Co-branding strategies in marketing

Marketing Co-Branding

Roadmap of Co-branding Positions and Strategies, the Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, Vol. 15, Num. 1, September 2009

The delicate balance of managing brand equity across multiple product lines and brands vs. attaining a unified global brand capable of serving as a scalable platform for future growth is explored in Roadmap of Co-branding Positions and Strategies (Chang, 2009). Illustrating how co-branding strategies need to be applied in the correct customer, product, messaging and service context, the author successfully shows how the organizational level of co-branding is just as important as the co-branding type of strategy implemented. Using the example of the HP-Compaq merger as the basis of how to implement enterprise-wide co-branding initiatives, the author shows how this strategy differs significantly from the cooperation-based co-branding of SONY and Ericsson and their many co-development projects in the mobile industry (Chang, 2009). Contrasting these are the department-level coordination points across BenQ and Siemens, and the joint venture of Miller and Coors breweries (Chang, 2009). These examples are meant to show how co-branding can potentially be a diffusion and dissipation of corporate brand value if not executed in alignment to the integrated marketing and co-branding underlying strategies. The author defines four generic strategies, with ample disclaimer that there are a myriad more, citing market penetration, brand reinforcement, global brand and brand extension strategies as the four foundational ones that co-branding are the most complimentary to (Chang, 2009). The author and researcher concludes that the nuanced use of co-branding is far from scientific and needs to be planned and executed to support the corporate brand by deliberately aligning with the underlying business strategy first. He advocates using co-branding within the context of a strategic market planning process to increase the probability of success (Chang, 2009).

Analysis of the Article

The article aligns with the core concepts of brand management and the role of brands as individual catalyst of market positioning for specific product lines. This aligns with the lessons learned in our course, and also underscores one of the core points of the author, which is the need for nuanced use of branding from a strategic marketing standpoint first, not driven by messaging or advertising strategy concerns. The author convincingly uses a series of matrices to explain how critical it is for branding strategies to align with specific marketing strategies, citing well-known business examples of companies who have successfully use branding to unify what could have been widely disparate positioning. The example of HP and Compaq is a case in point, as the author shows how an enterprise-wide collation strategy that was needed to unify the merging companies (Chang, 2009). The joint venture examples showing cooperating and collaboration as the basis of brand reinforcement and brand extension strategies further solidify the findings of successful co-branding strategies being built on strategic marketing platforms and strategies. In conclusion this article clearly shows the value of co-branded strategies to unify potentially disparate brands while also showing how their execution must be nuanced and well-planned to preserve and grow brand equity.