Playing All the Angles
Everyone should have a chance for a big payday with multi-partner tie-ins. Here’s how to handicap your play.
Marketing may lack the complexity of nuclear physics, but Albert Einstein’s prescription for solving problems could well be applied to brands pulling together multiple partners for a promotion: Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
A brand needs to stay clearly focused on its marketing objective when it is enrolling that squad of teammates for the purpose of expanding a target audience, reaching into new channels – or new store aisles – or simply gaining borrowed interest.
At the same time, lead brands in multiple-partner campaigns have to think through some potentially complex issues, such as ensuring that the aligning brands meet their own goals, that the promo works at the trade level, and that the concept and execution doesn’t baffle consumers.
Brands risk seriously diluting their brand identities when they shoulder up to a small army of others on FSIs and in the store.
Yet the potential benefits are alluring, whether the effort involves brands from different manufacturers or internal brands like Kraft and Keebler pooling resources to pay for advertising and retail displays.
“The beauty of these promotions is that, if they are done well, there’s not a lot of cash outlay. It’s almost all upside. But you can’t be sloppy. You lose enormous credibility with the partners and trade if it doesn’t work out,” says Joel Erlich, senior vp promotions for DC Comics and Warner Bros. Consumer Products, New York City.
Here are some tips marketers agree should be followed in putting that multiple-partner tie-in together.
Start with a clearly defined objective.
You’ll want a simply stated goal to refer to in order to stay focused as planning proceeds, and when partners ask “Why are we doing this again?”
Skin-care brand Eucerin, a product of Beiersdorf, Wilton, CT, defined four aims when it pulled together 15 diabetes-related brands for its recent National Diabetes Month campaign: Stimulate sales with a highly-desirable segment, get trade support, reinforce ethical positioning, and implement a cost-effective national promotion.
Visa’s terse goal for last month’s Shop Click and Win promo involving seven Web retail partners: Get shoppers to use Visa online.
Find the ideal partners.
The multi-brand promo has to make sense for all the brands involved and the consumer. Brands should share some least common denominator such as compatible demographics, distribution channels, or similarities in their positionings.
Brands might share common marketing problems – “business pain points” – and they should try to identify them in the planning stages. Amtrak and Visa were each trying to spur sales with families and kids when they teamed last year with Broderbund, which was trying to revive sales of its Carmen Sandiego CD game, in the Great American Amtrak train adventure.
Make a list of as many complementary partners as you can think of, and then winnow it down. You might want to use the services of agencies that specialize in matchmaking, such as Cooptions, Darien, CT, which maintains databases of potential partners and manages tie-in planning.
Get preliminary approvals on a targeted partner list from any client-side departments that would be involved in the promo. Sales, for example, might know of conflicts at the trade level. Then determine the potential partners’ interest and availability.
Eucerin looked at more than 50 brands before narrowing the field to brands such as Lifescan, Futuro, and Ocean Spray.
Brands often gain partners with common attributes when they tie-in with studios for film or video releases.
“If the studio is doing its job right, and most of them do, it is lining up companies that can work together,” says Mark Owens, senior vp at the Davie-Brown agency in Santa Monica, CA. He notes that the studios host mini-summits where partners can hash out tie-in ideas. Hershey offered coupons on Sprint services and Kodak film when the three were hooked up before the Godzilla movie release and found compatible demographics among the brands.
Visa sought online storefronts with strong brand recognition for the Shop Click and Win effort, where the card brand is highlighted at each site as the preferred method of payment.
The right partner will exponentially increase your chance for success.
If you’re paying for it, you run it.
Before you make phone calls or send out solicitation letters to your favored partner list, know what the theme and elements of your promotion will be, what you are trying to achieve, and what you need from the partners. If you are spending the most money as the lead brand, you should have a greater say in the promo’s design and execution. Have a lead brand strategy with a list of what you absolutely must have. Know what points are the deal-breakers, and in which areas you can be flexible.
“Don’t go on a fishing expedition. You want to have a clear sense of the program you are proposing and a realistic sense of what’s in it for the partner,” says Mike Chadwick at New York City-based CCM, which handled the Eucerin promo.
“You have to have your act together,” says Erlich. Warner went to Batman licensees with a series of options in putting together the $1 million Go Beyond! Batman Beyond! sweeps running through March. They could contribute game prizes (as Hasbro and Six Flags Theme Parks are doing), put gamepieces on products (Fruit of the Loom, Kid Rhino, and PCA Apparel), or both.
“We present the options and they develop what role they want to take. But we say `We’re doing this whether you’re in it or not,'” says Erlich.
Put yourself in your partners’ shoes.
Consider how the project executes across every brand. Lead brands often go searching for potential teammates with nothing to barter. Make sure each partner is receiving value for what they are contributing.
“You might be offering impressions or access to your database. You should be able to justify it on a cost-value basis,” says Chadwick.
Visa knew that traditional media exposure was valuable to the dot-coms, many of which are hoarding funds for a 1999 Christmas blitz. So it threw in plenty of advertising with its pre-holiday online campaign with Web retailers including eToys.com, Garden.com, MarthaStewart.com, and Reel.com, says vp integrated media Bill Carmody of Marden Kane, the Manhasset, NY agency handling the promo.
Agree at the start on the approval process for materials and give partners sign-off power on the basic look and feel of materials to avoid surprises.
Make sure the promotion is strategically sound.
Understand what each brand delivers to the mix, and whether or not the promotion supports your objective.
Kids Own America, Washington, DC, has most of the mechanism in place to drive parents and kids ages eight to 13 to its online site, which teaches kids how to be smart about money. Parents redeem American Airlines frequent flyer miles to get access to KOA banking services, such as certificates of deposit that kids can buy in $50 increments. Consumers may trade in points earned by staying at Days Inn establishments for cash to be invested in KOA financial products.
KOA is negotiating with software firms to add an “edutainment” dimension to the online site. “We need to close the loop with a valued brand in kids entertainment software. The sell-in is to the parent, but the sell-through is to the kid,” says Carrie Edwards, executive vp at E. James White, the Herndon, VA-based agency that handles the Kids Own America program.
Don’t get boxed out.
You’ve got a great multi-partner idea. You pitch it cold to several parties. They like it so much they take it and run with it on their own.
If you are addressing prospects cold, be sure to negotiate a matchmaking fee upfront.
Put it in writing.
You move from concept to reality when you create your written agreement, in which you specify exactly what your company will be providing versus what your partner will provide. If you’ve thought through both sides of the agreement, the negotiations are much easier.
Selling it to the trade.
Some leadership with be required from one or more salespeople, especially if the partner products are in different categories. Have a plan for implementing the promotions with retailers.
It ain’t over till . . .
Keep tabs on your multi-brand promotion and make sure the partners are happy throughout its run. A consumer in Visa’s online campaign experienced problems when he went to play the online scratch-off game and his browser crashed.Visa issued a free game play and the consumer who had a potentially neg ative experience sent back an e-mail expressing his thanks for the help, says Carmody.
When it’s all over and you are quantifying the spikes in sales, or increases in viewership, remember to find out how the program worked for your partners. After all, it was their added financial support – and equity with retailers and consumers – that got your ambitious promotion off the ground in the first place.
