Apple Brand Collabs: How Apple Leverages Brand Collabs To Grow It's Market Share

Imagine you are the head of marketing for a small startup or really any size of business. You work hard every day to get the word out, build momentum and attract new customers, but things are slow going and uninspiring.  Then your phone rings or ‘pings’ and it’s a senior exec at Apple on the line. They really want to collaborate with you on a new product launch. They think that your brand has attributes, heritage or DNA that helps Apple explain and more importantly show Apple products at their distinctive best.

Apple X NYT

They remind you how they worked with The New York Times to show how the iPad brings media to life and creates new possibilities for understanding and engagement. As exciting as the iPad was, they needed to collaborate with the distinguished and established home of the best journalism to inherit the kudos of the brand to burnish their own and gain cachet with the most discerning audience. The implication was clear, the iPad may be new…but it’s not a toy. It’s for the most discerning and serious consumers.

This shortcut is the high road to acceptance and growth that only collabs can bring.  No influencer, however celebrated, and ‘liked’ or followed can bring this. And advertising won’t touch the sides or pull the strings that collabs do.

No-one would refuse to take that call..because it’s Apple.

But everyone should be prepared to make that call on behalf of their own brand. Apple hasn’t always had the ‘pull’ it has today…but it has always used brand x brand collabs to build its business and reach and move audiences in ways that other marketing cannot.

For Apple, brand collaborations are a central pillar of their marketing strategy.

When it comes to designing products be they hardware or software, Apple famously adopts a vertical approach. Creating their own operating systems, business applications such as Keynote, media players and chips to handle the traffic. When they partner for manufacturing components they are famously exacting and demanding. The stories from Foxconn or Gorilla are legendary.

Likewise, their retail experience is centrally defined and executed either in their own stores or store-in-stores at the likes of Best Buy and Target. Apple sets the tone and governs and approves every aspect of the execution including staffing and training.

However, one of the things that has made Apple’s marketing so successful over the years is its strategic development of a robust system of brand collaborations. By partnering with other renowned names, Apple leverages peer group heritage in domains that it hasn’t an established foothold. As in the NYT example, Apple was able to show how their product worked at its best inheriting the credibility and the creativity only the NYT could bring.

Gaining growth through new connections with established and new customer groups. Notably in the case of the iPad, a professional class that considered Apple products to be consumer rather than professional grade.

Apple’s partnerships are often long lasting and deeply strategic.

Apple x Nike

For example, Apple has partnered with Nike since 2006, initially to partner music to exercise and more recently to create the Nike+Running app, which allows users to track their runs and share them with friends as part of the Nike Health suite of apps. This not only gets Apple's name in front of Nike's huge customer base but also earns legitimacy with a global brand in the fitness market.

In its initial incarnation the Nike x Apple relationship was designed to increase the reach and range of the iPod, taking music out onto the pavements joggers pounded. Now it’s to tap into the overall wellness measurement trend.

In each case the partnership marries global brands to each other to lend heritage and authority in their categories. Both brands are sufficiently ubiquitous to have an obvious customer overlap. It’s not about expanding the customer base so much as it is enhancing and embedding credibility across a range of experiences. Trust is transferred from one brand to another with the customer knowing that the existence of the collab itself is a reliable indicator of the value of the product.

A gift of persuasive communication that only collabs can pull off.

The History of Apple Brand Collabs.

Apple has a long history of partnering with other brands to market and highlight the attributes of its products, dating right back to its earliest days. Back in 1980, the exclusivity Apple secured for VisiCalc software helped make the Apple II one of the best-selling computers of its time and gave Apple a sound foothold in the business world which initially frowned on Apple’s computer’s as expensive toys.

Apple brand partnerships into the future

More recently, Apple has continued to partner with other brands in order to gain credibility, usage and to express new value as well as expand markets and demographics.

As mentioned previously, Apple is running successful collaborations with Nike, Target and continues to grow its presence in music and film with partnerships with stars and studios.

Apple is always the target of speculation for new partnerships with high end partners such as Tesla and Fashion houses as well as entry into the smart home market with an Amazon partnership often mooted.

Apple often uses brand partnerships to express the value of its products most notably when they teamed up with the New York Times to promote the launch of the IPad back in 2010. By working with NYT Apple was able to show just how much better an experience reading newspapers and magazines was on the iPad. A partnership that was so well received that sales of the iPad took off…as did digital subscriptions to the New York Times.

Brand partnerships done well are a win-win situation for both companies involved. They provide an opportunity for each company to tap into new markets and demographics that they might not have been able to reach with traditional marketing methods alone. They help subtly demonstrate attributes to the brand and its products.

Conclusion

Brand partnerships are a great way to grow your business, and Apple is the master of the art. By partnering with other big names, they are able to reach new markets and attract new customers. So if you're looking for ways to boost your own business, take a cue from Apple and start partnering up.