← The Commerce Collective Podcast
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Kiki Strahan
Foreign.
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Emma Irwin
Welcome back to the E Commerce Collective Podcast. I'm Emma Irwin, your host. Quickly today, before we dive in, I wanted to let you know that you can now watch our full episodes on both YouTube and Spotify. So if you've ever been curious what's happening behind the mic and behind the
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screens that we've been hiding behind for
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all these years, now is your chance. This episode is live along with our latest episode of this month, above the Fold. And you might notice that things are looking a little bit sharper around here. We've given the podcast a bit of a refresh. New look, new feel, new us. Let us know what you think. All right, let's get into it. Today we're talking all about partnership marketing.
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Not just what it is, but how
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to actually do it. Well, how brands, big or small, can use partnerships strategically. How you move real product and not just generate buzz. And what separates the campaigns that work from the ones that flop. And to make it real, we will, of course, be breaking down an actual campaign that Flywheel helped bring to life.
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So let's meet our guest.
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Kiki Strahan
Hi, my name is Kiki Strahan. I am the head of partnerships for Flywheel. I have the privilege of being able to connect our clients with partners like entertainment companies, celebrities, influencers, licensed IP or other brands. I love it.
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Emma Irwin
You have such an exciting role. And I'm very excited to talk about partnership marketing because it's not something we've really covered on the show. And so we're going to start off. This is either going to be easy or really hard. It depends on how broad of a question you like. But when we say partnership marketing, what. What does that actually mean?
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Kiki Strahan
So partnership marketing is the combination of two or more brands coming together to achieve something in the marketplace that they really couldn't do alone. So that could look like a number of different things. It could look like a special edition product. It could be a brand collaboration. It could be a celebrity endorsement. It could be IP on a brand. So let's say, for instance, somebody wants to put the IP of a movie property on their packaging. That is absolutely a partnership. It could look like something of two brands inside of a grocery store want to come together because they want to get out of aisle and they want to reach other consumers. So there's a number of different ways that. That we can do partnerships. There's a number of different definitions of what partnerships is. It really just depends on what is the goal of the brand, what is our client trying to achieve, and then we help them get there we demystify the whole process.
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Emma Irwin
Amazing. In your mind, what separates, like, real, authentic feeling partnership marketing, and probably also, like successful partnership marketing from a campaign that's just like smacking two logos next to each other.
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Kiki Strahan
Right. I think you can tell when brands do that. You can absolutely tell, and your consumers can tell. So if you're doing a partnership that really does not feel authentic to your consumer base, they're going to call you out on it. People are very smart when it comes to marketing. They know when they're being marketed to. They know when people are really just taking advantage of something. A trend, a partner, a movie. And they're not diving deep to show that they truly understand that property. Consumers can tell. So the best types of partnerships are ones that really make sense. They're the ones that are rooted in data and insights and intelligence we have about consumers finding out what they're passionate about, finding what other brands or entertainment properties align with their interests, and then putting our brands in partnership with them to create a big moment in the space. That's what we're looking for, is looking for something that differentiates brands, wherever they show up in retail, from their competitors. Because not everybody can do partnerships. Not everybody wants to do partnerships. So the brands that do need to be sure that they're doing it in a really authentic way that's going to resonate with their consumers.
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Emma Irwin
I noticed because we just passed by April Fool's Day, all the brands that decided, like, I think there was. I would even call it a trend of, like, brands announcing fake partnerships.
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Kiki Strahan
But.
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Emma Irwin
But then a few of them, I think, ended up actually being real. And I can't think of any off the top of my head, but they were. It's like, oh, that those are so dumb together that it's obviously an April Fool's joke. And then it wasn't. And I was like, now I'm lost. Now I'm lost.
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Kiki Strahan
Yeah, exactly.
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Emma Irwin
What is real, what is not? Did the. Is this like, a dupe account of the brand? I don't know what's going on, but I like the point of, like, we can tell. We can tell when something really feels off.
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Kiki Strahan
Absolutely.
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Emma Irwin
April Fool's Day or not.
