: I want the insight gained from this quantification of climate change effects to serve as an innovation driver for our products and services in every segment. The WWF will support us in that, as well. We’d like to lower our climate risks as soon as possible, and take advantage of the opportunities resulting from climate change. We also hope that, together with the WWF, we can get the whole industry moving in the right direction. 

Why is the partnership limited to three years?  

Faber: This doesn’t imply that it will automatically end in three years. But three years is a good period of time to achieve the first results, and then to decide together how to go forward. 

This isn’t a new subject for Allianz. What’s been done in this area so far? 

Faber: We have already achieved a good deal. After our first climate report in 2005, we adopted an international program that is now implemented by about two-thirds. For example, between 2005 and 2006, we reduced our direct carbon dioxide emissions – which are caused mainly by offices and business trips – by nearly five percent. By 2012, we’ll be reducing our emissions by another 20 percent compared to 2006.

Within the international Carbon Disclosure Project, we are working for greater transparency in climate-related risks. Moreover, the Project has recognized Allianz as “Best in Class” in our approach to climate change disclosure.

As I mentioned before, climate change also offers opportunities. On August 1 of last year, our new Allianz Climate Solutions subsidiary went into operation. Its team advises companies on how to adapt to climate risks, and about climate-friendly projects like wind farms or biomass plants, covering all aspects of financing, technical risk management and insurance.

In September, we also launched the ECOMotion car insurance policy in
Germany, which is certified by the WWF. For the first time, it enables environmentally-aware drivers to neutralize their CO2 emissions. Our successful Allianz RCM Global EcoTrends fund was also established in collaboration with the WWF. Our Dresdner Kleinwort investment bank is a leading player in the European emissions trading market. And we’re making long-term investments in renewable energies. At the end of last year, we significantly increased our wind farm portfolio.

Source: Interview from Allianz Group Website

“Games that connect to the Internet or online games pose a threat if there is no up-to-date virus protection. The partnership with Ubisoft is an interesting chance for us to highlight the importance of IT security”, explains Tjark Auerbach, CEO of Avira.

“The existing bundle offer is an excellent start for continuing strategic marketing cooperations” said Benedikt Schüler, Marketing Director at Ubisoft.

If this is the start of the co-operation, let’s see what other initiatives are following.

So what has the new mesh-box to offer: The relaunch brings not only a new design - which makes room for more visuals - but also introduces several new features and a new structure. The new structure improves the access to information as we sort posts into three categories. From now on you can directly reach posts by clicking on “facts & figures”, “articles” or “examples”. We take your feedback to heart and will therefore publish more facts about co-operations and more partnership examples with as many co-operation visuals as we can get hold of. With the newsletter subscription we also offer a new service on mesh-box.

With the new mesh-box, we aim to provide even more insights about marketing co-operations than we have done last year!

All the best from your mesh-box team!

P.S.: Do you like the new design? Share your views – you know how it works!

All information about the contest will be available on the joint microsite www.machnewelle.de (in German only). The best spot will be produced with the aid of Sven Unterwaldt, a famous German screenwriter and producer. With this project Coca-Cola and WWF continue their collaboration with regard to environmental protection, which started in 2007 with the global “Water Savers Project” (mesh-box article).

Product placements in movies have been part of Audis marketing strategy for some time now. The Audi RSQ that Will Smith drove in “I, Robot”, for example, was the futuristic design parent for the new Audi R8. With the co-operation, Audi approaches the young cinema audience in a direct way and creates awareness and enthusiasm for the brand amongst them. Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment, on the other hand, benefit from Audi’s marketing power (communication channels and presumably media) to reach specific target groups.

The measures implemented by Paramount Pictures/Marvel Entertainment and Audi remind a bit of the previously presented LG co-operation. Through the cinematic-appearing online campaign Paramount Pictures/Marvel Entertainment and Audi try to strengthen the link between Iron Man and Audi R8. On 10^th march 2008 the joint microsite www.audi.com/ironman went online, an ambitious flash website that features quite similar features as the “InsideTheSuit” microsite of LG (exclusive trailers, background information, exclusive content and a sweepstake), but in addition it enables users to take in two different perspectives. One is the sight of Tony Stark, which is used e.g. for trailers, the other one is an infrared sight called “Iron Man Vision”, which is utilised e.g. for details on the construction of Audi R8 and A5. In beginning of April further measures were implemented, including outdoor advertising and trailers in cinemas. In line with the campaign, eleven trailers were produced exclusively for Audi and show driving scenes from the movie, which are not yet published but to be seen on the joint microsite soon.

