Hello, and happy Monday!
This is issue no. 13 of the Nebulab newsletter, your favorite bi-weekly reflection about retail, DTC, and eCommerce technology.
Brand partnerships are not exactly a recent trend in retail or DTC, but we expect them to become an even more relevant channel in the coming years. Partnerships are an incredibly cost-effective way to pursue your goals, no matter what size or stage you're at:
Small brands can use partnerships to build brand awareness through borrowed channels and authority.
Mid-sized brands can use partnerships to enrich their channel mix and experiment with brand positioning.
Established brands can use partnerships to keep customers engaged.
With customers becoming harder to acquire and retain, brands should consider how partnerships can become an integral part of their marketing strategy—on par with paid social, wholesale, and B2B.
So what does the ideal partnership look like? You want to look for three key factors when researching potential partners:
Audience alignment: does their audience overlap with yours? If not, is it a desirable audience for you to reach?
Value alignment: do their brand identity and messaging resonate with yours? Will your respective audiences receive the partnership well?
Non-competitiveness: is there any room for you to cannibalize each other's business? Are you competing for the same customer dollars?
As always, take these with a grain of salt: rules can be broken, if you know what you're doing—just look at the infamous Balenciaga x Crocs partnership, or the Burger King x McDonald's "A Day Without Whopper" campaign.
Below, we've included a selection of inspiring, insightful, and actionable reads about brand partnerships. We have more coming about this topic very soon, so stay tuned!
21 Examples of Successful Co-Branding Partnerships (And Why They're So Effective). Hubspot's content on marketing is always spot-on, and this piece is no exception. Not only does it offer a ton of inspiration for brands interested in a co-branded campaign, but it also provides some actionable tips on how to track a partnership's performance over time.
🔒 Inside the viral Heinz x Absolut collab that sent pasta sauce sales soaring. What happens when two iconic brands join forces to create a co-branded product? This Heinz x Absolut project is a textbook example of how to plan and execute a messaging-focused partnership.
Why DTC brands like Lunya are introducing new brands to its customers. Brand marketplaces are a form of distribution partnership that is becoming more and more popular. It's an interesting way for an established brand to expand into adjacent categories with little risk—as always, just watch out for brand dilution.
New article
Shopify Just Released Hydrogen v2. What’s In It for You?
This week, we go through the most significant changes and enhancements offered by Hydrogen v2, which was rewritten from the ground up to use Remix as the underlying React framework.
Features such as support for optimistic UI, page streaming, and error boundaries can dramatically speed up and improve your storefront, while Hydrogen's new approach to server-side rendering makes for a much more pleasant developer experience.
Check out the article for the complete list of changes and how to migrate from Hydrogen v1!
That's it for today!
If you have any questions, comments, or brand partnerships you love, you can send everything to [email protected].
See you in two weeks! 👋
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