Co-Branding

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Co-branding is a marketing approach that seeks to associate a single product/service with more than one brand name. Often one of these brands is the principle producers, with the other brands ‘endorsing’ this brand or otherwise embellishing it. The purpose of such co-branding could be varied – the aim could be to transfer the secondary associations of multiple brands, to borrow goodwill of multiple brands, increase the premium consumers are willing to pay, etc.

Types

There are several forms of co-branding in vogue. Four of these stand out and they are:

• Ingredient Co-Branding: This co-branding involves participation by brands of the ingredients/components of the end-product. An example of this could be an ad by, say, Maruti that says that its cars use MRF tires. Another example would be ‘Zenith PC, powered by Intel Centrino’.
• Same Company Co-Branding: Here both the different brands that are being used for the co-branding exercise belong to the same company. An example of this is ‘Titan, from the house of Tatas’ which uses both brand Titan and the parent brand Tata.
• Joint Venture Co-Branding: Here two or more companies form a JV to jointly come up with and sell a product that will bear the branding of all the participants. An example of such a co-branding is the recently terminated JV between EIH Hotels (of the Oberoi Group) and Hilton under which opened a number of hotels under the brand of ‘Trident Hilton’.
• Multiple Sponsor Co-Branding: Here there are more than two brands lending themselves to the new product. This is common in the credit cards space: The ‘ICICI British Airways American Express Card’ (a bank, a product and a payment service franchiser) is an example of the same.

Besides these broad categories, there are other forms of co-branding too. Project Drishti, which saw P&G and National Association for Blind participating to donate Re. 1 for each pack of Whisper purchased by the customer, is an example of a corporate house co-branding with an NGO. Often the co-branding does not take the form of a single product, but of a package of products – like a combo-meal advertized as containing Subway’s ‘6-gms-or-less’ subs and Diet Coke.

Ensuring the success of a Co-Branding

In an earlier post I had elaborated on secondary brand associations. A co-branding exercise essentially is one of adding the secondary associations of the associated brands to the co-branded product. And just like secondary associations need to be relevant, appropriate and believable for a product, so does the co-branding. Some extra care that needs to be taken with co-branding include:

• Associating brands need to match with each other and with the product. If they are two different and have little in common by way of values and purpose, a co-branding would be reduced to a mockery.
• Parent brands’ value should not be adversely affected by the co-branding. Getting Mercedes to endorse your premium cycle may be good for your cycle, but will be disastrous for Mercedes. One should ensure that the co-branding does not spoil (if not strengthen) the brand value of the associating brands.
• The co-branding must be understood by the customers. ‘Zenith PC powered by Intel Centrino’ is easily understood – one instantly knows where Intel comes in. But a ‘Whisper-National Association for the Blind Initiative’ is not. Giving laborious explanations for such an association takes away from the efficacy of the partnership.