In today’s reality, the client’s attention still needs to be earned. This applies not only to market newcomers, but also to large successful brands. The former want to increase brand recognition, and the latter want to remind about themselves again or attract a new audience.
Collaborations are a great way to achieve these goals. They are collaborations between brands, companies and people that aim to strengthen each other’s positions.
In this article, we explain what collaboration is and how it differs from other types of cooperation. We will give examples and advice on what to do to make collaboration successful.
Collaboration: what is it?
Collaboration is a mutually beneficial cooperation between companies, brands, people, such as bloggers or musicians. Its goal is to attract the attention of the audience, increase profits, create a positive image, and so on.
The word “collaboration” today has an exclusively positive meaning. While in the USSR “collaborationism” meant treacherous cooperation with the enemy.
The main signs of collaboration:
- Collaboration is the joint creation of a new product or service. This is what distinguishes collaboration from other types of cooperation.
Shoes and clothing are the most obvious collaboration products. For example, sports brands Nike and Adidas can be called record holders in the number of collaborations.
As a result of collaboration, special services, events, projects, and competitions can also be created.
The difference between collaborations and other types of cooperation
Collaboration is a beneficial combination of resources. In this way, collaboration is similar to other formats of relationships between brands and companies. Let’s list other types of collaboration to separate the concepts and understand how collaboration differs from them.
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PartnershipCollaboration is a collaboration in which companies create a common product. Collaborations are often formed for a specific reason. Such collaboration formats are organized to demonstrate the uniqueness of products and the values of companies.
Partnership is a long-term relationship. Typically, the goal of cooperation is to exchange resources and expand influence, but nothing new is created.
For example, the corporate messenger Compass and the Softline Group of Companies signed a partnership agreement . For Compass, this is an increase in its own capabilities and access to new clients, for Softline, this is a new service in their product portfolio.
Cross-marketing
Cross-marketing is a joint promotion of two or more brands. Usually, companies provide discounts on each other’s goods or services, various bonuses and gifts. They increase their audience reach, exchange platforms and advertising opportunities.
Examples of cooperation: joint promotions of a marketplace and a bank, a coffee shop and a bookstore, a veterinary clinic and pet products.
Ambassadorship
A popular way of cooperation is collaboration between a brand and a famous person. As we have already written above, joint creativity is important in collaboration.
Ambassadorship can even be lifelong, especially with sports brands and athletes. For example, the sports brand Adidas made footballer Lionel Messi such a representative.
Goals of collaborations
Let’s list the reasons why brands and influencers need collaborations.
Increase sales
Collaboration is a mutually beneficial cooperation, and one of the popular goals of collaborations is profit.
An example is the collaboration between McDonald’s and Travis Scott. In 2020, the collaboration brought the rapper $20 million. Thanks to their product, the Cactus Jack set, which included a burger, fries with sauce and Sprite, sales in the restaurant chain increased by almost 5%.
Attract attention
Original and unexpected collaborations are discussed. They attract attention, content goes viral, brand mentions and online searches increase.
To attract an audience, they come up with a truly unique product. When launching a collaboration, brands often create a stir. Companies emphasize that the collection is exclusive and limited.
Examples of collaborations are sometimes collaborations between completely different brands.
For example, there was an unexpected collaboration between two brands: the clothing manufacturer “You Wanna” and the noodle manufacturer “Rollton”.
Reach a new audience
Collaboration helps to get a new audience, find an approach to it. The collaboration format for potential clients works as native, indirect advertising. They are already more loyal to you, because you are “friends” with their favorite blogger or brand.
With the help of collaboration, partners exchange audiences and find new points of sale. Moreover, this can be done without spending huge budgets on advertising.
Improve your image
The goal of collaboration is not always about money. Collaboration allows the company to demonstrate its attitude to social phenomena, to share its mission.
An example is a collaboration between a brand and a charity. In this case, a percentage of sales usually goes to the charity.
