Brand x Brand

Brand x Brand. Businesses are rethinking their paradigms around brand and fan building by turning competitors into collaborators. Although collaboration is largely untapped in the digital world, the world of commerce has always been collaborative.

Concerts showcase multiple bands to tap into each other’s fan bases. Car dealerships live on the same street to bring more of the target market to one space, increasing the odds of a transaction. Collaborations give brands access to new audiences while crushing conversion costs.

Like meeting someone through a mutual friend versus a cold call, the customers that brands reach through collabs are potentially more willing to start the sales conversation. Asa Whillock, former director of product management at Adobe, says, “We also expect104 a greater focus on making the right business alliances or data partnerships both internally and externally. Companies across industries will partner up to share audiences with explicit permission from their customers.

” He predicts the next trend will be “companies working closely together, brand to brand, to exchange resolved first-party audiences (with consumer consent, of course) in a secure, neutral environment.” The biggest opportunity flying under the radar is collaboration. It’s the best way to increase the number of buyers who know and care about you in a way that turns you into not competitors but cooperators, perhaps even allies and friends.

It’s the best way to have fan bases come into contact with new kinds of brands. “Collaboration is truly the win- win way for brands to find new audiences in a way that doesn’t dilute your brands.” – Alex Danco, Director of Blockchain and Systems Thinking, Shopify: How to collab with other brands? The buzz around a collab creates new excitement for long-time customers and ripples into hard-to-reach markets.

Brands get new eyes on their products and a fresh take on their brand. New Balance used collabs to completely transform its brand image from dad shoe to highly coveted hype shoe. After more than 100 years as a sneaker brand all about function, actors, rappers, and supermodels105 are now spotted rocking the footwear.

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