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Kiki Strahan
Yeah. Even the brands that did the April Fool's collaborations or the promotions, they got the attention. You know, sometimes it is really the unexpected that gets the attention in the marketplace. And that's okay, too, as long as that's your goal. You have to know from the very beginning what are you trying to achieve? What is the strategy behind the partnership? Because not everything should have a partnership. Not everything needs it. Do I need a partnership? Because there's a lot of energy and effort that has to go into making something like that come to market. So you want to be sure before you ever start that you have a strategy. Strategy, and you have a reason for that partnership being. The other thing we like to do is we want to be sure always that it's the brand that shines. So a partnership should not lead the conversation. That is an amplifier of the conversation. What you want to be sure of is that the brand always looks like the hero. They're the ones that when the consumer leaves the grocery store or when they turn off the TV or they get off of social media, they remember the brand that brought that partnership, not just the partner. It's really important.
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Emma Irwin
Partnership marketing has been around for decades and decades. Brands have been partnering with celebrities, different franchises, whatever it may be like. Would you say partnership marketing matters more now than ever? And if. Yes, why?
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Kiki Strahan
I think partnership marketing has come from a place of being a luxury for a lot of brands to being a necessity. So the power of partnerships is so great because you have the opportunity to do so much more if you are a brand that is in the marketplace and struggling with how do I make my marketing dollars go as far as they possibly can? I mean, we're all trying to get the most out of our money nowadays. Partnering with a brand will help you do that. And that's because of a couple of different reasons. Let's take, for instance, if you were gonna do a movie partnership. Movie studios, when they're coming out with a theatrical release, they have a marketing machine that is going to promote that movie release. And within their doors, they have a certain strategy of how they're going to promote that movie release. What they might not have is they might not have the audience of a particular brand. They may not have that group of consumers built into their existing marketing plan. So partnering with a brand to extend that messaging and to make those marketing dollars go further is what the movie studios are trying to do when they're partnering with brands. That's one of the things that they're trying to do. If you look at it from the other way, the brand now has the ability to latch onto something that is really culturally relevant. A big movie that's about to come and be released. And they have the ability to reach the movie studio's audience. So everyone that the movie studio was going to target with their own marketing campaign is now someone that that brand can also reach. So when you look at the ability to amplify your marketing spend to reach new audiences. It's very important nowadays because money isn't endless. We don't have unlimited budgets, unfortunately. And so making those marketing dollars go as far as they possibly can is really important to brands. And it's a way to do something that's a little non traditional, maybe a little unexpected, which also catches the eyes of consumers a lot of times at retail, wherever that retail experience might happen.
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Emma Irwin
Do you ever find like brands thinking about getting bringing a partnership to life, but the like in it for the wrong reasons? They're trying to fix a problem and you kind of have to step in and be like, I don't think that should be the reason. Like, it's not that partnerships aren't for you, we're just thinking about it wrong. Does that ever happen?
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Kiki Strahan
Sure. I mean, you know, we have people that clients that come to us and say, I need a partnership for this. And really they don't. Because not everything is suitable for a partnership. Again, you have to start with a strategy. You have to understand what you're doing and what is the role of that partnership before you ever start moving into the process of finding the right partners and negotiating the deal points that are going to eventually end up in that contract. You have to understand what is the goal and then continue to ladder up to that strategy as you go further down the road so that you don't get off the path of again, just having a partnership for the sake of having a partnership. Because they can be expensive and they can be very time consuming. So you want to be sure that everybody in the organization is very clear on why you're doing that partnership and we're all leading towards those same goals.
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Emma Irwin
Do you have in your head kind of like a guideline for deciding whether you need a partnership or it's like just better media, better creative or better product marketing?
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Kiki Strahan
Yeah, absolutely. And we have a decision tree that we use at Flywheel where we can take the clients through and show them. Here are the different reasons why you want to explore a partnership, or here are the instances where a partnership might be very appropriate. So that's part of the process. If we have clients that are sort of on the fence of do I need a partnership, Do I not need a partnership? We can help guide them through that so that they understand not only do they then have the strategy, but they have got, they've done the due diligence to understand, is a partnership something that I should pursue or am I better off going to Market alone.
