So, I asked myself this question: How could I (if I worked at Rogers) make Dawn squeal with delight every time we sent her an invoice?
According to Wikipedia, Rogers has a lot of Dawns: 10.482 million wireless customers as of quarter 4 of 2017 plus 2.25 million cable and 930,000 internet clients.
Maybe, if I was in charge of accounts receivable, I would create another sales channel with my snail mail envelope and email/online invoices. How’s that?
Suppose I allow other companies (for a fee) to include freebies with my Rogers bills… perhaps Starbucks sends out a $10 gift card or Molson delivers a coupon for a couple of free, beer koozies…
Sponsorship and co-branding are a vastly underutilized form of revenue generation and brand promotion in my view.
With the above in place, I’ve:
a) turned my cost center (sending out millions of paper or paperless invoices) into a sales channel and profit center
b) presumably decreased customer churn because I am delighting them and surprising them on the upside, once a month
c) vastly increased my chances of sticking with my company and gaining a promotion… CEO would be nice.
I always thought it’d be smart to have a commercial where a nice-looking man gets out of an Audi wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and a Rolex watch–that’s co-branding because (we assume) Audi customers might be in the market for a nice watch and suit and vice versa.
Why would anyone (in effect) sponsor an unpleasantness like a Rogers bill? Because they want to get in front of Rogers customers with their own offering.
Sponsors are sponsors for five main reasons:
1. they want to find a new sales channel for their products and services
2. they want to associate their brands with the brand they are sponsoring
3. they want to increase their sales and market share
4. they can’t find a more cost-effective way to do all of the above
5. they may also have a CSR (corporate social responsibility) agenda that requires them to support certain causes; possibly Molson wants to not only give out free koozies to keep your beer cold, but also ask you to help fund MADD, mother against drunk driving or some other worthy cause–there, now you have three organizations involved with co-branding.
Prof Bruce
Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Real Estate Investment and Business coach
ROYAL LePAGE Performance Realty broker
Ottawa Senators founder
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