Exploring What is Co-Branding and Its Benefits

In a market where, as a business, you may constantly be trying to promote your company as the first choice and beat the competition, co-branding is a way to strategically use other businesses to your advantage by joining forces.

It can be a very successful marketing campaign and a great way to create a product that can appeal in a more substantial way, especially if you’re co-branding with those companies which have significant reputations.

In this guide, we will look at what co-branding is and the benefits it could offer you.

What is Co- Branding?

Branding is the general promotion of your product, service, or company using a particular design, image, or message. If you’re branding your company, you’re setting up your business personality and advertising your product/service in a certain way. You may use a branding agency to support your brand image and merchandise, too. However, co-branding is slightly different.

Co-branding is when a company joins with another in order to promote both businesses at once and support each other in the marketing efforts. Usually, businesses will also share the profits of sales gained through co- marketing efforts.

Branding vs. Co-Marketing

When comparing co-marketing to co-branding, the differences are clear. Co-branding is placing two separate brands on a product/service for strategic promotion, and co-marketing is the efforts of both companies to push a product or service, share the reward, and increase brand equity.

Examples of Brand Partnership

There are many great examples of where co-branding has got it right, and in which two products can go hand- in- hand, work in harmony, and create a multiple brand alliance.

Nacho Cheese Doritos®️ Locos Tacos from Taco Bell

Here we have an example of a top fast-food chain store forming an alliance with one of the most popular snack brands, Doritos, in order to present an exclusive menu item. The Doritos Locos Taco is a crunchy taco shell made from Nacho Cheese Doritos® and is filled with seasoned beef, crispy lettuce, and shredded cheddar cheese. This has proven to be a significant hit with taco and extra-cheese lovers and makes it more likely that Doritos fans would head to Taco Bell: a prime example of a co-branding campaign.

Betty Crocker and Hershey’s

As a baking company, Betty Crocker has a brand requirement to deliver popular and delicious recipes, which is where a co-branding partnership with Hershey’s chocolate proves to be an absolute win-win. This partnership increases the target audience potential by combining an iconic baking brand with an iconic chocolate brand.

Louis Vuitton and BMW

These might seem like two unrelated brands. However, there are similar tenants to each that link the brands together. Both are well- known for the highest quality of their own product. Both brands benefit from promoting a new, sleek vehicle combined with travel cases provided by the handbag designer fashion label — ideally tailored to fit in the trunk of a BMW i8. This is a perfect example of how two luxury and high-quality branded product items can reach a wider variety of customer bases.

What are the benefits of co-branding?

There are several benefits to gain from going down this route:

• Increase customer potential. By combining a service or product from two or more brands, it’s possible to broaden your customer base. For example, credit cards that use co-branding can appeal to a wider audience through offering retail rewards and incentives.

• Shared risk. It’s always possible that co-branding strategies might not be as successful as hoped, but with co-branding, two companies share the risk and therefore make the individual risk much less.

• Appeal to a larger audience. It’s possible to increase brand extension by having a partner company market your product for you through co-branding.

• Increase in trust. If your product has been partnered with a well-known brand that has a loyal customer base, this is automatically going to increase the trust in your own product giving it another level of credibility.

Try it for Yourself

There are many good brand management practices that can promote your business alone, such as branding agency services, marketing strategies, and improved brand image. When thinking about what co-branding is, you should think about the added benefits which come from partnering with established companies that can help to promote your brand, too.