In the third quarter of 2009 the number of newly created marketing co-operations has reached a new peak in Germany with a total number of ~330 (see figure 1). This is up 14 percent from last quarter and an increase of 29 percent compared to the third quarter of 2008. These figures show a quite remarkable growth considering the slight decrease earlier this year. Apparently, many companies identified co-operations as a valuable tool during the peak of the economic crisis. This initiative pays off, since the co-operation ideas, with which decision makers came up about half a year ago, are now observable in the statistics.

The upward trend can be explained by the continuing tendency of companies to utilize marketing co-operations as an inherent part of the marketing mix, especially in the current economic crisis. It also shows that co-operations have become an established instrument to tap-in new markets, acquire new customers (also see the results of study “Marketing co-operations in a crisis?”) and to offer products or services with an added value for costumers. Since many marketing co-operations are still of short term and promotional in nature, a deepening in the co-operation engagement towards a strategic partnership can be a beneficial move in the long run.

Figure 1: Development of marketing co-operations in Germany
Source: On-going market screening by Noshokaty, Döring & Thun

Most co-operations established by media, computer & IT industry and with celebrities
Taking a look at the overall development, the newly established marketing co-operations in the respective third quarter of the last two years show a remarkable growth of about 40 percent per year (see figure 2). A glance at the industries with the biggest growth during that time periods illustrates how popular marketing co-operations have become especially in the media and IT industries (see figures 3).

Co-operations of computer & IT companies enjoyed the strongest growth between the third quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2009 (+152 percent), followed by co-operations with celebrities (+141 percent). A similar strong development can be observed for online platforms & services (+128 percent) and the media industry (+109 percent). The four industries grew 56 and 62 percent in the respective third quarters of the last two years. In this context, the share of the selected industries in relation to all industries accounted for 33 percent in 2007 and increased to 37 percent in 2008 and to 42 percent in 2009.

Figure 2: Annual comparison, Figure 3: Four strongest growing industries

Third quarter 2009 generated eclectic co-operation examples in Germany
To illustrate the plain numbers, it’s worthwhile to include some interesting co-operations examples from these industries within the past three months. Well created and credible approaches are, for example, the Nintendo advertisement campaign for the new DS i featuring the two German actors Moritz Bleibtreu and Christian Ulmen as well as a co-operation of BMW and Nuance. The latter involves the integration of language and music recognition software in the new 2010 models. Others are the co-operation of Axel Springer and United Internet for a joint celebrity platform Top.de, an “interactive celebrity platform”, and a partnership of MTV Germany and Facebook for the provision of Live Streams of MTV shows on its Facebook group page.

International co-operations of the last three months are not represented in the underlying statistics, but nevertheless worthwhile to mention as well. Interesting co-operations include Sony and Google, a sales partnership that allows the pre-installation of Google’s browser Chrome on Vaio notebooks, a partnership of Hasbro and Google to provide the biggest virtual Monopoly game worldwide based on Google Maps, and yet another co-operation of H&M with a designer, i.e. the “Queen of Knits”, Sonja Rykiel.

It can be expected that the positive trend towards marketing co-operation in these industries and across all others will continue. The question is, whether companies will also be able to “fill these relationships with life” in order to make them successful on the long run. We’re looking forward to see the results of the co-operations established and to many new ones in the last quarter of this year!