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Emma Irwin
Gotcha. I'm going to move us slightly into same flow of thought, but talking about brands of different sizes and evaluating, like, what types of partnerships are out there and if they make sense. And I think, as we've said, like so many brand or people hear partnership marketing and think of the giant celebrity deal. You got Shaq, you've got the guy that does partnerships. But how do you coach smaller brands on kind of deciding what a partnership might look like who aren't necessarily going to get Shaq repping the brand?
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Kiki Strahan
Sure. It all depends again, on what's that brief, what's the client brief that they're bringing to us, what are they trying to accomplish? What are the budget limitations that they have? Now, I say budget, but I also don't think that that should be a stopping point, because budgets in partnerships, there's a number of different ways that you can structure a deal. There's a number of different ways that we can get that partner for the client that they maybe didn't think that they could get. So even though we do have celebrities that command such a high price tag, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't get them. You may have to reevaluate what is your ask of them. So we work with the clients to really suss out what are the things you need from that partnership or from that celebrity, if we're working with the celebrity, and what don't you need? Because we have experienced a lot of times where we'll work with partners and they try to sell you on something that you truly don't need in order to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish in the marketplace place. It's our job to guide clients through it and understand what usage do you need? What deliverables do you need? What's the time period? What is the exclusivity that you need to have in order for this to be successful? And sometimes when you're able to whittle some of those things down, all of a sudden the unattainable becomes attainable. You're able to get those big properties or those big celebrities that you didn't think were ever in or sphere of possibility. But that's where our years of negotiation and our relationships with folks in the movie and gaming and music industries and the celebrity agents, that's where all of that comes into play. Because we have great relationships there. And we can talk to our friends that are in all of those industries and find out how do we make that deal happen that's going to benefit both parties. Partnership has to be beneficial on both sides in order for everyone to feel good about going into partnership together. Can't be one sided. One person can't win and the other person loses.
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Emma Irwin
Would you say that there are any advantages that smaller brands might have when it comes to partnership marketing over a bigger brand?
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Kiki Strahan
That's a great question. So we have worked with smaller brands before, mostly in the arena of doing brand to brand partnerships. So for example, we worked with Nature Sweet Tomatoes, which is a company based out of San Antonio, and they came to us because they were having a challenge of people buying non branded produce during the summertime. And they found that there are a lot of other brands that are in the produce category that were having the same challenge. People would walk into the grocery store and instead of buying Nature Sweet Tomatoes, they would buy the unbranded grocery store tomato. And so our job was to put them in partnership with other brands that were having a similar issue and create a program that encouraged people to buy the branded produce so that they could create these recipes using that branded produce, which ultimately drove sales for all of the brands that were involved. So in that instance, you're talking about a somewhat smaller brand. You know, when you look at it in comparison to things like a Hershey, it's definitely a smaller brand, but absolutely something that we can do. And if NatureSweet had come to us and said, hey, we really want to be in a movie, then yeah, we could do that too. Like to what extent we would be putting them in a movie or that we would be amplifying a movie release that might have looked a little different versus a bigger company like a Hershey, but it's absolutely doable. I think again, we have to understand what are you trying to achieve, what do you need from this? And then setting the expectations for whichever brand is coming to us to try to execute, like, here is what is possible, here's what these types of things cost and then find out which direction we want to go after that.
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Emma Irwin
Gotcha. I'm curious in your. In talking about like understanding what the goal is of the partnership and does it always tie back to just like driving reach and hype or do all of these kind of translate back to sales for the brand? Like, is sales one of the main KPIs that's just less discussed in these conversations? What is the value of sales?
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Kiki Strahan
Right, Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, I think everybody's going to say that they're measured on sales versus measured on impressions or measured on earned media. I Mean, those can certainly be, certainly be components of a win. But at the end of the day, we are measured on how much product is this going to move, because I think that is indicative of whether or not you're going to do another partnership. Frankly, a lot of our brands will come to us because they're having challenges selling in merchandising into retailers. So retailers want that big buzz. They want a reason for consumers to continue walking into their stores. And a partner that can bring an exciting program that offers something potentially exclusive to that retailer is exciting. It gives the retailer a reason to put that merchandising on their floor. So while the brand wants to create differentiation, they want to show consumers that they're part of culture. They're very culturally relevant. Retailers, a lot of times want to have that reason to drive consumers in. They want that reason to give you the space on the floor or on the shelf. And so, and then consumers, they want the entertainment, they want the exclusive things they can't get anywhere else. They want the limited time product or the sweepstakes that you're running. And all of that can be delivered through partnerships.
