3.6 Collaborator Analysis

Marketing Collaborators

No company operates in a vacuum. All companies of all sizes and types rely on numerous collaborating firms, organisations and people to achieve their goals. The need for finance through loans and other debt mechanisms immediately springs to mind, with even small and medium enterprises (SMEs) using banks as collaborators to finance their businesses. Similarly, the majority of businesses nowadays require some form of IT support, for example, to access and run computer services and to develop and run websites and apps. Most businesses also require accounting services.

A full list of collaborators for even a small business would be long and cover many different aspects of the business. For the 5Cs analysis, we are looking specifically at marketing collaborators, and we can define these within three distinct categories:

1. Suppliers
2. Distributors
3. Promotional agents

Suppliers

Many businesses require supplies of some kind. These range from raw materials to suppliers of infrastructure, such as computers or other equipment. Examples of suppliers might include:

• Whittaker’s requires supplies of cocoa, sugar and other raw ingredients
• McDonald’s requires supplies of raw materials and semi-prepared products, as well as packaging materials.
• Air New Zealand requires supplies of fuel and in-flight meals, as well as planes and everything that goes into a plane, such as entertainment systems and software packages.

Distributors

Distribution is the core of marketing because it involves getting the final product or service to the customer, without which there can be no sale and so no business. Distribution involves the movement of products, both from the source to the point of sale and from the point of sale to the final customer. Companies such as restaurants that sell services still rely on distribution companies to deliver raw materials.

Distribution can be split between upstream logistics, whereby raw materials and other wholesale products are supplied to the company by other businesses, and downstream whereby the final product or service is delivered to the customer. For upstream logistics, the distributor and the supplier are often one and the same. For example, LSG Sky Chef is the supplier and distributor for in-flight meals on Air New Zealand.

As a result, for all companies, the distribution mechanism that gets the final product to service to the customer is a key component of the marketing plan. These become the most important distribution collaborators. For consumer brands, these will mostly be retailers. Defining the retail collaborators for a product or service is important because the type of retailer chosen plays a major part in defining the positioning for a brand:

• Whittaker’s brands are sold in supermarkets and other food stores. It also sells premium and limited edition products in places such as airport duty-free stores.
• Cookietime biscuits are sold in supermarkets, but they are also sold through direct mail and online, and in some markets, the brand also runs its own speciality branded stores.
• McDonald’s runs its own stores, working with landlords, notably major shopping centres. McDonald’s has a few premium stores around the world and
• Air New Zealand sells tickets through its own website, but it also works with travel agents of various kinds, both online and offline.
• Louis Vuitton operates its own stores, but it also works with other premium retailers, such as department stores.

Choosing the correct retailer to work with and fitting the status of the retailer with that of the brand are very important decisions for many brands. Selling through The Warehouse gives a very different brand positioning and different customer segment for a product compared to selling through Farmers, for example. Also, remember that while brands can target particular large retailers, it is the retailer who will decide whether or not to stock the brand and how much profit it expects to make from doing so. The brand can only propose. The retailer decides. In many cases, if the brand does not pay the retailer a fee, the retailer won’t stock the brand.

Promotional Agents

Agencies

For MRKTG101, the final marketing collaborators to consider are promotional agents and platforms. While small companies can set up their own simple advertising and promotions, in most cases, larger brands will employ advertising experts to manage various aspects of their promotional strategy. Bigger brands will sometimes use the same agency to cover all their advertising and promotional needs, while others will split different roles (e.g. branding, creative content development, advert distribution and so on) between different agencies, and some will switch agencies more frequently than others.

For its 2020 campaign, for example, the University of Waikato employed Together and Special Group to organise its promotional campaigns. (see details here).

Similarly, for a 2021 campaign, Air New Zealand used Shine Communications (see details).

As advertising agencies are in the business of advertising, self-promotion is also common, and it is fairly easy to track down. There are many websites dedicated to advertising the work of advertising agencies (for example, see Stoppress, Campaign Brief or Ads of the World).

Advertising Media Channels & Platforms

The other collaboration factor again relates to distribution—this time, distribution of the ads themselves. There are multiple options for media channels and, as with the choice of retailer, each relates to a different market and different brand positioning, although many brands will distribute their promotions across multiple media channels at any one time. You will study more about ad platforms in Chapter 12.

Common media channels include the following:

For the brand you are analysing for 5Cs Collaborators, you should:

• List the agency or agencies used to create the campaign
• List the media used for the campaign (which will also correspond to the customer target)