The co-operation works well due to the good “fit” between the two partners. As the press article states, both Iron Man and the Audi R8 stand for similar attributes – they are both fast, safe, outstanding in performance, luxurious, intelligent and demanding.

A little anecdote to conclude: Director John Favreau had difficulties with the car and couldn’t use it for the last scene as initially planned. The Audi R8 was supposed to crash into Iron Man’s enemy, but the crash just wasn’t spectacular enough. “Our stunt specialists did all to overturn the car – that would have been a dramatic final scene.”, said Favreau, “But it just did not work as we thought – the car just held the road too well.” Well put (sold), Mr. Favreau…

One of the trailer can be found here.

The partnership started off with a quite unique and attention-grabbing announcement on January 7^th at this year’s CTIA, the largest wireless industry trade show. At the show, the original Iron Man suit was on location to protect Iron Man’s very own mobile phone, the limited ”LG Shine Iron Man Edition”, a handset developed by LG and decked out in solid 18 karat gold.  

Limited LG Shine Iron Man Edition

There is no information on whether this phone is going to be sold, I snapped up unconfirmed information that it will only be sold in the United States with an AT&T contract and for about US$ 2000 – if so, it will be an item for real fans only. The joint microsite http://www.lg2win.com/ does not give any information on this neither – in contrary, it only contains a flash intro and a sweepstake for winning LG solid steal consumer electronics (see screenshot below). No word about the solid gold handset. But the latest announcement of a second joint microsite InsideTheSuit.com to be launched on April 15^th set an end to the rumours. The website will offer visitors exclusive behind-the-scenes content and the chance to win the gold phone by participating in a marketing contest.  

Microsite “LG2WIN” 

But these are only the first pieces of the marketing package that the co-operating partners will wrap around the movie to be released on May 2^nd. So far, it is known that they are going to market across multiple media platforms with traditional, online media vehicles as well as key technology industry initiatives. I’m curious what this “marketing contest” is going to look like. Let me know if you find out anything else about this partnership!  

The “miCoach” system is build around a Samsung/adidas branded mobile phone and comes - in addition to equipment like a compatible apparel line and a training website - with several sports features like a heart rate monitor and a stride sensor chip to fit all running shoes.

The main differences to the Nike+ training system is that “miCoach” works with all kind of running shoes and that it is based on a mobile phone instead of a mp3 player (iPod). “miCoach” was launched last month and from the microsite information it seems that it is available for about 400 Euro in Germany, UK, Russia, Spain and Switzerland. Soon it will also be launched in Italy, Ukraine and the Netherlands. In Germany, the set is sold at adidas and Samsung stores and at the o2 online store.

adidas and Samsung have jointly worked on the “miCoach” for almost two years. While adidas provided expertise in the area of sports and developed the monitoring and website training system, Samsung developed the matching mobile phone.

Print ad

Both partners promote the joint product, but the communication measures are quite different. Samsung’s “miCoach” print ad (see above) focuses on the mobile phone, while adidas is putting the training system in the focus of its measures. These differences can been seen best on the two individual microsites that were developed for “miCoach”. While both websites have the same features for the training program, Samsung’s microsite (see below) concentrates on the mobile phone and the adidas training website focuses on the training system with no visibile integration of the Samsung logo at all. Samsung and adidas even use slightly different “miCoach” logos.

Microsite www.micoach.samsungmobile.com

Microsite www.micoach.com

In the joint commercial the adidas logo as well as the adidas microsite is used:

This is not adidas first co-operation of this kind. In 2005, adidas already launched a training product in collaboration with Polar, a producer of heart rate monitors, that is comparable with “miCoach”. The technology of the Polar product and “miCoach” is probably quite similar.

http://www.adidas-polar.com/phase5/index.html
Press release: adidas and Polar introduce the world’s first completely integrated training system

As the Samsung and adidas co-operation was announced as a long-term strategic partnership, it remains to be seen what other products the co-operation will bring to market. Eventually, the continuation of this partnership will probably depend on how successful “miCoach” will be.

For the press release see the adidas website

The first of their two campaigns “Stop HIV: Spray to Change Attitudes” promoted a joint perfume called “Rougeberry” which was launched as a limited edition and sold in The Body Shop stores. Additionally, the campaign motive, a piece of art designed by Australian Graffiti artist Sarah Howell, was auctioned and the revenue was given to the “Staying Alive” foundation.

