Why pairing brands makes good marketing sense

• Aditya Jaishankar, Co-founder, MAAD, writes that pairing two brands together and offering them to consumers have myriad benefits, for both the brands as well as consumers.
• It can not only help in enhancing consumer loyalty, but also in unlocking demand from a dormant set of customers.
• Jaishankar also believes that pairing brands has the potential to create a disproportionate boost in terms of word-of-mouth, getting them a huge traction among consumers.

It’s human instinct to pair things up. Almost every aspect of our lives instinctively involve pairing something with the other; whether it’s getting paired in life or it’s about pairing a meal with a starter or a dress with an accessory.

But how is this related to the world of business and marketing?

When you look at brands and services, the same magic applies. By pairing brands in a unique manner, one can get to offer true consumer delight and complete the consumer’s shopping basket and fulfill his wish list.

The true value of a lot of products and services are uncovered only when they are paired with something that truly complements it.

On our platform maad.me, we decided to experiment with some brand pairing. We paired a mattress brand with a baby wet wipes brand. At first glance, it seemed like an unlikely pair. However, the results were super. We managed to significantly increase the sales of both the brands, while also bringing in a fresh audience for both.

We also discovered that we needed to look at the consumers with a fresh lens. A homemaker looking for a mattress can very well wear the hat of mother looking for wet wipes at the same time. If she is being rewarded a product that enables her to take care of her baby while purchasing a mattress online, it would be truly rewarding.

We realized that in both linear-based pairing and nonlinear-based pairing, genuine value can be added to a customer’s life. A t-shirt being paired with a jeans brand would be a classic linear pairing and a Wet wipes brand being paired with a mattress brand would be nonlinear pairing.

The difference between rewarding your loyal customers or even your fresh set of customers through pairing vs giving them a cashback or discount can have far reaching implications on the customer’s connect with your brand. Cashbacks or discounts will only encourage flirting between brands but pairing brands in an insightful manner will unlock the true value of every transaction and enhance the bond that the brand has with a consumer.

The benefits can be multifold:

• Enhance the loyalty of a customer through delightful pairing. Retaining a customer through other means like cashbacks and discounts could be a hugely expensive affair
• Unlock demand from a dormant set of customer
• Nudge the fence-sitter to cross over to your side
• Create a more diverse pool of customers for any brand
• Ride on the demand of a well-established brand and generate trials for your new brand

What it also has the potential to do is create a disproportionate boost in terms of word-of-mouth which multiplies far more than the client could ever imagine. This would mean a much better rate of engagement and conversions on your digital spends.

In today’s economic environment, there is a need to hunt in pairs. As times are getting tougher, hunting in pairs will be critical and not optional for brands. By hunting in pairs, brands can perhaps unlock 2X or 3X more worth of sales, and not just struggle to survive.

The additional benefits of pursuing this strategy is that a brand gets a deeper view of the consumer’s needs and wants. Furthermore, they can predict the future wish-list of a consumer after having understood the evolution of his or her shopping basket. This also can enable a strong media-targeting strategy as one becomes the owner of his habits, preferences, tastes and of course website visits.

Getting a multidimensional view of the consumer vs a unidimensional view can enable one to navigate the future relationship with a consumer.

The implication, in terms of sales, can be huge. Enabling a brand to break free from it’s demand constraints and acquiring a fresh set of customers while retaining the existing pool by constantly delighting them can definitely unlock an at least 3X numbers in terms of sales. The domino effect over a period across brands that have been paired with multiple partners could be much larger than one can envisage.

So when you think of your next marketing plan, don’t go solo, hunt in pairs. Also rethink substituting a part of your cashback and discounts strategy with a little bit of pairing to build genuine consumer bonds.

- By Aditya Jaishankar, Co-founder, MAAD