Marketing collaborations and partnerships: What earns attention?

Start with a reason to belong together

Follower count and brand fame can make an introduction easier, but they cannot manufacture fit. Start with the audience, the values the partners share, the cultural context, and the business job the collaboration needs to do.

Deloitte found that 69% of creators surveyed named relevance to their audience as their top priority when choosing a brand partner, ahead of monetary value. The partner needs to believe in the fit too.

Before greenlighting a collaboration, I pressure-test three things: whether it creates mutual value, whether the offering is truly distinctive, and whether the team has defined what a positive business result will look like.

• Mutual value: shared goals, audience alignment, and credibility for both sides.
• A unique offering: a clear value proposition with authenticity, relevance, or genuine exclusivity.
• Positive proof: earned attention, audience sentiment, sell-through, and a reason to continue the partnership.

Give the partner something real to shape

A collaborator should help shape the idea, not arrive after the strategy is finished to hold the product. The brand is choosing that person for a point of view, a creative language, and a relationship with an audience. Use those strengths.

Guardrails still matter. They should protect the strategy, the audience, and both partners' reputations without flattening the contribution that made the collaboration interesting in the first place.

The Reyna Noriega partnership put the idea on the product

For Hispanic Heritage Month, Schick Intuition partnered with Afro-Latina visual artist and author Reyna Noriega on a limited-edition Sensitive Care razor sold exclusively at Target. Reyna's signature visual language lived on the product itself, turning an everyday self-care object into a celebration of Latino culture and representation.

The collaboration responded to a real representation gap. A 2019 study of the collections of 18 major U.S. art museums estimated that only 2.8% of represented artists were Hispanic or Latinx. Schick Intuition could not solve that structural issue, but it could use the reach of an everyday product and a national retailer to put an Afro-Latina artist's work into more consumers' hands and homes.

I led brand activation for the two-year collaboration, connecting artist, product, retail, social, and press. A physical product and a major retail moment need more than a content calendar. Sales, brand, legal, creative, communications, and agency teams all have to land the same idea.

The marketing ask was specific: build awareness and consideration, drive sales, elevate brand equity, and create cultural relevance. That clarity gave every part of the activation a job.

Design the partnership ecosystem before launch

Decide how the idea will travel before the work goes into market. Product, packaging, retail, owned social, creators, paid media, PR, events, and internal communications may all have a role, but they should not all tell the story in exactly the same way.

The product can prove the partnership is real. Retail can create discovery. Social can show the making of the work. Press can explain why it matters. The collaborator's own voice can make the story human. One idea should give every channel a distinct job.

For the Reyna launch, Target.com carried a behind-the-design video that brought her story and creative intent into the shopping experience. That is a stronger use of a partner than placing a name beside a product and hoping the audience understands the connection.

The system earned the attention

The Reyna activation connected her own storytelling, Schick Intuition organic social, a broad influencer mix, Target stores and Target.com, Roundel retail media, interviews, and proactive press outreach. The reach came from the system working together, not from one post.

Campaign recap data recorded more than 147 million earned-media impressions, 10 million social and influencer impressions, 16 million Roundel media impressions, four media interviews, and 16 media placements including syndications. Social delivered the highest return on ad spend within the Roundel mix. Just as important, the limited-edition product returned in 2024 after the first launch drove sales.

Build proof of impact beyond the campaign

The post-launch review also identified what could make the work stronger: a charitable contribution, deeper in-store activation, and community stories showing how the brand was positively affecting the audience it wanted to celebrate.

Representation in the creative matters. Long-term credibility grows when the community can also see the value created beyond the campaign. That is how a successful moment can become a partnership platform.

Protect the relationship with clear operating rules

Chemistry does not replace an operating model. Define scope, creative and approval rights, usage, exclusivity, compensation, deliverables, timing, measurement, and escalation before the pressure rises.

Clear rules create room for better creative work. They reduce late surprises, protect trust, and help both sides know when a decision is truly final.

Measure the job the partnership was built to do

If the partnership was built to move a product, look at sell-through, retailer support, and new customer response. If it was built to earn cultural relevance, look at earned media, sentiment, conversation quality, and whether the audience understood the shared idea.

No single metric explains the full value. Pair the business outcome with audience response and what the relationship unlocked for the next activation.

• Do both sides have a credible reason to be together?
• Is the collaborator shaping the work or simply appearing in it?
• Does the audience receive something useful, beautiful, or new?
• Are roles, rights, approvals, and measures clear?
• Can the central idea travel across product, retail, media, and press?