The co-operation was a great success with MTV communicating the message via TV, websites, broadband services and mobile TV to a potential audience of 1.3 billion people worldwide. The promotion also had a relevant financial impact, as it could raise more than 500.000 Euro which were given to more than 80 projects.

After the success of last year’s campaign both partners joined again for a second promotion. The new campaign “Move your Lips” promotes a MTV-branded “Guarana lip butter” and will be available in The Body Shop stores from today. The campaign’s microsite www.moveyourlips.com is now also online in Germany.

The promotion includes posters at the POS as well as a commercial which will be broadcasted at MTV and reach approximately 500.000 households worldwide. Besides raising money for the foundation by donating two thirds of the money for every co-branded product sold, the campaign also aims to encourage young people to participate in the “Staying Alive Awards” which endow up to 10.000 dollar per project.

Both campaigns were executed likewise in more than 50 countries. Together, MTV and The Body Shop created a multi-platform campaign between media and retail of incredible impact. Well done – and way to go…

According to the new agreement, BBCGreen.com will place ebay advertisements on its site, offering consumers the opportunity to buy ‘used only’ products from eBay. The benefits of the co-operation are quite clear: BBC can inspire the public to take action with examples like this drawn from life, while eBay generates more traffic on its website.   

This is a quite an unusual co-operation, but  I’m sure the economy wouldn’t be particularly impressed, if people would avoid the trading of new goods and instead buy old and used products…     

The following clip represents from my point of view a good example of a successful joint TV-commercial. Ramazzotti is well integrated into the spot - far beyond a mere logo integration. The spot is part of Ritter Sport ’s current campaign with the slogan „Ritter Sport-friends“. The commercial is in German, but really there are no language skills required to grasp the idea - so go ahead and check it out.

The aim of this partnership is presumably to address new target groups, especially adults who like bitters and will boost Ramazzotti’s awareness in Germany. In addition to the commercial, the co-operation also includes a range of joint POS promotions. The special edition is available until March 7th.

This co-branding is accompanied by the two other Ritter Sport special editions “Eierlikör-Trüffel” and “Marc-de-Champagne-Trüffel”.

This is not the Gap’s first design collaboration. As part of the in 2007 launched “GAP Design Editions”, an initiative established to support and encourage new American design talent, the Gap has already collaborated with Doo-Ri Chung (DOO.RI), Kate and Laura Mulleavy (RODARTE) and Thakoon Panichgul (THAKOON). Then, for Valentines day 2008, Gap has partnered with British handbag brand Mulberry to create a new version of Mulberry’s iconic Roxanne bag for the Gap (PRODUCT) RED™ collection. In April, the company plans to launch another collection of white shirts with a new group of young designers. 

The cooperation gives Pierre Hardy a great chance to increase awareness among high-street consumers. Alike to the engagement of Stella McCartney and H&M, the Gap will immensely benefit from the co-operation, especially image wise as it is likely to bring a high-fashion feel to its jeans-and-T-shirt image, if the collaboration is effectively communicated. It will also attract many new fashion conscious customers to the Gap’s high street shops… . if they find out about it.  I found out about the collaboration through an article in the latest issue of Elle
USA but have so far not seen any ads…The shoes look great and I will definitely try to get a pair….

As everyone knows, Valentines Day is the top-selling day of the year for flower shops worldwide. Back in the last century it was celebrated in the United States only, but became increasingly popular throughout Europe and the rest of the world within the last years. According to its own account, Fleurop Austria is making an incredible ten percent of their annual turnover on Valentines Day alone.

The decision to engage in a marketing co-operation with Palmers was based on a market analysis by Fleurop, which shows that customers in general do not only want to buy flowers for their beloved, but flowers combined with vouchers of all kinds. So there is further potential for marketing co-operation partners, especially for those of other business sectors, to benefit from the run to flower shops these days.

