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Competitors
or
Partners?
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Business New Haven
2/23/1998
By: Ellen R. Musante-Saba
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The line between competition and partnership isn't nearly as rigid as it used to be.
Armed with research about consumers' needs and wants and psychographic profiles of potential customers, marketers can identify appropriate collaboration partners and strategies. The wrong partner can easily destroy existing brand awareness. But the right partners can help an organization infuse new energy and strength into product and service offerings. The partnership becomes a win-win situation for all involved.
An instructive local example is the Marketing & Communications Council of Central Connecticut, an association formed to help several of Connecticut's marketing and communications trade associations promote events and training seminars to one another's members.
“In a business world where we are all trying to add value to the service we provide our customers - our members, in this case - it makes sense to integrate with other groups, even if those other groups seem to compete with us,” says Tiffany Nunes, a board member for the Advertising Club of Connecticut.
With 600 members, the Ad Club is the largest of the council's eight affiliated associations. The others are local chapters of the American Marketing Association, the International Association of Business Communicators, the Legal Marketing Association, the Network for Entrepreneurial Women, the Public Relations Society of America, the Society for the Marketing of Professional Services and the University of Hartford School of Communication.
The Connecticut Art Director's Club has also participated with the Council on some initiatives.
The council began its collaborative marketing five years ago when representatives from some regional communications associations found themselves participating in the
same panel discussion. Afterward they met informally to discuss common issues and discovered a synergy among their organizations and their members. The council grew and became more formalized, with by-laws and budgets.
“We find that the creative directors in the AdClub can be more successful when they integrate with the marketing or communication managers with some of the other organizations,” Nunes says. “Whenever we can offer better networking activities and programs to our members, it adds value to the groups individually.”
Although the council functions quietly, it offers tangible benefits to participants:
n Several times a year it compiles and distributes a program calendar listing regional marketing-related meetings and networking opportunities.
n Quarterly articles about marketing communications programs and successes are published by the council in several newsletters.
n The council's annual half-day educational conference draws national speakers and an audience of nearly 150 professionals.
A conference on “Integrated Marketing Communications,” held last November at the University of Hartford, offered a case history of how the strategy of bringing competitors together to market cooperatively has worked in private industry.
The Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board helps national milk distributors raise aggregate milk sales. Previously, milk distributors had advertised individually to take shares of milk sales away from one another. Now they have joined resources to integrate the marketing message, raise awareness and increase sales - by the millions - by helping to shape buying behavior.
Bozell Worldwide, which represents the Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board, was instrumental in founding the trade group and creating its collaborative marketing strategy. The agency has successfully created and implemented the “Milk Mustache” print advertising campaign to increase sales in market segments that had been, well, curdling.
Says Valerie Strenk, account executive for Bozell Worldwide: “Certain market segments held serious misinformation about the consumption of milk - that it's fattening, for example. It is significantly more effective to educate the buying public when you market collaboratively, as a national group.” BNH
Ellen R. Musante-Saba, a marketing management consultant based in Simsbury, serves as chair of the Marketing & Communications Council of Central Connecticut. She can be reached at 860-651-5152.
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