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Emma Irwin
How do you measure that a partnership work? And I'm worked. And I'm sure the answer is it depends. But I'm kind of curious. How do you measure what is success?
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Kiki Strahan
Absolutely. And a lot of that does depend on the kind of information that we get from clients sometimes because clients will be able to look back on previous years and show us the difference between what did that program look like without a celebrity or without a partnership and what does it look like now. So what's the difference? Is it hopefully, you know, it drove sales. Hopefully sales went through the roof. Hopefully they had easier sell in with retailers and then the sell through to the consumers. Hopefully those markings were higher than they've seen in previous years or without a partnership. We also do look at things like when you're talking about social media, we're looking at, you know, how many people saw it, how many people interacted with it, how many people forwarded it onto a friend, like, what kind of interaction did we get on social media? So, and earned media, you know, earned media, who picked it up, that we, we had not intended to be involved in the conversation, who picked it up and publicized it on our behalf. There's so many different ways that you can measure that. But what we like to do is during the client briefing process, understand what does success look like for them? Where are they measured? Because then we can come back to them with a comprehensive campaign that says, here's how we reach those goals. And assuming that they have the ability, along with our data and insights, that team to pull their results at the end, that's how we measure if a partnership has been successful or not.
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Emma Irwin
Beautiful. Okay, let's. Let's talk about Reese's, the chocolate peanut butter candy. Everybody knows this and Scream, the movie franchise.
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Kiki Strahan
Yes.
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Emma Irwin
And this is a campaign that Flywheel helped bring to life, just because I think this shows, like, what really strong partnership marketing looks like. And it starts with a really cool, like, business problem that was identified. And so I'm kind of curious, like, what was the business challenge that Reese's was trying to solve? And then, like, how did the idea of this campaign come to life? And then how was it activated? Because we haven't quite touched on, like, the actual activation.
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Kiki Strahan
So Races and Scream was so much fun. We have worked with Hershey for many years, and in this instance, we had the international team come to us because they'd seen the work that we had done with the domestic team, and they wanted to see if that was something that we could help them with. And, of course, we jumped at the chance. So working alongside them, they briefed us on this challenge of Reese's. While it is America's number one candy, peanut butter chocolate combination that everybody loves and looks for in, you know, at every holiday, it's not as popular in international markets. So that flavor profile is not something that shoppers are really seeking out. And Reese's really wasn't in their mindset at that point. So that was challenge number one is how do we get international customers to seek out and purchase Reese's? How do we make that a flavor profile and a candy that they are looking for at retail locations? That was number one. Number two was that international markets don't celebrate Halloween like we do in the States. Halloween is a huge holiday, and it is usually earmarked by kids going to trick or treat and Halloween parties and making special Halloween treats. That's not how they do it in international markets. As a matter of fact, Halloween is just really. It's not a thing. And so that was our second challenge is not only do we have a holiday that is not celebrated in international markets widely, but then the flavor profile of the product that we were trying to promote alongside that holiday is not one that is sought after by international consumers. So they came to us and said that we need to change. We want to change all of that. What do we do? How do we do this? And so we started with data and insights which is where we always start with partnerships. And this is such an important step. So in this instance, we did a lot a deep dive into those international markets. And we found out that one thing that they really love doing around this time frame is they like to watch scary movies. That was a thing. And it wasn't just, you know, scary, like really gruesome scary movies. It was nostalgic scary movies. And some that are sort of on the edge of being a little campy. So Scream was, I believe it was the number two rated horror story horror movie franchise that these folks in the international markets watched during the holidays. And so after uncovering that, then the job was to go to who owned that property, which was Paramount, and start discussions about is a partnership between Reese's and Paramount's Scream possible? We got a little blessing in that. Scream 7 just came out in February. At the point that we started the negotiations, we didn't. We weren't for sure that there was gonna be a new movie. So we were banking on the fact that consumers liked the franchise as a whole. We knew that, you know, with the trend of nostalgia and so many consumers who are going back to those things that were from the 90s or even, we knew that regardless of whether or not it had a new release coming out, it was going to be a strong partner because of the attitudes and the behaviors of our consumers in those markets. So we talked to Paramount, found out that, yes, there is a new movie coming. And so the negotiations began of what we needed, what they needed, how they could help us, how they could help us. We could help them, they could help us. And then that's how the partnership was born. And it was again generated out of some great creative thinking from the team at Flywheel. They came to the table with an amazing plan, a great creative strategy on how do we communicate Scream? How do we utilize things like the iconic Ghostface? How do we get the rights to use that kind of ip? Because that's an instant read at retail. And kudos to our creative team. Our job was to create a toolkit of all of the things you can and can't do with the IP of this property and then provide them to all the different territories that wanted to execute the campaign. So we were in Australia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Germany, uk. We were in all of these territories and each one of them had a little bit of a different execution, because as you and I know, consumers are different in every territory. We negotiated a contract that allowed them to rights to do so many different things. And then they took. Took off and ran with it from there.
