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Co-branding has helped MTV India enter new territories apart from television programming. The MTV brand has lent its youthful 'funky' character to Citibank credit cards, Airtel SIM cards and Fastrack watches. MTV has had reasonable success in its co-branding ventures with Airtel SIM cards and Citibank credit cards.²

Here, the participants cooperate because they have, or want to consciously achieve, an alignment of their brand values in the customer's mind. As is evident, Airtel and Fastrack have re-asserted their youthful character with their MTV partnership.

Marriages are Made in Heaven - Keep Them Good & They'll Do You Good

P&G, India, undertook a co-branding exercise with the National Association for Blind in the form of Project Drishti ³, where one rupee per pack of Whisper purchased by the customer was diverted towards the cause of a blind female child. Using the funds so collected, P&G arranged for the restoration of eye-sight of two hundred and fifty blind girls through corneal transplant operations. This deal gave P&G much more than it invested. By associating itself with a noble cause, it came to be associated in the public mind with a worthy cause.

Cause-related marketing is a form of co-branding. The 1983 partnership between American Express and the project to restore the Statue of Liberty demonstrated the benefits associated with an effective cause-related marketing strategy. The result of the campaign was a 28% increase in AMEX card use, with a 17% rise in new card applications, while raising $1.7 million for the Statue of Liberty repairs.⁴

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2 http://www.indiantelevision.com/headline/y2k4/feb/feb150.htm.
3 "Co-Branding", Sachin Mehta, www.indiainfoline.com/bisc/art4250101.html
4 "Mutual Interest: Options for Cause-Related Marketing with the Mutual Fund Industry", Tessa Hebb, http://www.unitedway.ca/english/docs/mutual_interest.pdf

* Contributed by -
Santosh Kumar Vuppala,
Batch of 2007, PG Program in Communications Management,
Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad.