Marketing is a Team Effort... Your Team should be much larger than your company...

I am World Champion Kayaker, President of Jackson Kayak and a Touring FLW Pro Bass Fisherman. My marketing approach to all three endeavors produces results and that approach is to "Ride on the Shoulders of Giants" by partnering up with brands bigger than I am.

My marketing horsepower at my disposal is but still limited; 160,000 facebook fans for my page, 102,000 for Jackson Kayak page, as a reference. I have access to a very strong website- www.jacksonkayak.com, and a new one, www.orioncoolers.com, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to my friends at Dickies, Nissan, GoPro, Casio, etc.. The combined efforts of all of my partners is astronomical.

Getting positive exposure for your brand is always the primary marketing goal. Having it come from other sources, other than your own, can be extremely powerful. A good example is looking at some of the high production value clips that you can view on my websites and social channels. These clips include the logos and products of many brands that I work closely with. In fact you can find Dickies, Casio, GoPro, Nissan, Jackson Kayak, Orion Coolers, Strike King Lures, Kokatat, Werner Paddles, Snap Dragon, Cashion Rods, Ardent Reels, Raymarine Electronics, Evinrude, Ranger Boats, Quaker State Oil, RAM Mounts, Goal Zero Solar, and more all in one video or post! Check out this article and embedded video on the Dickies Website: https://www.dickies.com/dickies-nation-eric-jackson.html

The key to this process is finding partners that work well together. I am approaching it from two angles, myself. angle is as an athlete who needs sponsors to help me cover my training, competition, and equipment needs. Therefore, I chose brands for my gear that are the best in the industry, for performance reasons, but also because other brands are way more to want to associate with another very brand. Example, Jackson Kayak, Ranger Boats, Evinrude, and Orion Coolers are all top end brands in their respective fields, and brands like Nissan are more likely to want to share the marketing I do with those brands if they were not on par with the new Nissan Titan. Pulling my $90,000 bass boat behind the Nissan Titan reflects well on both the Titan and the Ranger Boat. Therefore, both Nissan and Ranger are more to want to push out marketing photos, videos, etc.. that I produce for them. This is THE holy grail for everyone involved.

Think about social media for a second. Facebook: If Nissan has 18,000,000 fans, Dickies has 1,300,000 fans and I have 160,000 fans.... What is my best bet for exposure on this platform? It is to have all of my partners pushing out the content I am creating, of course. There is a little unknown factor that many don't consider, however, when looking at the value of having individuals posting marketing materials versus brands and that is that the engagement is typically much higher. People on social media tend to pay way more attention to an individuals page than a brands page. Finding individuals that can act as a between brands and bring multiple brands into one are very valuable to those because the combination of everyone paddling in the same direction around the same story is very powerful and drives traffic much further. Doing your marketing through ambassadors with ties to multiple brands is very effective.

Some best practices for pairing brands.

1. always let any brand you are thinking of working with know on the front end that this is your strategy. There are still plenty of brands out there that ' want to see anyone else's logo on anything they are marketing. You can try to change their minds, but you are much better finding another brand that is excited about the strategy of sharing the spotlight for a bigger overall footprint.
2. Try your best to predict the energy a brand will put into creating their own marketing around you or your brand, or pushing our your marketing and prioritize your partners that way, not necessarily by the size of their own footprint. GoPro, for is huge on social media, but I am only 1 of 150 athletes on their team and I can't command a huge amount of their attention. Dickies, however, or Casio, doesn't have a huge team of ambassadors to compete with in comparison. Therefore, I can expect to see much more exposure coming from a Dickies or Casio than I can expect through GoPro. I can still provide GoPro exposure, but they may not be as powerful in pushing out my content as brands that might be smaller, but have more bandwidth around my projects.
3. Don't overlook the smaller brands- small, respected, endemic brands to your industry tend to have very strong loyalty and knowledgeable customers and fans. You can go a long way with your marketing pieces that include them and those people it reaches will typically be influenced more strongly than those who are casually following a bigger brand.
4. Getting as many partner brands represented in your photos, video, articles, etc.. as possible. You will quickly realize that you have included or excluded brands when you want to share content with them and hope they'll push it out for you as well. Make sure you have a formula for inclusion that works. Bass fishing has the tow vehicle and the Bass boat wrap and your jersey that makes it easy to include logos in any Whitewater and the isn't as easy, but you can see how I did it in these GoPro Shots below Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River...

5. Make sure the brands are appropriate for the situation. In the photo above, Kokatat makes the best outwear gear on the market and it is what I wear for kayaking. GoPro makes the best action cameras and it is what I used to get the and all photos/video on the water. Werner is the brand of paddles I use, and Pear Sports is the least but is still very appropriate as I make workout routines for kayakers that live on their platform.

6. Don't PUSH it... and authenticity are critical to success in this arena and if a brand doesn't fit in the story, remove it or ignore it. I have a few qualifying questions I ask myself before I include a brand in any story, post, or photo...

• Will including this brand add anything positive to the story? (if yes, include)
• Will including this brand detract in any way to the story? (if yes, don't include)
• Am I proud to include this brand or its products in this particular story? (if yes, include)

Taking out the individual ambassador as the hub, and substituting your brand as the hub, working with other brands.

Jackson Kayak is fortunate to have a number of great partners in many categories. Here are some examples of what that looks like:

• We decided to build a GoPro sliding mount on each Jackson Kayak and a Jackson Kayak/GoPro logo with it. This has resulted in a plethora of sales/marketing opportunities that GoPro has offered as a result and that Jackson Kayak has brought to GoPro.
• We designed our fishing kayaks to accept the Micro Anchor as a plug and play option. You can find Jackson Kayak on the Power Pole packaging as a result, and Power Pole can find their name all over our marketing.
• We designed our kayaks around RAM Mounts and include RAM Mounts with every fishing kayak. RAM Marketing is chock full of Jackson Kayak marketing and vice versa.
• There are many other examples with RealTree, Raymarine, Buck Knives, and more.

Summary

You don't have to be an athlete or ambassador to have "Partners". Tapping into the marketing budgets of other brands, and giving them access to yours only makes sense when you look at growing your audience and influence. Keeping the brands you associate with compatible and is critical. Use the prestige of other brands to help elevate the prestige of and vice versa. Have fun with it and remember that being part of a team usually means you'll accomplish more than going it alone.