Music films shown at the Berlinale will be for example:

• Martin Scorsese: “Shine a light” about the Rolling Stones (Concert Promotions International)
• Todd Haynes: “I’m Not There” about Bob Dylan (Killer Films)
• Anton Corbijn: “Control” about Ian Curtis (Becker Film
• Madonna: “Filth and Wisdom” about Gogol Bordello (Exposure/HIS)
• Neil Young: “CSNY déjà vu” about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Shakey Pictures)
• Steven Sebring: “Dream of Life” about Patti Smith (Thirteen/WNET New York and Clean Socks)

The last years have already brought a number of highly successfully music films as well as tour documentaries. So for instance: “Ray” about Ray Charles (2005, Anvil Films), Scorsese’s “No Direction Home” about Bob Dylan (Box TV), “Walk the line” about Johnny Cash (2006, Fox 2000 Pictures) and “Runnin’ Down A Dream” about Ton Petty (2007, Warner Bros).

A parody of this trend has not been long time coming. The biography “Walk hard” (2007, Apatow Productions) pokes fun at films like “Walk the line” and challenges typical clichés.

What is the reason for the increasing number of co-operations between the music and film industry?

Well, from the music industry’s point of view the motivation is quite clear: The music market has been on a downwards trend for several years. Money is rather made by concert tours than by selling CDs. So films represent an additional revenue source. Music films increase not only the involvement of fans and raise awareness of certain musicians, bands or music genres but eventually also boost CD sales through the high media coverage they get; especially if a well known director stands behind the production. And let’s not forget the released soundtracks accompanying the films.

So the benefits for the music industry are evident, but why is the movie industry currently so keen on releasing music films?

First of all there is the latest development in the movie industry. A rising number of movies with top actors have recently turned out to be flops. “Invasion” with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, for example, only generated revenues of $15 million in the US, and $80 million worldwide. That is only half of the actual production costs. Several other films had similarly underwhelming results: Tom Cruise’s “Lions for Lambs”, Angelina Jolie’s “A mighty heart” and Brad Pitt’s “The Assassination of Jesse James”. Stars of that popularity ask increasingly high salaries and profit participations. Cameron Diaz, for instance, received $30 million merely for synchronising Princess Fiona in the movie “Shrek”, while Tom Cruise got an estimated $70-90 million for “Mission Impossible 3”. It seems that more and more productions that feature Hollywood’s biggest superstars turn out to be unprofitable. Films featuring musicians who people identify with and which make them remember the good old times, seem to be more rewarding – and probably less expensive/risky.

A recent article of Germany’s “Der Spiegel” even declares that today people don’t look up to Hollywood’s “Stars” anymore; they rather idolize music stars of the past. In Hollywood’s first decades, stars were created by the industry, with actors behaving perfectly synchronised with their images and the press only reporting on what the studios wanted. Today it is different: If stars like Mel Gibson or Lindsay Lohan are lowering their guards, the press directly reports it to the world. According to “Der Spiegel” this is one of the reasons, why we see that many films featuring music stars of the “good old times”.

Berlinale 2008 director Dieter Kosslick states about the music movies trend:

“In today’s fast-paced society where nobody can hold on to things anymore, there is a desire for emotion, a desire for ‘the good old times’ where some things were actually better.”

(Original German quote at http://www.taz.de/1/leben/film/artikel/1/die-musikfilm-festspiele/?src=ST&cHash=1404817e0e

But is that really so? Don’t stars appear more real to us, the audience, by having their whole life showcased in TV? Shouldn’t it cause the audience to follow their stories and watch their movies even more frequently?

I personally think this trend is going to abate pretty soon. But for now, let’s enjoy the music films that are currently on as some of them are absolutely brilliant - like Anton Corbijn’s CONTROL!!!

Now they have joined forces with Britain’s biggest fashion retailer Marks & Spencer for a special promotion: “The M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange”. Whoever donates a bag of clothes containing at least one item of M&S clothing to one of Oxfam’s 790 high street shops across the UK and Ireland, will in return receive a £5 M&S voucher off the next purchase of £35 or more in M&S. Vouchers will be valid for one month.

The clothes exchange runs for a six-month trial from January 28.

Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam, said: “Recycling and reusing clothes - and anything else we can sell - has always been central to Oxfam’s fundraising, as well as being good for the environment.”

The benefits for both partners are obvious. The M&S voucher is on the one hand an incentive to go shopping at M&S. On the other hand it encourages customers to recycle their clothes, and is very likely to increase the revenue of Oxfam’s shops through the increased traffic in the shops and all the new (M&S) offerings.

The deal with MTV will initially involve clips shows such as Pimp My Ride, Punk’d, South Park, Cribs and The Hills as well as music videos from artists as diverse as Elvis and Britney Spears. The deal spans across nine European countries including the UK, France and Germany and builds on the wide-ranging $500m (£250m) advertising and content agreement between Viacom and Microsoft from December 2007.

