Your company's e-business unit is exploring how some shrewd partnerships might enhance your brand's credibility and market share online. Does your PR team have a seat at the
table?
This year, more than $110 billion in e-commerce sales will be driven by online partnerships. Moreover, joint ventures accounted for 16% of total sales on content-driven sites
in 1999 and will top 35% by 2002, according to Forrester Research.
Web-based collaboration has become critical to the success, credibility and reach of any e-business. At the same time, most executives aren't leveraging their online
partnerships from a PR standpoint.
What is the role of the PR counselor in the e-business equation? In many cases, PR professionals are becoming content developers in an effort to build and maintain
relationships with various stakeholders. Fresh, relevant Web content not only fosters online brand loyalty, it also can be leveraged to spark offline media interest, which, in
turn, can drive more traffic to online partner sites.
Manufacturing Press
Consider an e-business called Unibex, a technology platform provider that competes with the likes of Ariba and CommerceOne. Unibex recently struck up a partnership with the
National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to create an e-commerce hub called Manufacturing Central. The company was eager to generate maximum buzz, but needed to first gauge the
Web literacy of its target audience.
Sensing that the manufacturing sector was slow to adopt the Internet as a supply chain solution, Unibex and NAM surveyed 14,000 NAM member companies (by mail) and asked two
basic questions: Do you have an e-business strategy in place (75% did not); and, if not, do you plan on creating one in the next year (75% did).
Armed with this trend information, the partners were able to position Manufacturing Central as the ideal solution for manufacturers with e-business aspirations. For maximum
impact, the team introduced the new portal on the first day of National Manufacturing Week last March and offered an exclusive to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to a major
piece in the Journal, articles ran throughout the week in leading papers and trade publications such as Purchasing Magazine, Upside Today and InformationWeek. As a result, Unibex
experienced an unprecedented amount of buzz at the NAM trade show, which occurred the same week.
Investing in Expertise
Strategic online partnerships also can help old-line companies reposition themselves as market leaders in the new economy. General Electric Financial Assurance, for example,
faced a number of challenges in establishing itself as a major force in personal finance services. First, consumers typically associated GE with refrigerators and light bulbs.
Second, other major financial institutions such as Schwab and Fidelity had already claimed first-mover status in the personal finance arena.
GE's PR strategy was to create a first-of-its-kind, impartial, online center for financial learning. Content would be provided by a host of third-party personal finance
experts, academics and association executives. The GE team believed they could set GE apart by providing much-needed financial advice to Americans. A survey conducted on the
site's behalf determined that while 79% of Americans considered themselves financially literate, only 16% could correctly identify 15 basic financial terms. In addition, most
survey respondents didn't understand their company 401(K) plans.
As such, the PR team spearheading the GE portal began building content with such widely disparate partners as the Women's Institute for Financial Education (WIFE) and the
National Institute for Consumer Education (NICE), ultimately forging 21 distinct content partnerships. These not only provided the credibility needed to shore up reader loyalty
and attract media attention, they also saved GE millions in development costs and dramatically cut time to market.
As a bonus, the resulting publicity in The New York Times and elsewhere has generated 400 million impressions to date, and has driven more than 200,000 unique visitors to the
site - more than double the amount anticipated.
Media Becomes You
Of course, as PR pros become content providers and the Internet blurs the lines between church and state, savvy communicators also are forging content partnerships directly
with the media. The strategy consulting firm Integral recently formed an alliance with Fortune.com to create a co-branded survey on disruption (i.e., is your company vulnerable to
disruption? Is there an Amazon.com lurking in the shadows, about to upend your industry?) The survey was posted on both Fortune.com and Integral's Web site for a month, capturing
more than 700 responses. This formed the basis of a subsequent analysis piece in Fortune magazine - and generated some extra buzz for Integral.
Perhaps you've always viewed other businesses, associations, universities, nonprofits and media organizations as coveted audiences. Try thinking of them as strategic partners
and watch your e-brands blossom.
Steven Cody and Edward Moed founded PepperCom in 1995. Today, the agency represents clients such as Steelcase, GE Capital, Paine Webber and VerticalNet and expects to post
billings of $10 million in 2000. 212/931-6100. [email protected] or [email protected].
Five Reasons Online Partnerships Fail
1.One partner has completely different objectives than the other.
2.The participating parties fail to establish goals or benchmarks to evaluate
the venture as it progresses.
3.Neither organization assigns a point person to manage the partnership. Following
the initial excitement, the venture falls apart due to poor planning and inattention
to detail.
4.The partnership outlives its usefulness and begins to cost too much time or
money because the participating parties failed to predetermine how or when to
terminate the venture.
5. The venture failed to create maximum value for the partners because it was
not sufficiently leveraged from a PR or marketing standpoint.