Co-Branding: A Beautiful Union or Costly Mistake?
Once you have an established brand that is starting to make a name for itself, you may wonder what the next step is.
If your marketing is falling flat and you’re struggling to reach a new audience of consumers, you may be considering a few different marketing strategies. In your search to reach new audiences and expand your growing customer base, you are likely to come across co-branding.
How does this type of marketing help you reach new consumers, expand your brand, and make more sales? We are here to explain everything you need to know about co-branding.
What is Co-Branding?
Co-branding is a marketing strategy that features multiple brand names on a product or service as part of a strategic collaboration.
Sometimes referred to as a brand partnership, co-branding fuses the individual branding of at least two well-known companies to create one fresh, unique brand. Each company contributes its own established branding elements to create a new look using new logos, colors, packaging, etc.
This marketing strategy extends reach, awareness, and sales by reaching the consumers of both brands at once.
Co-branding is not to be confused with co-marketing. With a co-marketing strategy, two brands pair together to bolster marketing efforts but it does not result in the creation of a new, collaborated product or service.
Co-Branding Strategies
Co-branding can boost the reputation of two or more brands, depending on the strategy used. There are four strategies used in co-branding: Market penetration, global brand, brand reinforcement, and brand extension strategy.
- Market Penetration. This is the process of going to market with a product in an existing market where similar products already exist and taking market share from the other competing companies.
- Global brand strategy. This refers to the strategy of expanding and managing a brand in different regions of the world.
- Brand reinforcement strategy. This strategy focuses on keeping the brand alive and maintaining brand equity among new and existing customers.
- Brand extension strategy. Brand extension, sometimes referred to as brand stretching, is the process of using an existing brand reputation to promote a new service or product.
Pros of Co-Branding
There are several reasons why a company may be thinking about partnering up with another established company to execute a co-branding strategy. There is a lot of good exposure, market reach, and untapped revenue potential that can come to fruition during co-branding.
Here are 5 major benefits of co-branding:
- Both brands can reach a larger audience at a lower cost.
- It maximized exposure and broadens your market size.
- It can improve a brand’s reputation.
- Unique talents can collaborate.
- It increases your brand’s value for loyal customers
Cons of Co-Branding
As with any marketing strategy, there are some potential issues that you may run into while co-branding. Here are some of the most common speedbumps with co-branding.
- Financial issues may arise.
- It can create confusion.
- The work put into the strategy may not be equal.
- Some brands just are not compatible.
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Examples of Co-Branding
Co-branding examples are all around us. At Taco Bell, you’ll find a Doritos Locos Taco on the menu. This is an example of two brands in the food industry creating an item that can only be created by using elements of these two specific brands.
An example of an upscale co-branding effort is the collaboration of BMW and Louis Vuitton. These two establish brands partnered up to create luxury products that meet the quality and value standards of both companies.
Who Would You Love to Team Up With?
While reading this article, were you thinking about a company that you’d like to pair up with to create an unstoppable duo? Before approaching them, ensure that you’ve done your research and are aware of the pros and cons of co-branding.
If you have the perfect collaboration and collective products in mind, ensure that your co-branding material is on point. A co-branded product line requires new marketing materials, social graphics, and product packaging that features your new shared branding and logos.
No Limit Creatives’ world-class designers can help brainstorm and design the most captivating visuals for your exciting new launch. Eye-catching graphic designs that feature both brands is going to be the cherry on top of your co-branding strategy.
Schedule a free consultation to see how we can fulfill your graphic design needs.