Co-Branding Opportunities and Benefits

Brand owners have found many different ways in which co-branding may be turned to advantage. For established brands it offers the opportunity to create an entirely new income stream or to boost sales of existing products and for new brands it may bring immediate credibility in a normally sceptical marketplace. Co-branding may reduce the need for costly investment in targeting new markets or be a means of overcoming non-financial barriers to entry, of gaining additional brand exposure, of reducing risk, of speeding investment payback, of facilitating price-profit maximization or of providing a novel way of communicating with the market. It can be used to gain short-term tactical advantage as well as for longer-term strategic purposes. In exceptional cases a brand may even be used in co-branding applications before it has been established as a separate entity in the marketplace and be the way in which its reputation is first established. Let us look in more detail at these advantages