The deal with Sony BMG will include thousands of music videos as well as exclusive backstage footage and interviews with BMG artists.

Microsoft Expands EU Video Reach With MTV & Sony BMG Deals
Microsoft today ramped up its MSN Video strategy for the UK and Western Europe announcing deals with MTV Networks International (MTVNI) and Sony BMG. MSN Video viewers can now watch content on the web from MTV shows, videos and exclusive footage of Sony BMG’s roster on top of the existing selection of global and local news and other entertainment videos plus user generated content on MSN Video’s Soapbox…

Microsoft in MTV and Sony BMG deals (Guardian Unlimited Media)

The Yahoo-Rhapsody partnership was announced after Microsoft’s $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo. Yahoo said its Music Unlimited subscribers will be migrated to Rhapsody’s digital music service in the coming months and will be able to maintain their existing pricing tiers for a limited time period. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

See also:

Yahoo Music’s Slow Death
Yahoo Music has been reported to be struggling for a long time. As the anti-climatic 100 days came to a close, we began hearing rumors that Yahoo Music’s 300 employees would face the first round of layoffs. Just weeks ago, Yahoo launched a web-based MP3 player, but it just wasn’t enough to keep the money rolling in. While the free portions of Yahoo Music will continue to work, Yahoo Music is losing its paid subscription service. As of today, they are supposed to redirect traffic to their paid service to Rhapsody…

Yahoo Dumps “Music Unlimited” for Rhapsody; Buys FoxyTunes
Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) announced on Monday that it will dump its Yahoo Music Unlimited digital music service, and replace it with Rhapsody, the competing on-demand streaming service offered by Rhapsody America, a joint venture between RealNetworks (NASD: RNWK) and Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA) MTV Networks. Yahoo and Rhapsody also intend to collaborate on other digital music services, such as music downloads…

The new Renuzit(R) Tri Scents(TM) air freshener is on store shelves now. The partnership between the two global household care companies expands the geographic reach of a concept that helped Sara Lee’s Ambi Pur brand increase its sales of electric air fresheners by more than 40% over the past 18 months. The innovation is based on the insight that people notice and enjoy complementary fragrances that change regularly much more than static, background smells. The device automatically rotates through three complementary fragrances every 45 minutes to deliver fresh, noticeable aromas that consumers can enjoy.

“Collaborating with Sara Lee provides an excellent opportunity for Henkel and showcases the best of technologies from two global partners. As the air care category continues to advance, products are becoming increasingly sophisticated. It’s imperative to have an innovation strategy that creates a new dimension of performance and TriScents air freshener illustrates the spirit of innovation and collaboration,” said Brad Casper, President and CEO-The Dial Corporation, A Henkel Company.

Air care products are becoming a steady feature in consumers’ shopping carts. The air care market in the US has grown 8% annually in this decade to its current US.8 billion. The worldwide market has benefited from strong demand in both mature and emerging markets and now stands at roughly billion.

“3Volution confirms our belief in strong consumer insights and effective innovation as the keys for Sara Lee’s continued growth,” said Vincent Janssen, chief executive officer of Sara Lee’s Household & Body Care business. “This partnership with Henkel provides an exciting opportunity to strengthen our global reach in household and body care products by expanding our presence in the US market.”

Sara Lee is well-positioned to take advantage of the worldwide growth in air care with innovative products such as 3Volution, Ambi Pur Puresse and Ambi Pur 2Motion. Sara Lee’s global portfolio of household and body care brands includes such highly trusted names as Ambi Pur, Sanex, Kiwi, Radox and GoodKnight.

Henkel is a worldwide leader in home care, personal care, and adhesives technologies and is committed to the development of innovative and sustainable products. In North America, Henkel markets a wide range of well-known consumer and industrial brands, including Dial(R) soaps, Purex(R) laundry detergents, Right Guard(R) antiperspirants, got2b(R) hair gels, and Loctite(R) adhesives. The Renuzit(R) family of products includes Renuzit Adjustables, Super Odor Neutralizer, and Subtle Effects.

http://www.personalcaremarketshares.com/2008/02/sara-lee-and-he.html

Henkel schließt Partnerschaft mit Sara Lee
Der Konsumgüterkonzern Henkel hat mit der amerikanischen Sara Lee Corp. eine Vertriebspartnerschaft zur Vermarktung eines Lufterfrischers in den USA geschlossen…
http://www.aktuell-24.de/2008/02/04/ots-sara-lee-und-henkel-schliessen-apartnerschaft-um-innovation-2/

The poster you see below is the first of ten collaboration images of the campaign. It teaches us to “Collaborate with a friend” and shows “83 original ways to successfully waste your time”.

