Partnership Marketing from around the world pt 4
by Chris Reed
Ubisoft have created an exclusive partnership with NIVEA for the Your Shape: Fitness Evolved video game. The partnership brings together NIVEA, developers of the world’s best-selling body-care products, and Ubisoft, to offer a holistic, in-home program for consumers to sculpt their bodies leveraging Kinect(tm) for Xbox 360(r). A NIVEA workout will be included in Ubisoft’s Your Shape: Fitness Evolved when the game launches in November 2010. Two other special workouts, developed in collaboration with NIVEA’s fitness and lifestyle expert Sarah Maxwell, will be available as downloadable content throughout 2011. This is a very cool marketing partnership that works effortlessly for all brands involved. The consumer will see how well these brands dovetail and Nivea should benefit from ongoing subliminal in game marketing while Ubisoft are no doubt getting revenue for this deal and benefiting from strong brand association to create awareness to females and males alike who buy into the Nivea brand. Levi Strauss is trying on brand collaborations to grow its business. The result is a spate of partnerships with iconic brands like Filson and more edgy designers like Opening Ceremony and Billy Reid in America. Several others will be announced before the end of the year, including one with Stussy. Levi has long done limited partnerships, but never this many all at once or with the bottom line goal of growing the business. They are very late to the table on this as brands like H&M and Top Shop have been doing these for years with great success and it’s old hat here but drives sales significantly so maybe it will work for Lev’s too in the US…although I saw their shop in Singapore the other day giving away a caravan so I think there might be some mixed signals going on!!!