The power of numbers are more than just math…
In marketing the power of numbers are success and expanded exposure through marketing partnerships.
Marketing partnerships can offer magic to brands. The secret is to combine relatable but opposing brands together. Physics proves that opposites attract. When you apply that strategy to brand marketing you have the potential to expand your exposure to the maximum.
The math is simple. One plus one equals three… or five… or maybe twenty-thousand.
Exposure exposure exposure… that’s the main deliverable of combined resources, the merge of new audiences is a win win for all parties.
What do you get when a running shoe company and a kids art brand and a basketball star team up?
You get triple exposure to the max!
(Along with a line of very cool kicks…)
Meet the Adidas D.O.N. 2.0. A colourful line of basketball shoes that brings three brands together through a clever three-way licensing agreement between Crayola, Adidas and the NBA star Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz.
These kicks are the second line of the Adidas D.O.N. series. These Donovan Mitchell signature shoes come in three vibrant Crayola crayon colours –Sky Blue, Banana Mania, or Jazzberry Jam. They also feature a giant Crayola logo on the soles.
This series is kicking it out of the park and into the court and onto the feet of a new wider target market for all parties. An especially big win for Crayola to broaden their market to an older demographic.
The music industry understands math and for years have been teaming up artists from different genres to attract new audiences.
The music industry knows the value of partnering up different demographics. Look at the success of the 1977 Christmas classic “Peace on Earth/ Little Drummer Boy”. This collaboration of the legendary 73 year-old crooner, Bing Crosby with the 30 year-old glam-rockstar, David Bowie is a seasonal standard that continues in heavy rotation.
Then there is the smash-up of the two biggest pot-heads in the music industry, country’s Willie Nelson and hip-hop’s Snoop Dog. Their 2012 duet of the ever so fun track of “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” sums up their legenday lifestyles and brings together to distant demogrpahics.
The ultimate pay-dirt for as opposites attract partnership hit the music industry in 2019. This ground shattering multi-Grammy award winning for ‘Best Duet’ and for ‘Best Video’ is the song “Old Town Road”. This controversial song brought together the rapper Lil Nas X and former-country star Billy ‘Aky Breaky Heart’ Ray Cyrus turned the music world upside down. It also brought new audiences to the table and made the “Country Rap” category mainstream. Bang!
At Say What!, our favourite mash up of different brands started with a phone call…
I got a call from Michael Robinson, president of Eastwood Guitars briefing me on a discussion that he just had from the marketing team at John Varvatos fashion in New York. They wanted to use 100 Eastwood and Airline guitars for a feature display in Bloomingdales NYC prime Third Avenue window for the introduction of the John Varvatos USA fall fashion line.
Mike’s question to me – “Who is John Varvatos and does this make sense?”
We had to let them know if we would do this ASAP, as the window display was going live in 30 days.
I called Mike back a few hours later after an intense dive into the fashion and music world of the John Varvatos brand and said “Hell yes! This is a game changer opportunity!”
Over the next month we worked the Varvatos team and launched a co-branded online and traditional marketing PR campaign which included a fun trip to New York to help build the attention grabbing window display.
The results were the establishment of an ongoing relationship with this incredible high fashion ‘rock-centric’ brand and tons of international exposure in both the music and fashion sectors. We also landed product placement in Varvatos stores across the US. Another promotional event was the Eastwood sponsored concert by the Mastersons at the the John Varvatos Bowery flagship store in NYC (formerly the punk meca bar CBGBs).
The big bang from this partnership was addition of over 20,000 new online fans for the Eastwood brand over the three months of the campaign.
The power of math is marketing magic.
If you want to bang heads and chat about who would be a good fit with your brand give us shout.
We love math!
Take care, and let us know what brands you think would make good partners.
cheers
grant ‘the brand guy’ ivens
Recent Comments