So what about the brand and target group fit? Both brands are successful European lifestyle fashion brands with worldwide success and individuality and expression as important values. One brand is from Italy, the other from Germany. OK, nothing wrong here.

But originality is a key brand value of adidas Originals with both - communication and product themes - focusing on this topic. And this image dimension would have been much better addressed through a partnership with Levi’s (“Levi’s® jeans are the original, authentic jeans”). Respectively, I believe the brand fit is not ideal.

However, the partnership provides benefits to both partners: the denim collection is expanding adidas Originals product range and strengthens its positioning as a fashion rather than sports brand. Diesel, on the other hand benefits from the positive image transfer – especially regarding the trend dimension, I believe.

I’m really looking forward to the following campaigns. Let’s wait and see what’s coming next…

Other blogs that wrote about this marketing co-operation and the co-branded jeans:

Adidas joins hands with Diesel: Introduces new jeans

The latest news in the clothing industry world is that Adidas is teaming up with Diesel to release the latest clothing line. It seems like Adidas is on a roll these days. The company already introduced Y3 as well Stella Mac Cartney line of clothing this spring. Now, it has signed a four year deal with the Italian Denim company called Diesel.

Full article at: http://www.styleguru.org/entry/adidas-joins-hands-with-diesel-introduces-new-jeans/

Co-Branding From The Waist Down. adidas & Diesel

On February 1, 2008 adidas Originals and Diesel will enter a four-year product collaboration by introducing the first adidas Originals Denim by Diesel collection. Two male and female jeans models will be available exclusively at adidas Originals stores worldwide.

Full article at: http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2008/01/co-branding-from-waist-down-adidas.html

Diesel Adidas Originals Denim Jeans

Now you can match your Jam Master Jay Adidas Shoes with a pair of new Diesel Adidas Originals Denim Jeans! The new Adidas Originals Denim Jeans collection comes in adi-Thanaz Dirty Medium Treated, Raw and Super Black while the adi-Viker is available in Dark Blue Treated, Dirty Medium Treated and Raw. Diesel Adidas Originals Denim Jeans feature cool trademarks like an Adidas trefoil label and Adidas’s signature stripes on the hip and on the inseam.

Full article at: http://www.besportier.com/archives/adidas-originals-denim-by-dies.html

Adidas press article

On February 1, 2008 two iconic lifestyle brands, adidas Originals and Diesel will launch a landmark product collaboration – adidas Originals Denim by Diesel. The first denim collection to result from this four year relationship is a collectible line of extremely detailed, premium denim for true jeans lovers, designed in conjunction with the adidas Originals and the Diesel Creative Team, latter headed by Creative Director Wilbert Das. Two male and two female models presented in four different washes will be available exclusively at adidas Originals stores all around the world starting spring/summer 2008. Prices range from 160 Euro for the female adi-rohnary model up to 210 Euro for the male adi-viker model. Representing the long-term partnership of the two brands, the range is recognizable by the adidas Originals Trefoil and the Diesel co-branding.

Full article at: http://www.press.adidas.com/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-4/79_read-8626/

“´Collaborations` is the buzz word of the minute. Everyone’s at it. Record labels are merging, genres are blending, worlds are colliding, club nights are joining forces, brands are fusing - strength in numbers and throwing the marketing net bigger and wider and embracing a more varied skill set has never been so fashionable.The social networking phenomena has swung open virtual doors for the meeting and exploitation of new creative business, and modern culture is mutating into a blur of boundaries - giving birth to an open space where anything is possible…. ”  

(From Electronic Beats magazine, issue 4/2007 ”When worlds collide”).  For the full article click here.

 ILLUSTRATIONS BY LEONA LIST 

As usual, not that much has happened in the holiday season. But we’ve come across one interesting new partnership: DHL has entered into a strategic agreement with US’ largest drugstore chain Walgreens.

