Co-branded

As I have been reading a wide variety of sociological, business, media and theoretical things to try and get a grasp on what, exactly, co-branding "means," I thought it might be fun to juxtapose the previous things I wrote about Bernard Simonin and Julie Ruth's article on brand alliances in the Journal of Marketing Research, with Clifford Geertz's notorious essay on the Balinese cockfight.

The Geertz essay describes in great detail ("thick description") the various rules of the cockfight in Bali, the social practices articulated in such cockfights, and the comparisons that can be made between cockfight and Bali culture as a whole. Geertz concludes from his close reading that "societies, like lives, contain their own interpretations. One has only to learn how to gain access to them." Ideally, co-branded advertising spots might provide some interpretation of our own society; or at least that is my hope.

Putting aside Geertz's lively and astonishing prose, here are the maxims he derives from his observations of cockfights:

THE MORE A MATCH IS...

1. Between near status equals (and/or personal enemies)
2. Between high status individuals

THE DEEPER THE MATCH.

THE DEEPER THE MATCH...

1. The closer the identification of cock and man (or, more properly, the deeper the match the more the man will advance his best, most closely-identified-with cock).
2. The finer the cocks involved and the more exactly they will be matched.
3. The greater the emotion that will be involved and the more the general absorption in the match.
4. The higher the individual bets center and outside, the shorter the outside bet odds will tend to be, and the more betting there will be overall.
5. The less an "economic" and the more a "status" view of gaming will be involved, and the "soldier" the citizens who will be gaming.

Geertz uses such observations of the cockfight to challenge Bentham's concept of "deep play," as advanced in The Theory of Legislation. Bentham argues that play with inordinately high stakes is irrational and immoral, as it typically does not benefit either party, and should be made illegal.

Geertz takes on the more interesting challenge of determining why, if it is so irrational, men engage in such high stakes play. For the Balinese, "the explanation lies in the fact that in such play, money is less a measure of utility, had or expected, than it is a symbol of moral import, perceived or imposed." That is to say the "deep play" of the Balinese cockfight is a game of status, more so than money; its benefits not so easily quantifiable as mere profit.

Which brings us back to brand alliances. Are the successes and failures of co-branding to be measured solely by profit? One nice thing about the Simonin and Ruth essay is that it focuses not on monetary gains tallied post-co-branding, but on consumer recall (brand awareness) and brand loyalty. Co-branding, then, does seem to be a "status game" in the cockfight sense: one in which the stakes are extremely high; and, as Simonin and Ruth show, the most "high status" of the brands involved actually has the least to gain in terms of increased brand impressions.

It seems to me that Bentham would view co-branding as an irrational corporate strategy, yet it is one that more and more companies are adopting.

Posted by at 11:32 AM | Permalink

Having spent a lot of time acquiring articles relevant to co-brandedness from the seems to me to be excellent Journal of Marketing Research, yet spending comparably little time actually tackling (i.e. reading) these articles, I was pleased today to discover that I had come across what appears to me to at least partially or perhaps entirely be the first "definitive" study of brand alliances published in the marketing literature: Simonin, Bernard L. and Ruth, Julie A.'s paper titled, Is a Company Known by the Company It Keeps? Assessing the Spillover Effects of Brand Alliances on Consumer Brand Attitudes, published 1998 in the aforementioned Journal of Marketing Research.

Here are the rules of the brand alliance, as uncovered by Simonin and Ruth in their pre-tested, placebo approved experiment on the effects of co-branding on consumer perceptions of individual partner brands as well as the brand alliance itself:

This is maybe the most important conclusion of Simonin and Ruth, as apparently there were previously doubts as to whether co-branding partnerships do, in fact, do anything for the brands involved.

Again, mostly just confirming that brand alliances have an effect. According to the researchers, there has been "explosive growth" in co-marketing and joint branding efforts in the 1990s, with cooperative brand activities enjoying a 40% annual growth rate in recent years. That's a lot of co-branding.

This is interesting. Less familiar brands have the potential to gain more in the way of positive "spillover effects," while contributing less influence on attitudes toward the brand alliance. The more familiar brand exerts greater influence on the brand alliance, while at the same time gaining less as an individual brand, due to the fact that brand associations are by and large resistant to change once they have been firmly established.

Terrific.

I really like both of the concepts: "product fit" and "brand (image) fit." The researchers define product fit as consumers' perceptions of the compatibility of two product categories, irrespective of the brands involved. Because in a brand alliance the two brands are typically contributing their "specialty," there is no need to consider the adverse effects of brand extension that, say, Betty Crocker might experience when extending its brand into the bicycle market. This would be a bad "product fit," because Betty Crocker makes cake, a product category not so compatible with bicycles.

A "brand image" is defined as "perceptions of the brand that reflect consumer associations of the brand in memory." Thus, if the two brand images are "somehow inconsistent, consumers might activate a causal or attributional search, through which they are likely to question why these two brands are associated." The example the researchers give of a bad brand fit is an alliance between McDonald's and a "low-share, low-quality brand of cola." This seems really funny to me, that consumers might go on a "causal or attributional search" if they are presented with two brands of seemingly incompatible classes.

WHY IS MCDONALD'S IN BED WITH THAT OTHER COLA?!?!?

This is a question the brands don't want consumers to be asking.

Meaning, I think, that these two concepts (product fit and brand fit), which are themselves defined through the alliance, affect the core brands solely through the mediation of the alliance. Unless I am mistaken, this is kind of a redundant statement.

Wow. Am I just boring myself, or are all of these points starting to seem redundant? I think the thing that is difficult for me to grasp is the particular use of the language, which is a scientific usage, though the language itself employs terms with variant meanings. So, here "spillover effects" and "alliance" are represented as mathematically derivable sums, determined by the equation of the variables "familiarity," "influence/affect," "product fit," "brand fit" etc.

Whereas, I might think that a positive effect on attitudes toward the brand alliance is one of many "spillover effects." I might think that "product fit" and "brand fit" are inseparable, though I understand the necessity of distinguishing them.

In any case, here is the final conclusion:

I hate this final point. Though product fit and brand fit "significantly affect attitudes toward the alliance," they do not "moderate" contributions of brands to the alliance or spillover effects of the alliance on the core brands. What does "moderate" mean in this particular equation? How can the compatibility of two products or their brand images "significantly affect" attitudes about the brand alliance, while not "moderating" the effects of positive attitudes about the brand alliance on the core brands? It seems to me that if the compatibility of products or their brand images comes significantly to bear on the perception of the alliance, then by necessity "product fit" and "brand fit" moderate the contributions each brand is perceived to be making to the alliance, as well as the consequent effects of the alliance on each brand.

Is this a crazy thing to be writing? This is how marketing research papers are written. I am glad I read the paper, but I am as confused as I am glad. Where confusion and gladness are perceived to be equal terms, my gladness is moderated by the alliance of confusion and the paper. Gladness does not significantly affect my perception of the paper or its concepts. I am not glad I did not read the paper.

Any thoughts?

Posted by at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)