“Cobranding is like cross-pollinating,” says Reilly Newman, brand strategist and founder of Motif Brands. “You are able to leverage existing intellectual assets from one brand and have it complement the other brand. They kind of feed off each other.”
Newman concurs with Krupa on that point — he says the intention of many co-brands is to help a company reach a new audience that should be interested in their products based on the fact that they are already fans of the other company’s products. There is a common thread between the fans of the two companies that can be exploited by a co-branded product.
“It’s not just about the products or the transaction, it’s about someone saying, ‘Hey, I like brand A, and now they’re showing me brand B, so therefore I probably like brand B,’ ” Newman explains. “Psychologically, humans like to be consistent with our internal narrative. So if I’m a big Doritos fan, and then I see this new Jack Link’s-flavored Doritos, I’m biased towards liking that. So Jack Link’s could be introduced to a market segment they weren’t being introduced to before.”