Resource exchange
Collaboration between two companies is a strengthening backlinks from visuals of each other’s positions. Manufacturers can provide their resources, such as goods, services, sites and capacities for the creation of a joint product. Examples of such collaborations exist in the tech and IT industries.
For example, DKC, a manufacturer of cable support systems and electrical panel equipment, recently teamed up with the IT company Unicorn. Together they will create devices for smart homes based on the Ujin operating system.
Types of collaborations
Collaborations can be divided into 3 types:
- personality-brand;
- personality-personality;
- brand-brand.
Collaboration of personality and brand
A type of influencer marketing is collaborations with bloggers, musicians, artists, actors and other media personalities. They can be designed as long-term cooperation, but a format with a limited sales period can also be used. Launching a collaboration is especially relevant in the fashion and beauty industries.
An example of long-term cooperation is the collaboration between the cosmetic brand Krasnopolyanskaya Cosmetics and eco-blogger Irena Ponaroshku.
Russian clothing brand Tvoe often collaborates with artists. Recently, Tvoe and artist Andrey Karpov released a collection of T-shirts featuring the artist’s paintings as part of a collaboration.
Influencer Collaboration
In this type of collaboration, we mean collaboration between people of any media personality — bloggers, musicians, and other celebrities — who exchange audiences as a result of collaboration. This is content collaboration. To expand their audience, they record tracks and podcasts, hold joint live broadcasts, and other events.
For example, an effective collaboration is the famous song “Say Say Say” by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson.
Brand Collaboration
Brand-to-brand collaboration is perhaps the most common type of cooperation. For example, two brands release joint products or services. For both, this attracts a new audience and a new reason to remind about themselves.
Uniting the audience is one of the goals of collaborations between sports brands and fashion houses. For example, collaborations between Nike and Jacquemus, Adidas and Gucci. This is an exclusive series: for fans of the brand, it is a new pair for the collection, and for newcomers, it is interest and loyalty to the company.
How to start a collaboration?
Collaborations bring excellent results if they are thought out and calculated. There is no point in launching a collaboration without a plan and concept. To ensure that cooperation is effective, we offer the following algorithm.
Define the goal
Before launching a collaboration, it is important to phone database choose a goal. Any goal can be made measurable, even if it is an abstract “increase awareness”. Marketing metrics will help evaluate the effectiveness of the collaboration later.
Select a partner for collaboration
For a collaboration to be successful, the participants of the collaboration must have a real “match”. Here are some tips that will help you find a partner successfully:
- In collaboration, partners have similar values. Their goals for participation may be different, but there must be a common view on ethical standards, communication and cooperation.
- Collaborations are successful when brands have similar audiences. For example, a food brand collaborates with a food blogger.
Think through and implement a marketing strategy
Joint partnerships are one of the marketing tools. Before launching a collaboration, you need to answer the questions:
- what will participation in the collaboration bring;
- what the product or project will be;
- what will be the budget and what resources will you use;
- how do you segment your target audience;
- where and how do you announce cooperation;
- how will you know that the cooperation was successful?
They will not only help you decide on the details of the collaboration, but will also help you develop a marketing strategy .
Come up with a joint product
Use your strengths and combine them. The collaboration of two partners should reflect their individuality. But it is also important to show that by joining forces you have created a new and interesting project. This is why your product attracts the audience.
Select promotion channels
Each brand can provide its own platforms on websites and social networks for announcements and news, press releases for the media and well-known publics will also be necessary. During cooperation, it is important to warm up the audience – we have all read headlines more than once about how a brand or influencer announced a collaboration with company X.
Analyze the effectiveness
Analyze your target metrics during the collaboration process. Track audience reaction, comments, subscriptions, media mentions or number of applications, sales growth and other metrics.
Results
Collaboration is an effective way of mutual promotion. In simple terms, collaboration is a mutually beneficial cooperation between people or companies. As a result of joint activities, participants create a new product. This is what distinguishes collaboration from other forms of cooperation. The product can be a product, service, event or project.
