Digital Brand Partnerships vs. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is an essential marketing channel that brands, reluctant as they may be, must take into consideration when crafting their marketing strategy. However, netizens have become savvier at identifying sponsored content, especially if it comes across as inauthentic. Consequently, brands have started to explore new strategies that integrate seamlessly in the cultural zeitgeist. One of these strategies involve partnering with more established brands to raise brand awareness whilst fostering a more authentic connection between netizens and the brands themselves. Interestingly, this strategy is being embraced by both smaller and more established brands.
For instance, well-known skin care brand Kiehl’s recently partnered with gossip site Deuxmoi to promote the brand’s summer pop-up
Lea Huriglica, senior brand marketing manager at Ghia, the non-alcoholic cocktail brand, highlights this shift in how brands engage with the community and stay culturally relevant by stressing “[We’re] moving away from traditional influencer partnerships toward authentic, relatable moments that truly resonate.” Last year, for instance, Ghia partnered with social media account girlscarrryingshit to promote the water bottle they launched with Nalgene.
Similarly, cat food brand, Smalls, partnered with Kareem Rhama’s “Subway Takes” to raise awareness of their cat food products. Rhama owns two cats, so when it came to the promotion of the “Cat Dad” campaign Smalls launched around Father’s Day, the brand did not hesitate to involve Rhama who is a cat dad himself. For the episode, Rhama interviewed Smalls co-founder, Veronica del Rosario, her take being that the world needs more cat dads.
Melody Park, director of brand marketing for Smalls, emphasizes that “the goal for the partnership was to raise awareness for Smalls’s products, but not necessarily to drive sales.” In fact, the brand name is never called out during the episode. Park further adds that a different strategy and ad channels whose main goal is to call out the brand and drive website sales, like their online series Shop Cats, in which she “interviews” bodega cats in NYC.
Whilst pricing for said campaigns may vary, and they are much more difficult to scale, Park highlights that these strategies “can often result in millions of eyeballs on the brand, as well as site traffic. It is a way of slowly entering, whether subconsciously or not, into folks’ awareness.”
