Picking a partner for co-branding or other joint marketing efforts is like associating with someone wearing heavy perfume. Pick the right partner, and you can come out smelling like a rose; pick the wrong one, and you just stink.

Ideally, both partners benefit from association. This suggests that they’re equals, but complementary. For example, Reese’s ™ Peanut Butter and Smuckers™ Jelly sandwiches would be great co-marketing.

On the other end of the spectrum are partnerships where one partner wins at the expense of the other, or both lose. Consider a recent example I saw while shopping: Weight Watchers Whitman’s candy.

This is a product that exemplifies stupid marketing, on so many levels. Consider the five P’s:

·        Product: Why would a company who was marketing their chocolate as a rich, indulgent, sensory experience (a luxury good) partner with people who urge a healthy, dynamic, eat-right lifestyle? Good grief, what’s next – churches co-branding condoms?

·        Price: Whitman’s is not getting a price premium for these chocolates. While they may do well from a profit and/or volume standpoint, on the face of the package, consumers pay less for the bag than for Whitman’s standalone boxes… but not enough less to differentiate the products.

·        Promotion: None. In a tacit admission of guilt, the product was buried in the candy aisle. Sadly, this approach again reinforces the lack of differentiation. Don’t bury it next to everything else… promote the heck out of it through new (Weight-watchers) channels.

·        Placement: The chocolates are being distributed in a cheap shrink-sealed plastic bag. The packaging looked almost exactly like the dried prunes packages my grandmother used to eat to keep her regular – and distributed through Duane Reed drugstores, a low-end chain that also stocks Whitman’s “higher end” products. That’s right, folks – don’t just make your brand look cheap; do it conveniently close to your other products so comparison is easy.

·        Positioning: “Whitman’s, the chocolate that helps you lose weight”? Again, is this a luxury good or a laxative? I hear the sound of a brand creating a large smoking crater as it crashes.

In short, the companies may have had great reasons for partnering – but I can’t see them in the marketing. I didn’t buy the product, and left the store shortly after seeing it – because frankly, while the chocolates all looked nice, the marketing partnership stank.

 
[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]