Collaboration Brand Touchpoints: Merging Your Brand With Others
Influencer marketing. An overused term in every marketing department. Who should you pick? What is the effect of collaborating with an influencer? It’s just as important to make sure your collaboration brand touchpoints are on brand. Which is way harder to achieve. As a brand or business you need to know how to choose the right party to collab with. They need to fit with your brand and grab the attention of your dream client.
In this post I’ll explain the different types of collaboration brand touchpoints and give a couple of examples of brands who are working their partnerships.
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT ONLINE OR OFFLINE TOUCHPOINTS?
Check out this in depth post about all the online touchpoints your brand might have and this post about the offline experiences that your dream client encounters in real life.
TYPES OF COLLABORATION BRAND TOUCHPOINTS
Brand touchpoints you should not forget are your clients, brand ambassadors or social media influencers you are working with and collaborations with other brands. You don’t have a lot of influence over clients other than giving them the best brand experience you can give but you can choose brand ambassadors or influencers yourself.
“The more positive their experience is with your brand and service or product, the more likely it will be that they suggest it to one of their friends.”
Clients
Your clients may not have a large following on social media or influence a big group of people but that doesn’t mean that a client isn’t a touchpoint you need to take care of. Take the time to help them with questions before or after a purchase, problems they may experience or like their image when they tag your brand or business on social media. It’s a small gesture that will make a big impact. The more positive their experience is with your brand and service or product, the more likely it will be that they suggest it to one of their friends. And what better person to trust than a friend who recommends a brand when you’re looking for something. They have unbiased first hand experience.
Brand ambassador
In case you are thinking “but isn’t this the same as an influencer?”. No, it’s not. At least not in all cases. When I worked in PR a couple of years ago, we started working with brand ambassadors for Agent Provocateur. They were Dutch actrices or musicians and not people who use their social media to influence peoples buying decisions (sidenote: influencer marketing wasn’t a big thing back then). For example, Jennifer Lawrence is a brand ambassador for Dior and wears the brand when she has big premieres or award shows. She’s not an influencer but does create brand awareness for Dior.
“In case you are thinking “but isn’t this the same as an influencer?”. No, it’s not.”
(Social media) influencer
An influencer is someone who uses their platform — mostly social media or their own website or blog or all of them — to influence other people to either buy a product or share a message for a cause. Brands collaborate with these influencers because they’ve got credibility among a certain target audience or have build a community of likeminded individuals. It’s important when you select an influencer to work with, that they match your brand and brand message. There has been a few incidents where an influencer worked with a brand and all of the sudden old posts or messages show up that conflict with the campaign or the brand message. Do your homework and don’t just select based on numbers. Yes, reach is important but you want your collaborations to match and support your brand vision.
Brand collaborations
A brand ambassador or influencer can collaborate with a brand but there are also brands that collaborate with other brands. They are often two brands with the same mission or style. When they collaborate they strengthen both of their brands and brand message. You often see this in fashion with special causes like the Net-A-Porter collab with six different brands to create more awareness for International Women’s Day. A percentage of the proceedings of the t-shirts went to the non-profit Women for Women International.
COLLABORATIONS: THE EXAMPLES
Below are a couple of examples of collaborations that have caught my eye. They combine their brand vision and visuals with their partners branding to create a whole new experience.
“It’s just as important to make sure your collaboration brand touchpoints are on brand. Which is way”
TINDER & DELTA AIRLINES COLLABORATION
These two brands brought travel & dating together. The campaign was inspired by the many travel photos that were being used on dating profiles and research on relationships and traveling.
They combined their two brand messages — creating relationships with people from all over the world and helping more than 160 million travelers get to the places they want to go to each year — by creating a selfie wall with nine different locations you can take a photo with. For singles they even hosted an event where singles could get their photo taken by a professional photographer to share on your Tinder profile. Tinder also has a running campaign with influencers to petition for interracial couple Emoji’s.
KNOMO LONDON & USER GENERATED CONTENT
User generated content is authentic content of your product and/or services made by your dream clients. It’s a way to build a community and say thanks. And definitely collaboration brand touchpoints you will score points with.
Below is one of my tweets that was retweeted by Knomo London, one of my favorite work bag brands. I did not only tag the brand but also used their branded hashtag #ThisIsMyOffice.
Having a branded hashtag will make it easier to find content made by your dream clients. The branded hashtag doesn’t have to be your brand name. In Knomo’s case it’s a small sentence that describes their philosophy: to design products for a organised life to live free.
“The branded hashtag doesn’t have to be your brand name. In Knomo’s case it’s a small sentence that describes their philosophy: to design products for a organised life to live free. “
Finally got my hands on the @knomo Knomad Organiser ?? I’ve been using it the last two weeks & I’m loving being organized on the go!
Best investment if you work remotely #remoteworking #ThisIsMyOffice pic.twitter.com/LzbABfmsp4
— Fiona Gobbo (@FionaGobbo) February 5, 2018
WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT ONLINE OR OFFLINE TOUCHPOINTS?
Check out this in depth post about all the online touchpoints your brand might have and this post about the offline experiences that your dream client encounters in real life.
