Creating Authentic Partnerships
Creating Authentic Partnerships
I recently had a consulting call with a brand that is launching soon. The topic of the call was developing their social media strategy and determining what growth looks like from the start and things to consider in the future. One item that came up was brand partnerships - partnering with other brands to create a campaign. This could look like a content series, giveaway, collaborating on a product or influencer promotion, etc.
The easy way to look at this is brand’s will have a following on social and be able to offer that as “leverage” to another brand for the partnership - hoping that brand offers a similiar amount of followers. However what is really important here is synergy - the brand you want to work with has similar goals, similar audience, and just the vibes are there. This leads to much more natural collaboration than what we are all doing 5 years ago with our “let’s do a giveaway” emails. I have seen new brands launch (that generally seem really cool and fresh) partner with really established brands - did they get lucky? Maybe the founders know each other? Or they generally seemed like such a natural fit together it works!
I bring all of this up because I recently saw this TikTok and was blown away.
I have been following Nadya and August for several years now and really loved their use of Geneva to host and built their community. So August has always been about the greater good of it’s customers vs being concerned on competitive products.
It’s sad that this isn’t the type of content and partnership we are seeing on a consistent basis from brands. Everything just seems like a “social media one off” and not really building anything - and I think things like this are exactly what your customers (or future customers) want to see from you, especially Gen Z. We need to be creating more partnerships, more experiences, and show more love to our fellow brands. The brands that truly thing they are different and believe in their product are not worried about the competition.
So, how can you make this happen? As a social media agency we have a lot of brand contacts and are more than happy to connect our brands and connections together, so use your agencies wisely. Otherwise this really comes down to networking - showing up for your brand and getting conversations started - this is MUCH better than cold emails that may never end up to who you want to speak to.
