When you think about coffee, Starbucks probably comes to mind. Similarly, spend too much time thinking about doughnuts, and you’ll be searching for the closest Krispy Kreme or Dunkin’. Why? These companies have built up enough brand equity to be known and immediately recognized for a specific product or service. However, building brand equity requires much more than great coffee and tasty doughnuts.
Instead, it’s all about customer perception. The fact is, customers must know your brand. As a result, marketers are creating one-of-a-kind customer experiences to differentiate from their competitors. For distributed brands, these experiences need to be delivered consistently across locations.
Unfortunately, sometimes, you can’t create that awesome and unforgettable experience on your own. In some instances, developing a strong brand partnership at the local level can give your business a real boost in brand equity.
How Brand Partnerships Boost Brand Equity
A brand partnership is a mutual agreement between two or more businesses or organizations. Through these partnerships, companies help one another to increase brand exposure, break into new markets, and add extra value to products/services.
When brand partnerships are developed and utilized effectively across the entire distributed network, brands can do the following:
- Build Trust –– When two or more reputable brands partner with one another, it signals to the consumer that the brand can be trusted. If consumers trust a brand that you partner with and have a good experience with that company, the consumer will likely have a positive experience with your brand too.
- Add Value –– When your brand develops a well-integrated partnership, it adds intrinsic value to the product or service that each of those companies offers natively. Now that there are two or more stakeholders involved, each bringing something unique to the table, consumers find extra value in the product or service.
- Generate Buzz –– When reputable brands partner, there’s usually some buzz that surrounds the partnership. Consumers are excited about the product or service. It provides public relations opportunities or opens up new media exposure.
The Appeal of Successful Brand Partnerships
It’s important to know that not all national brand partnerships are created equal. For a brand partnership to make sense, the companies must both gain something from it. The brands must also formulate a cohesive marketing campaign that makes sense to the consumer.
When considering top companies, everyone can recall a partnership that’s done very well. For example, Balmain and H&M, or Spotify and Starbucks, are partnerships that helped reach new markets and establishing brand equity for all companies involved.
For Balmain, the French luxury fashion house, working with H&M made sense because it increased their brand recognition with younger customers. For H&M, the partnership added to their high-fashion credibility. Spotify and Starbucks were a perfect match because it capitalized on the young, tech-savvy, coffee-chugging Starbucks consumer who very likely, loves to use streaming music services.
But what about distributed brands that have lots of locations? With so many moving pieces, deploying a partnership campaign can be especially challenging, even for the most recognizable franchise or retailer. We all know the payoff is big, though, so how do they get it done?
3 Examples of National Partnerships That Won Big
If you need some inspiration for your next partnership, here are three examples of national partnerships that were rolled out with great success:
7-Eleven x DoorDash
By 2020, online grocery and convenience goods sales in the United States are expected to be about 18 billion dollars. But not many brands are capitalizing on this clear opportunity today because of extra costs in technology, delivery process, and training.
Cue the inspirational music, because, in 2015, 7-Eleven partnered with DoorDash to experiment with adding new shopping and delivery methods at the local level. DoorDash, a savvy, on-demand restaurant delivery service, has also offered promotions with Coca-Cola and Jack-In-The-Box to help expand their reach.
In their partnership with 7-Eleven, DoorDash delivered items from 7-Eleven stores to customers for a $2.99 delivery fee. The convenience store offered the option for customers to buy online, expanded the product line at participating stores to facilitate larger orders, and offered new services such as “Convenience Packs,” consisting of commonly purchased household products.
Although the service was only available within five metropolitan markets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, the impact at the local level was significant.
By focusing on the partnership’s marketing campaigns exclusively in these areas, 7-Eleven increased brand exposure in those markets while also piloting a new operating model for their store owners. To bolster the strategy, franchisees at participating stores promoted the new service and received marketing support (e.g., in-store promotions and collateral).
Dunkin’ Donuts x Waze
Just to prove that food and tech make great bedfellows, the partnership between Dunkin’ Donuts and Waze, the social traffic and navigation app, is another great example of how brand partnerships can have a local impact. Bringing these brands together gave the 86% of commuters who drive to work each day the option to place their Dunkin’ order ahead of time.
At the brand level, the partnership has been effective for both companies because the program stipulates that customers have to be Dunkin’ rewards members and also download the Waze app. Getting new signups and app downloads mean more loyal customers who can be engaged more often by the brand.
But it’s not all open roads and doughnuts – this kind of partnership requires full buy-in from all of Dunkin’ Donuts’ franchise owners. They must monitor and execute incoming online orders on top of their usual morning rush. They also have to promote the service and use any kind of marketing collateral sent from corporate.
When promoted and executed well at the local level, consumers get what they want, and sales increase across the network. When executed poorly, the marketing team at Waze will ask why the customer experience for this dough-nutty partnership isn’t being delivered by Dunkin’ the way they promised, and the franchisees will wonder what their ad funds are buying.
Ace Hardware x PGA TOUR
The partnership between Ace Hardware and PGA TOUR golfer, Jim Furyk, was a bit different from a high-tech food collaboration. While both brands have a similar target audience, establishing a connection in a marketing campaign could be tricky. Jim, while the face of the PGA TOUR, isn’t so much of a brand as he is a sports celebrity with a personal brand.
To leverage the most out of the partnership, which Ace Hardware considered a sponsorship, they launched a campaign that included digital, social content, and traditional advertising. Jim’s endorsement of Ace Hardware tied his good values, work ethic, and positive public image with the company. This played off their brand equity, but also helped to bolster their image as a brand as down-to-earth, hands-on, and always helpful.
Ace Hardware, whose store owners regularly compete with hardware juggernauts, Home Depot and Lowes, uses these brand characteristics as it’s a differentiator.
To stand out, Ace cultivated an attitude that is personable and helpful. Like Jim Furyk, Ace Hardware is an All-American, trustworthy, and strong brand with good values. At the local level, Ace Hardware employees must live up to their tagline, “Ace, the helpful place,” to make the most of the sponsorship. Not only do they need to successfully implement the campaigns that go with the TOUR’s season, but they also need to keep the core identity of the brand alive.
How National Partnerships Influence Brand Equity
Given all of these brand partnership examples, how do they lead to increased brand equity? Although some brands won’t have the reach to immediately partner with a highly recognized brand such as the PGA TOUR or Waze, there are still opportunities to take findings from successful distributed brand partnerships and build meaningful connections and collaborations of their own.
When distributed brands look to build partnerships, they should focus on selecting companies their customers will be excited about. Focus on the benefits your brand can give to the other, and set terms that make sense for everyone.
Kevin Groome is the Founder of CampaignDrive by Pica9, Inc., a leading provider of web-based brand logistics software solutions, with an active user community that spans more than 50 globally recognized brands, such as Marriott, Liberty Mutual, and more than 100,000 local businesses. The company’s customers represent a portfolio of some of the most valuable brands around the globe today. Every day Pica9 helps its clients protect, leverage and activate more than $50 billion in brand-driven market value. Mr. Groome has extensive experience in developing marketing technology for global brands. He understands the practical realities and unique demands of local-level marketing. His keen sense of current technologies and the needs of marketing professionals has contributed to his success as a marketing technologist, industry visionary, and entrepreneur.
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