Co-Branding Agreement

Co-branding is a marketing strategy involving multiple brand names being jointly aligned and used on a single service or product.

  

When businesses two or more, draw up a contract and agree to form a cooperation in an effort to associate any of their varied logos, brand identifiers and color schemes to a one specific product, this act is typically known as entering into a Co-Branding Agreement.

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Co-branding (also called brand partnership) can create marketing synergy between brands. There are various forms or types of co-branding:

One form is ingredient co-branding. This entails the creation of a new brand from the materials, components or parts that are contained within other existing products. For example, A chicken brand from Kentucky combing with the Jacked maize snack to create a burger with serious crunch.

Another form is same company or internal co-branding, these are businesses or brands with two or more brands within the same company, that decide to promote their brands simultaneously. For example, A courtyard hotel brand that also offers residence inn accommodation to its guests.

You also get Joint venture co-branding, which is another way that co-branding is done, involves more than one coming together with another in order to make available a joint product aimed at a targeted audience. An example: Banks will partner with airlines (let’s say British Airways) to offer products such as a bank card for credit that automatically qualifies the holder access to the executives member’s club of the airline.

When choosing a co-branding partner, it is essential to get to know and gather information about them. The importance of choosing a partner that offers products or services that complement shouldn’t be overlooked.  This is important to establish natural link between you and your potential partner. The product or service offering must be relevant and should offer end user value. A Co-Branding Agreement must be advantageous and add value to both brands.

the reputation, financial and market position as well as the operations of both brands should always be considered when entering into a Co-Branding Agreement.

When entering into a Co-Branding Agreement, both parties will have a say in the branding exercise. There might however, be instances where one of the parties may be more involved than the other due to its expertise, know how, etc.

This should not however, take away from the importance of both parties participating and being involved in some form or another.

The Co-Branding Agreement should be carefully drafted and detailed and should set out the parameters of their relationship.

The Co-Branding Agreement should include the use of intellectual property, the retention of the proprietary rights by each brand holder once the Co-Branding Agreement is terminated.

A Co-Branding Agreement lays out quality control measures such as the manner and form in which trademarks will be allowed or used and the scope of such use. The importance of having a set out marketing strategy/ plan can never be overlooked, this plan should stipulate the how’s, the mediums and monitoring of the promotion and marketing of the product or service.

The Co-Branding Agreement should have provisions dealing with the exclusivity, duration and termination of the agreement. Grounds for termination should be widely construed to cater for a variety of circumstances such as targets not met, misuse of intellectual property, negative publicity, etc. A Co-Branding Agreement should also cover warranties, indemnities and confidentiality. While we are here, I would like to point out that when entering into a Co-Branding Agreement it may become necessary to make available to the other party certain privileged information, which can be your market research and customer data or your technologies and know how. Please also make sure when disclosing such confidential information that your Co-Branding Agreement covers for the non-disclosure of such confidential information upon the termination of the Co-Branding Agreement.

The agreement should also deal with any new intellectual property, whether it be trade marks or new technology, etc. derived from the co-branding exercise.

More agreements and contracts can be found at the Business Own Corporation MIND Repository.

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Co-branding is the act of associating more than one brand name with a single product or service. It can also be viewed as associating someone other than the principal producer with a product.

combining the strength of two brands is the purpose behind a Co-Branding Agreement. This is done for various different reasons which include increasing the premium consumers are willing to pay, copy proofing the product or service against private label manufacturers and combining the different brand and their properties with a single product.