Collaborative Branding: When Agencies and Other Suppliers Work Together, Brands are the Big Winners. - Issue: 2002 Qtr 2
Building brands is tough, complicated work.
It means understanding the essence of your brand and communicating it to different customers — consumers, distributors, integrators, service providers, etc.
It means understanding different markets and how your brand's value proposition is viewed and positioned.
It means managing the messaging, image and personality of the brand…across a wide range of print, electronic, exhibit and sales materials that must be seamless in presenting the brand story.
Sometimes it also means that multiple agencies and design firms are involved. How can you accomplish a seamless brand experience with so many variables? The answer may be collaborative branding.
Collaborative branding happens when all marketing partners, both inside and outside the company, work together as a team focused on building the brand.
Here's an example of a company that makes collaborative branding pay off: The CertainTeed Corporation's Siding Products Group (SPG) manages a portfolio of six brands. And it has achieved a Number 1 ranking in awareness, brand perception and most often used/specified.
A measure of the group's success is how it has pulled suppliers and agencies together for the good of the brand. For example, Miller Brooks has formed a close collaborative relationship with Miller Designworks, MDW, (no relation), a design firm that has also worked for CertainTeed for many years.
Together the two agencies share knowledge, expertise, digital assets…even working on the same project together. Steve Miller, president of MDW, sums it up this way: "We're definitely better together. With our combined talents, we've seen CertainTeed benefit by getting better work, better turnaround, and better return on their investment."
"Plus, our people have enjoyed the collaboration," Miller continued, "and it has even led to our two firms working together on projects for other clients. It's been a win-win."
Printers, exhibit companies and others are brought into the collaboration. For example, printer IPC Mail-Well has provided web-based instant quoting, a consistent paper specification, and color standards guidelines so it is very easy for anyone involved to assure accurate brand color reproduction.
But CertainTeed has the final word. Vice president of marketing Bill Eberle puts it like this: "There's no question that the great collaboration of our agency, design firm, printers, sample suppliers and all the other partners has been a major reason for our success.
"When we're meeting, you can't tell the CertainTeed people from our suppliers' people. We're all mixing it up, contributing, working. Building our brands. That kind of collaborative energy is priceless."
Maybe you can help build your brand with a healthy dose of collaboration. But be advised, it's not easy. You have to be committed to tearing down walls and getting people used to a foreign concept like working with companies that they once considered competitors. But, it can be done, as CertainTeed has demonstrated. And the brand is the big winner.
Back to top