I was watching the Olympics last night and I saw one of the new AT&T commercials. You might have seen it – where Luke Wilson has “secretly replaced everybody’s smartphones” with those available on Verizon. As expected, everyone has a toxic freakout – (“where are my apps!”) and the tag is that AT&T is “a better 3G experience”. This ad caught my eye because while they focus on the actual hardware being better there’s not one mention or sighting of an iPhone anywhere in the commercial. Even at the end they feature a Blackberry Bold as the “smartphone” example.
So, I was curious and went back and looked at past AT&T commercials. And, whaddya know I actually could not find one AT&T commercial that mentions the iPhone by name. If you guys can find one – let me know – because I couldn’t find any.
Now, there have been plenty of iPhone ads where the AT&T network bars and logo were prominently displayed. But here’s the thing – they never once actually *say* it. Even in the Apple ad that’s widely considered to be taking a swipe directly at Verizon – they never actually say the name AT&T.
Now, it’s no secret that AT&T’s brand is hurting right now because of their coverage and connectivity issues. And, Apple’s brand is shining brightly. In fact, many have pondered if AT&T is hurting Apple’s brand – and vice versa. I have no idea what the marketing constraints are on either side of the AT&T/Apple partnership – but I’m absolutely convinced that the absence of any iPhones in AT&T commercials is no coincidence. And, that the same avoidance of AT&T in iPhone commercials is also purposely done.
And it got me to thinking…. Is AT&T Apple’s Shadow Brand?
Shadow Brand? What the Hell is that?
What I mean by that term is a partner with whom we’ve chosen to do business, and with whom we have somehow tightly associated our brand. But our partner’s brand somehow radically departs from our brand promise. Our…”shadow” if you will.
The Shadow Brand is one we have to be very careful with – because their brand personality or reputation doesn’t match well with ours – and despite the business benefit we may receive from being a partner – we have to manage the relationship carefully.
So, in essence their troubles can become our troubles. Or, in some cases, their success can drag us along for the ride (in which case *we* become the Shadow Brand).
Some of these “Shadow Brand” relationships go back and forth with “who’s the shadow and who’s not”. Think of MSNBC – Microsoft’s co-branded partnership with the television network NBC. When that deal went down in 1996, many believed that Microsoft was trying to address its failure to jump on the internet, and buttress its online/multimedia content on the Web. To do that, they needed a great brand – and NBC was the king of broadcast media in the mid-90′s (think Must-See-TV).
But recently (certainly very recently) it would seem that the NBC brand feels “old” and may have become the “Shadow brand” in that relationship. Microsoft quit the TV part of that partnership back in 2005. Yet, the co-branded name still remains.
And yet, in many other ways, the partnership continues and is by most accounts successful – with the two companies sharing many technology and content offerings. Most recently, NBC said that Microsoft’s Silverlight technology will be used exclusively to run Olympic Coverage online.
But sometimes Shadow Brands don’t go nearly as well. Consider the MySpace Music Label that was co-created by MySpace and Interscope records. Remember that? Yes, back in 2005, they launched the MySpace Label. It was because MySpace was (in the words of the CEO) “redefining today’s culture and transforming the music business with its innovative way of connecting musicians to their fans” (I know, funny now, right?). Anyway, there was some news just last month – that things were being “restructured” a skosh with the MySpace Music label.
And, of course we need not explore the mother of all brand merger debacles – the Time Warner/AOL deal.
So, Who’s Your Shadow Brand?
So, even if we never have to worry about brand management at that caliber – as marketers we will almost certainly have to deal with partnerships with other organizations. And, as we learn to start using Social Media, and Brand Reputation methods to monitor our own organizations – we will almost certainly want to monitor our partner’s as well.
Whether you choose a strategy where you keep your partner at arm’s length (a la Apple/AT&T) or whether you choose to intertwine the experiences (Microsoft and NBC) or whether one brand decides to subsume itself into the other (MySpace and Interscope) the safety tips around developing a process/strategy in brand monitoring are just as key. Here are three just for starters…
- Keep Your Friends Close and Your Enemies Partners Closer
Politicians have known this for years. You must know what’s going on with your Partner. If you’re co-branding an effort, you have to understand everything about that partnership. Where are the services going to break down? Who at the partner is likely to leak information? You know your company’s foibles – but how well do you know your partner? - Beyond the Co-Branded Strategy – Develop a Co-Communication and a Co-SEO Strategy
Make sure that your Google Strategy includes what you’re doing from a partner perspective. You’ve got to start developing the content that’s going to dominate Google. That doesn’t mean spamming – it means developing deep, valuable content that will inform the consumers of this new partnered service. If you’re committing to a long partnership to develop something – have a similar commitment to the content your producing. And, develop a process by which you’ll react to negative blog posts or comments. You’ve got to have a joint effort to communicate with influential bloggers. - Monitor Your Partner As You Do Yourself
Add your partner’s brand to all your blog and social media monitoring services. You now need to know as much (or sometimes more) about their reputation as you do your own. You certainly don’t want to be caught unaware when you walk into a sales meeting and the prospect says – “hey, I see your closest partner just screwed over a customer”. Awwwkward…
And certainly there’s just as much to say about being the Shadow Brand in a relationship. For all its mistakes, and inconsistencies in the Apple relationship, AT&T continues to succeed and has somehow maintained its exclusivity with the iPHone and now the iPad. But, that’s for another post.
There’s an old saying in Poker that if “you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is – that it’s you.”
It’s not quite that dramatic with a Shadow Brand – but if we take a similar level of care and attention that we put toward our own brand to that of the partners that sit at our table, – we’ll at least be assured that we won’t be blindsided by something beyond our control.
In today’s world… The Shadow Knows what evil lies in the heart’s of men… And so should you…
