When two of your favorite brands collaborate to create a limited-time product, the joy you feel as a consumer is often unmatched. This relatively simple marketing tactic can help boost a brand’s revenue at up to 25x less cost than digital marketing methods.

Examples of brand collaboration

Still not too sure what we mean by ‘brand collaboration’? It can be tough to think of examples, but there are some brand collaborations that have been going on for such a long time that it doesn’t feel like a collaboration:

• McDonald’s & Marvel/Pokemon/Doraemon and many other movie franchises. The fast food giant frequently partners with these companies to produce toys to go inside their meals for children. 
• Supreme and Louis Vuitton. This is a great example of two very different brands collaborating to expand their respective audiences. Both are fashion brands, but Louis Vuitton traditionally appeals to a more mature audience, whereas Supreme is favored by younger people. When they worked together to produce bags, both customer groups were excited to try them.
• Balenciaga and Crocs famously collaborated back in 2021, when they released ‘Balenciaga Stiletto Crocs’. Of course, these shoes weren’t designed with sales in mind, but rather increasing publicity for both brands. Since becoming an internet meme, both Balenciaga and Crocs will have benefitted from the extra coverage.

So, why do brands collaborate?

As can be seen in the few examples given above, there are two main reasons a brand would consider teaming up with another brand to produce a product, content, or other marketing materials:

1. The brands want to create new content for their own audience, so partner up with other brands to spice up their offering.
2. The brands occupy relatively similar domains, so they work together to produce something which will capture the imagination of each other’s audience, therefore growing their own.

These reasons can be broken down further into smaller reasons, which could also be key drivers for brands to collaborate:

• Brands might want to dramatically boost their following on social media, which could be achieved through increased exposure to collaboration.
• Create new opportunities for customer feedback. A collaboration is sure to get a brand hearing from its customer base!
• Similarly, an inspiring collaboration could promote more user-generated content like forum posts, reviews, or even memes.

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Jack Vale is a writer in partnership with Tablebases.com, leading supplier of table bases for business and homes.

The post Why Do Brands Collaborate? appeared first on COLDEA Productions, LLC.

Understand Your Data

Keeping data safe first requires every organization to understand the data they have in their possession and then forecast what the damage would be to customers if this information fell into the wrong hands. Once you know the type of data that’s in your possession, the next step is to figure out who inside your organization has access and manage internal permissions appropriately. This type of internal discovery can help data security leaders craft risk assessment models and conduct data penetration testing that will help companies mitigate risks. Businesses should also be careful to only collect/store customer data that is needed.

Keep Your Employee-Customer Communication Methods Secure

Keeping customers updated on your policies and being transparent about what type of data is collected and how it’s stored will provide them with the assurance they need to allow your company to handle their data in a secure manner. Using safe communication tools such as encrypted online faxing and two-factor authentication can go a long way toward establishing consumer trust.

Create Data Breach Processes

Guarding data is not only about making sure that firewalls secure your data perimeter. An onion model made up of layers of monitoring and management is the best way to safeguard against risk. If your data is breached, it’s critical that a crisis communications plan is already in place and can be acted upon quickly. This will help to prevent customer attrition, negative press, and even future legalities if parties are notified as soon as possible. The onion model also helps in locating breaches faster because of the more widespread monitoring that is implemented system-wide.

Make Security a Priority

Training teams to successfully protect customer data is a powerful standard against information theft and helps to protect businesses from liability. It’s critical that all team members know how to respond to incidents and how data leaks can occur unintentionally. Knowledge is power when it comes to learning how to protect hardware (laptops, USB drives, files, servers, smartphones) and make sure that physical spaces that house data are secure. On the digital side, knowing how to identify phishing scams and other digital vulnerabilities will help to keep the entire company and its customers safe.

Americans Feel That Their Data is Vulnerable

The Pew Research Center has collected data regarding how Americans, in particular, are feeling that they are losing control of their personal data. About half of all Americans feel that they have no control over entities accessing their online search information, and the majority of Americans think that they have no control over their data being collected by companies. In the future, companies will have to work harder to demonstrate that they are committed to keeping customer data safe. Providing customers with information about how their data is being used and extra security options will become an essential part of the customer engagement lifecycle in the modern digital age where consumers are demanding more and more personal data transparency.

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Abigail Baker is a writer from Happy Writers, Co. in partnership with Faxage, an encrypted online faxing service.

The post 4 Ways to Brand Your Business as Secure & Confidential appeared first on COLDEA Productions, LLC.