Whether the marriage is made in heaven or the marketplace, don’t take your vows unless you know:
- Have you looked around enough?
- What are the criteria/guidelines to evaluate and support the decision to partner or not?
- Will you get as much as you give? /Will it bring out the best in you?
- What is each brand’s relative contribution to the partnership?
- Will the partnership enhance your brand?
- Who’s going to wear the pants in the family?
- Is the relationship dominant, shared or endorsed?
- How much can you still get on the side?
- Exclusivity is not required-pursue additional options that would not be inconsistent.
- Make sure your name and presence will be felt across all touch points.
- Will you grow old together?
- Define the scope and duration of the partnership.
- Maintain an active leadership role in the marketing execution to ensure a better outcome.
Now that we have studied what is Co-Branding let us discuss a few examples to get a better insight. Domino’s Pizza Co-Branding is a program designed to link Domino’s Pizza stores with new or existing convenience store locations. This program utilizes a complete Domino’s Pizza delivery and carry-out store – no express concepts here.
A genuine co-branding campaign has each company that is involved consistently focused on achieving the following goals
- Respond to the marketplace’s expressed and latent needs.
- Leverage one’s own core competencies.
- Create a new product to increase corporate revenues.
- Increase product salience to the consumer.