One of the areas I covered off in the DNA session was how brands are under-utilising alignments & partnerships as a way of reaching their audience.
There’s all levels of examples that show a smart, strategic, mutually beneficial partnership can work in aligning a brand with an audience.
But what does this look like, practically? What about instead of spending budget on an online media campaign, that disappears once your money runs out, why not build a partner a section of their site, branded appropriately, that is beneficial to you & the partner.
Canon have recently run a campaign that I think is very clever. It is around a camera user submitting a photo that, to them, encapsulates their favourite charity. Users then vote on their favourite and the image with the most votes wins the charity $60,000.
The charity is pushing the Canon brand on their behalf, and opening Canon up to a new audience – not to mention ticking the corporate responsibility box.
Canon haven’t had the cost, or risk, of building this audience but have used the charities as the conduit.
NikePlus did this well with Apple, British Airways did by developing Metrotwin, Allergan the makers of Botox did it with RealSelf.com, Carnival started communities talking about ocean liner holidays, Starbucks did this nicely with their Pledge5 site in the States (whereby every American who volunteered for 5 hours community service received a free coffee), AstraZenica did it with simply4doctors to be within the GP community.
They focussed on the community and came up with a credible idea that connected them to the group.
The community then became the media outlet.
