Would you be surprised to learn that since 2000, 52% of companies in the Fortune 500 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist? That fact was part of the findings of a 2015 research report from Capgemini Consulting. The report is based on a study of 100 leading companies in North America and Europe and covered industry channels that have been the target of digital disruption.
The brands that disappeared failed on these key points:
- Inability to cope with the speed, volume, and complexity of change
- Failure to regularly evaluate their business model
- Neglect of proactively identifying customer pain points
These three points reflect the challenges faced by many brands today in their customer loyalty efforts. For example:
1) Innovative technology that fosters customer engagement is being introduced at a rate that outpaces marketer’s ability to blend it into their marketing programs. Observe how retailers are scrambling to sort how priorities among mobile apps, digital wallets, online ordering, BOPIS, and BNPL. The means to go to market exist with each service, but how should they be knit together to create a better customer experience and drive additional business?
2) Are the resources and budgets available in the current business model to reach a broader universe of customers? What adjustments to the business model can be made?
3) Customers are experimenting with new brands, buying in new channels and with new payment methods. Have you surveyed the fine points of your customer experience to ensure unnecessary friction is removed?
Customers are demanding that we (brands, retailers, marketers) fulfill the aging promise of personalization. But how can your brand execute on a more personal level with customers, bringing greater relevancy of communications and offers to the vital resource that fuels your business?
The concept of Partnerships has been bubbling up to boardroom levels for years and there are examples of how brands have paired up as a gesture to solving the challenges outlined above. It’s time to explore this opportunity further and we landed an interview with Al Montalvo, who was recently named EVP of Global Business Development, Kognitiv, to explore the topic.
Al is an executive with deep experience in developing partnerships and strategic alliances and who brings that expertise to Kognitiv. At the center of Kognitiv’s approach is a unique concept they call Collaborative Commerce which enables organizations to work seamlessly on a peer-to-peer basis to connect data, commerce and consumer experiences, deliver more compelling programs, and return more control of those critical consumer relationships to brands.
Wise Marketer: Why is the subject of partnerships becoming so topical today?
Al Montalvo: Partnerships are a well-understood tactic to drive scale for organizations, introduce brands to new markets and new customers, and bring organizations with different skills together for maximum collective benefit. It’s a classic business tactic. However, as great a tactic as it is, it can have some drawbacks around time to execute. I strongly believe that one of the most exciting aspects of the Kognitiv solution is that it is a loyalty and commerce accelerant. Business leaders looking to partnerships or strategic alliances as a solution never had a capable platform to create collaborative business relationships at scale before. Technology available today is making this possible.
As we start to see a post-Covid recovery taking shape globally, partnerships are very much back on the table as a viable accelerant to growth. Certainly, across my network, executives are examining their current partnerships or considering new one’s with one question overshadowing that evaluation — “Am I getting all I can out of this partnership and is it working hard enough for me?”
Wise Marketer: Partnerships is a word with broad meaning. What types of partnerships are you talking about specifically?
Montalvo: In the years leading up to the pandemic, you might have thought of partnerships as co-location of physical stores, like Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins or Exxon and Tim Hortons. Those physical relationships expanded to co-creation of content that could be cross-promoted by retailers and others whether online or in brick and mortar.
The limitation of that content was that it effectively translated into discounted offers, in other words, “buy here and receive a discount on a related product.” The alliance of grocers and fuel retailers is an example that most will remember, shopping at the grocer would earn cents per gallon discount at the partner retailer.
The partnerships that we’re focused on facilitating for our clients are the evolution of this content concept.
Wise Marketer: Well that certainly begs for more detail. What’s happening in the marketplace that makes this important?
