It seems that marketers are sometimes very creative to promote the most unusual and irrealistic associations between two products or brands. Today’s example shows that creativity has no limit: not only is the cobranding initiative pretty “odd”, but the promotion efforts are also deployed in a very creative way.
The cobranding campaign we are presenting today was made between Polaar and the movie “Le Dernier Loup”. Polaar is a cosmectic brand that claims leveraging the properties of plants found in … polar regions (hence the name). “Le Dernier Loup” (“Wolf totem” in English) is a movie by Jean-Jacques Annaud , who is best known for his movies Quest of The Fire (1981), the Name of the Rose (1986), among others.
How is the brand association articulated
It’s pretty unclear how the association between Polaar and the movie arose: polar region and cosmetics on the one hand; movie and wolves on the other hand. The packaging gives us however a clue: a wolf on a snowy land. Here’s the link: snowy regions of the polar circle. The packaging is perhaps the best part of the marketing campaign: it consists of a sleeve, promoting the movie, on top of the cosmetic packaging.
But in all honesty, except snow, I’ve some difficulties to understand what this cobranding campaign is all about; especially when you dig a little bit deeper.
Where is the link ?
As I said, if you dig deeper the “polar” link will soon disappear. Here’s the synopsis of the movie (source: Wikipedia):
The Chinese-French co-production features a Chinese student who is sent to Inner Mongolia to teach shepherds and instead learns about the wolf population, which is under threat by a government apparatchik.
In short, Wolf Totem takes place in Mongolia … which cant’ be considered by any mean as a “polar region“.
Advice for your marketing strategy
Co-branding is certainly a good marketing technique which can enhance the value perceived by the consumer. Yet, the association between two brands must make sense in the eyes of the consumer. In the present example, the least we can say is that the link is very tedious, the association meaningless and the value created next to zero.
Please remember to be pragmatic and try to take a customer-centric attitude when creating your next marketing campaign. Your marketing efforts will always be judged by people; so try to be true unless you want to seem odd.
Posted in Marketing.
