Brand Collaborations for the win
- Amy Goodall
- May 7
- 4 min read
In 2019 I had to get some help for my mental health, and you know what my therapist diagnosed?
LONELINESS.
I'd been a kid in a big family with hundreds of cousins and ever since those big raucous get-togethers, I always felt happiest when surrounded by lots of awesome people. It's why I dance in a group, make sure my workouts are as social as possible and am generally trying to engineer as many people as possible in my house of a weekend.
And just the same as I (and humans in general) need connection - brands get to supercharge their impact when they get together and collab.
Some of my faves:
Zara and pretty much ANYONE.
My last email to my subscribers asked them one simple question.
'If you had a magic wand to change ONE sticking point in your business right now, what would that be?'
And amongst the replies was this juicy little number about how best to go about a collaboration of two amazing women - each a specialist in their own niche - with plans to offer combined retreats and services.
Should they use their existing brand presences and use both on the marketing collateral? Or create a new identity for the collab? What to do?
So I put together recommendations in response, and decided to blog about it to help more people.
Here's what to do:
Create a simple brand identity for the collaboration with a landing page to ‘house’ it (like a soft sales page).
An Instagram page needs too much work, as does a website - and a page on each of your individual websites would probably get confusing.
This way would offer a fresh slate with a clear identity for what you are both doing together. I’d consider giving it a memorable and unique name (almost like it’s own brand name – and something which fits both fo your work) that you could eventually trade-mark or create a bigger site for down the line depending on how quickly it takes off and grows.
This landing site would benefit in several ways:
Data collection for the collaboration
You could run ads on Instagram sending people to it
Gives an easy email nurturing opportunity once people sign up
Leading to sales of the retreats etc
Keep things very simple and as pared-back as possible in terms of copy, but make sure to include:
As hi-res / professional-looking as possible photos of you both (not too corporate but keep backgrounds as simple/neutral as possible and bring in the vibe of what you each do with small touches)
Try to keep both photos similar in terms of colour palette, lighting, contrast and composition
Add your qualifications and a simple jargon-free overview of both your areas of expertise, keep it short and conversational and let your personalities out!
Explain clearly the transformation that people will get from your combined offering - how are they going to feel before, during and after they've experienced your collab offering?
Make sure you only have one type of CTA button on this landing site (but maybe in at least two or three positions as they scroll down) – always in the same colour and always with the same wording (i.e. ‘take the quiz’ for example rather than survey – quizzes are known to have a great take-up rate in terms of getting people engaged)
Add buttons to your individual social pages at the bottom
Structure/flow:
A short punchy explanation of what the collab is all about
Then who it’s for
What it helps with and how it gets results
CTA button
A short intro to the two of you
CTA button
Reminder of why they need your offering in their life
CTA button
Social links / website links
Branding-wise here's what to do:
Keep the new identity colour palette to 4 shades;
a deep grounding shade for the header, footer and copy
one brighter accent shade for CTA buttons (use v sparingly and avoid as backgrounds)
2 neutrals for backgrounds and to ensure copy is as legible as possible
What makes your collab different – is there something unique/special that you could use to inspire your colour choices? I.e. are these ‘an escape/sanctuary within the city’
Fonts – choose two only, one more interesting display font for titles (something with an editorial feel to it perhaps, maybe an italic) and a nice legible Google font for accessible copy (Work Sans and Lexend are both high on the accessibility register!). Avoid difficult to read calligraphic styles – these can look quite dated
Imagery-wise, I’d recommend The Vault Stock, Pexels or Unsplash depending on budget, for some nice free-to-use stock imagery that isn’t cliché or twee, and I’d probably avoid the usual sort of sunset type of pic and definitely make sure imagery is as hi-res as possible
Create a simple wordmark-only logo (i.e. literally just the word!) which is in a different font to those used for headings and copy to help establish this as a brand rather than just giving out information about a topic/something you’re selling (here are some prompts to help if you want to design this yourself : )
The key to the success will be drilling down into what makes your collab/offering really unique – going deeper than just generic wellness copy and then reflecting that visually to make it really enticing to people.
Ever since the dawn of business time, people seem to struggle with understanding really what makes them truly different - so I have some prompts to get you thinking on what that unique-ness is which you can access here.
These are prompts you work through together with your collab partner, and see what pops out that can be shaped into your combined brand.
And there we have it - this should stand you in pretty good stead for a new collab - the meeting of two expert minds, with a shared passion to help people with their magic.
Enjoyed this? I'd love to welcome you into my newsletter crew where you can get more tips and offers to help build your brand. And as a thank you for joining you get some free artwork to remind you what a frickin LEGEND you are 🤩
Bye for now,
Love Amy x
Comments