Strategic Partnering

Have you ever noticed that you only find Coca Cola in McDonald’s and Pepsi in KFC?

You will never find a Pepsi in McDonald’s or a Coca Cola in KFC.

This is called “Strategic Partnering”.

Strategic partnering is basically when two companies ally, usually to leverage each other’s brand image or resources to produce an effect called “Co-creation of Value”.

McDonald’s first partnered with Coca Cola in 1955. This happened when McDonald’s was trying to grow as a brand, it used Coca Cola’s existing offices as its base of operations.

Later came the concept of “Happy Meal”, which got both brands more popular than they ever could have, individually.

You’ll also notice that you’ll find the freshest Coca Cola at McDonald’s. This is because generally coke syrup is delivered in plastic bags, but since the number of sales of Coca Cola in partnership with McDonald’s went up, they supplied coke syrup to McDonald’s in steel tankers.

Hence, both brands gained a competitive advantage in the market because of partnering with each other.

We can easily say that neither one of them would be where they are today without the other!