The Walgreens/DHL agreement allows customers to ship packages by DHL from Walgreen’s 6,500 outlets, including 1,600 24-hour shops. The partnership expands DHL retail presence in the United States substantially - it will double the number of DHL’ outlets in the US, boosting particularly its reach to small- and mid-sized companies and individuals. This is a required move, as DHL’s rivals have already strong retail networks: Fedex with Kinko’s and UPS with UPS Stores. Walgreens aims at boosting traffic and sales with the co-operation, offering more services to its customers. For more information on the partnership check out:

http://www.dhl-usa.com/about/pr/PRDetail.asp?nav=PressRoom/PressReleases&year=2008&seq=1145
http://www.finanznachrichten.de/nachrichten-2008-01/artikel-9833722.asp

Christmas and the end of this year is right around the corner and the mesh-box team is about to go on holiday. A good moment, we believe, to thank you all for joining the discussions on mesh-box.

So what’s been going on over the last 12 months? The topic of marketing co-operations has certainly gained a great boost. Or as the editors of Electronic Beats magazine put it: “Collaborations is the buzz word of the minute. Everyone’s at it“. They even dedicated the last issue to the topic: “When worlds collide – the collaboration issue”.

This year has brought some interesting co-operations to the market. We’ve seen The National Gallery and Hewlett Packard bringing art to the streets of London, Opel and Mango joining forces for the “every street is a catwalk”´campaign, Eastpak launching a couture rucksack collection with the help of fashion enfant terrible Raf Simons and Eurocopter and Hermès designing private helicopters for the super rich.

Co-operations are now popping up in marketing newsletters on a daily basis and companies are establishing departments dedicated to this topic. In Germany alone, we counted more than 700 new marketing partnerships in 2007. Furthermore, we have found out that most marketing co-operations were set up to boost sales and that many co-operations fail due to either a lack of resources or a lack of continuous project management. To bring a bit of clarification to the terms that regularly pop-up in relation to the topic, we have also put together a glossary that you might find helpful.

We look forward to a year that brings many new, innovative co-operations and opens up new perspectives in this field. We’ll keep you posted on what’s going on in the “collaboration world” and hope to hear more from you.

The mesh-box team wishes you a lovely holiday season and a happy New Year.

Sounds familiar? Right, this kind of partnership is not new, just think of the iTunes and Coca Cola marketing co-operation. But also Pepsi’s has conducted a quite similar music co-promotion in the past. In 2004 they already offered their customers free music downloads. At that time with another partner, guess with who – right again, with iTunes!

Pepsi’s and iTunes’ co-promotion in 2004 failed to become a success though. Of 100 million songs available (a tenth of Pepsi’s present campaign), only five million were downloaded and therewith. The reason might have been that three years ago fewer people were familiar with music downloads. Only 142 million songs were downloaded from the Internet in 2004 (worldwide), while the number is continuously rising to an expected 735 million in 2007.* Maybe they were just ahead of their times.

Now that music downloads have become more popular, the marketing co-operation of Pepsi and Amazon should turn out to be more successful than Pepsi’s previous one with iTunes in 2004, especially with its launch being scheduled for the Super Bowl break in February 2008. However, the co-promotion’s success will eventually depend on how well it is integrated into Pepsi’s overall marketing strategy and whether it will be marketed through all relevant communication channels.

As a new player in music downloads, it is not easy for Amazon to win market share, especially as competition is fierce and the market is overwhelmingly dominated by iTunes (85% market share globally). It will be particularly difficult to get iPod owners to download Amazon’s music. But Amazon has already managed to capture three percent of the digital download market since its opening in September. Let’s see if the marketing co-operation with Pepsi supports Amazon in becoming a serious player in the music download business.

Despite the fact that Amazon is a fairly new player in this field, I doubt it will hold people back from using the free music codes as people know Amazon and trust it.

Overall the partnership looks like a great win-win-win situation: Amazon offers added value (songs), Pepsi communication power and access to new customers – and customers get free downloads.

Since barter deals are highly difficult to set up in the US (different regulations compared to Europe), I wonder what the deal between Pepsi and Amazon looks like in detail. Any idea?

* Source: http://www.golem.de/0712/56337.html

Blog links for further reading:

Amazon and Pepsi to pair up for music giveaway

http://valleywag.com/tech/online-music/amazon-and-pepsi-to-pair-up-for-music-giveaway-329973.php

Amazon and Pepsi plan to give away 1 billion DRM-free songs

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11/30/amazon-and-pepsi-plan-to-give-away-1-billion-drm-free-songs/