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Emma Irwin
Amazing. Such a fun one. It's such a. I love it. Yeah.
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Kiki Strahan
It was two things.
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Emma Irwin
I like peanut butter. Actually, it's three things. I like peanut butter, chocolate, and Halloween. So. But that makes sense because I am
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Kiki Strahan
so American and so everybody loves Reese's here, right? I mean, it's. Yeah. So delicious. Yes.
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Emma Irwin
Okay, to wrap us up, I'm going to send you. Send you. Okay. That was very digital. I'm going to speak out loud because
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this is a podcast.
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Some rapid fire questions that I'm just looking for. Very brief, short. If you can like one or two word it, great. But you have up to a sentence of words.
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Kiki Strahan
Okay.
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Emma Irwin
But my first question for you is what makes a partnership for feel instantly credible to consumers?
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Kiki Strahan
An instantly credible partnership is one that resonates with consumers because it is something that they are passionate about.
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Emma Irwin
Boom.
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If a brand only gets one thing right, what should it be? The partner, the product, or the activation?
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Kiki Strahan
Ooh, that is a great question. I think you have to get the partner right because a partner for partnership's sake does not do the job. You have to get it right on that.
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Emma Irwin
What is worse? Picking the wrong partner or forcing the right partner into the wrong idea?
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Kiki Strahan
Ooh, that's a good question too. I think you have to find partners who are willing and able to work with your brand. That is the key. You can't force a partner or a celebrity or an influencer to work with something they are not passionate about because you can see it. It's telegraph traffic.
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Emma Irwin
What is the biggest mistake that brands make when they kind of start looking into partnership marketing and trying to activate something?
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Kiki Strahan
I think time is a lot of times it's underestimated. Partnerships take a minute. They really do from if you do them right and you start at the beginning with good data and insights and you work through a creation of a big idea that makes the partnership. It gives the why behind the partnership. If you skip those steps because you're just trying to get to market with something that's big and flashy and fun, it's not going to be a successful partnership. It has to be grounded in a strategy and a big idea in order to work.
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Emma Irwin
Got it. Okay, last one for you. What is more embarrassing? A collab that flops quietly or one that trends for the wrong reasons?
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Kiki Strahan
We have seen a lot of examples of partnerships that have flopped, of partnerships that were not thought through as well as they should have. But in today's day and age, any attention is kind of good, right? I mean, unfortunately, I hate to say that, but attention is attention. And so not that I would ever put our clients in a situation where their brand is at risk or there's any negative attention I'd want them to receive. But I think it's, you have to be careful. You have to be sure that you do your due diligence and you're choosing the right partner, one that is aligned with your beliefs and your goals versus going with the hot property that is the complete opposite of who your brand is.
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Emma Irwin
Amazing. Okay, I think that can wrap us up.
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Kiki Strahan
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
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Emma Irwin
And with that, we've made it to the end of this episode of the Commerce Collective podcast. Thank you to Kiki for all of her insights on partnership marketing. And if you're looking for a partner to help you bring strategic partnerships to life for your brand, reach out.
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I've been your host, Emma Irwin and we'll see you next time.