At FutureM this week, we were inspired by the number of successful brand and startup partnerships.
On the panel “Small Startups Work With Big Brands” hosted by Promoboxx’s own Ben Carcio, executives in the startup community emphasized why brands and start-ups work so well together.
On a different panel, “Bringing Digital Content to Brick and Mortar,” brands told their side of the story. Stacey Howe, head of Global Digital Brand Marketing at New Balance, hit home when she discussed the challenge of implementing new digital technologies.
There were three distinct hurdles in the incorporation of new technology:
Preserving the Consumer Experience
In Stacey’s opinion, new technology should underlie existing technology — appearing invisible to the consumer and we could not agree with her more.
Here at Promoboxx, we seamlessly integrate into the existing channels that independent retailers and consumers are already using. We exist within Facebook tabs, we provide website widgets, and utilize twitter and e-mail to reach retailers in a way that doesn’t change their current behavior, but only enhances their user experience and broadens their consumer reach online.
Consistency and Customization
As a brand grows in size and complexity, keeping the content consistent on all of the online channels becomes increasingly more difficult. Howe pointed out that although simplicity is important, it is equally as important to customize the content in order to stay relevant to the local market. Not only is this balance difficult to manage, but creating custom online programs for individual retailers is expensive for the brand.
Promoboxx helps brands solve this problem by bridging the brand’s great national content with the local branding of the retailer. Brands need to be able to maintain control over the content, while giving their independent retailers the power to market on their own. Our goal is to empower retailers to market together with brands in the online world, ultimately growing the reach of the brand and the retailer. Call us cheesy, but our work is done when we’ve improved the relationship between the brand and each retailer.
Flexibility and Scalability
Howe’s final point was that brands like New Balance have many agencies, many retailers, and consequently many communication platforms. For a new technology to be considered at New Balance, it must be turnkey and able to scale. The technology should conform to work for each contingent of the brand — not the other way around.
This final point is something Promoboxx truly relates to. We talk to both the brands and retailers every day and we understand how busy they are. Our job is to make their lives easier. That is why we built our platform to automatically generate a customized co-branded campaign for the brand and each independent retailer. After two clicks of a button the campaign is distributed on that retailer’s local online channels. We are flexible enough to create a unique campaign for each independent retailer and our analytics dashboard allows both the brand and retailer to gain meaningful insight for their relationship with one another and the consumer.
Who’s up for a high-five?
