Chrysler’s “Imported From Detroit” used Eminem. Now brother-brand Jeep is co-branding with a rock star, turning their latest ads for the Jeep Wrangler into a promotion for the new Lenny Kravitz album due out in August.

While the creative behind the Jeep/Kravitz campaign isn’t quiet as stirring as the Chrysler ads, it is a perfect match between brand and band.

Lenny is a self-proclaimed Jeep addict, having driven the same Wrangler for 16 years. He believes in the brand. And like Jeep, his music is gritty and uncompromising yet carries a certain sense of refinement.

Opportunities for partnerships like this are everywhere, and they don’t need to involve worldwide brands and big-league rock stars. It could be a simple partnership between an aspiring singer-songwriter and a new  neighborhood coffee shop. It could be a taxi company teaming up with a popular nightclub. It could be a local restaurant cooperating with a nearby movie theater.

Watch out though. Martin Lindstrom wrote a great book a few years ago called BRAND Sense in which he claimed that 90% of brand partnerships fail. Why? Over half of them fail for three main reasons:

1. There isn’t equal value for each partner. One partner has more to gain (or lose) than the other, or one partner is putting more on the line than the other.

2. Brand values don’t match. While it is true that more and more women are buying motorbikes, Harley-Davidson should probably avoid doing a partnership with Victoria’s Secret. The brand values don’t match.

3. The strategy is unclear to the customer. The most important person in the partnership is the one with nothing invested in it… the customer. If they don’t get it, the partnership failed.

Explore opportunities to create partnerships that benefit your brand, but keep those three points from Martin Lindstrom in mind.

Barry Silverstein at BrandChannel wrote a solid piece on brand partnerships that you might find useful.

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He was written off by most of the music industry.  But in 2010, Eminem came back in a major way.

After establishing himself at the top of the hip-hop heap with music that tapped into the psyche of the day, Eminem seemed to miss a turn on the pop culture highway.  His earlier work relied on skits (“My Band”, “The Real Slim Shady”, “Without Me”) and shock (“Cleaning Out My Closet”).  While those songs fit in well with the cultural tone a decade ago, it sounds blatantly out of place today.

Eminem peaked with two albums that sold nearly 40 million copies.  The Marshall Mathers LP in 2000 and The Eminem Show in 2002 both sold 19 million copies worldwide.  Sales fell off sharply for 2004′s Encore with 11 million sold, and then plummeted in 2009 as Relapse moved a mere 3 million units.

The comeback began with Eminem making successful guest appearances on two massive hit songs from 2009, “Airplanes” by B.o.B. featuring Hayley Williams and “Love The Way You Lie” by Rihanna.  Those two songs brought Eminem back to the forefront, setting the table for the release of Recovery in 2010.

Recovery shows off a new, honest, and more real Eminem, with songs about insecurity, fear, and love.  The songs have a human quality that fans have embraced in today’s age of honesty.  Thanks to Recovery, Eminem led the industry in 2010. In July of 2011, Recovery became the first album to surpass 1 million (legal and paid) downloads.

The world is definitely different now than it was in 2000 when Marshall made his mark.

We are more connected than ever before.  Social media has made more, well, social.  Celebrities are more exposed than ever before, finding it difficult to hide behind their fame.  We indeed are living in an age of honesty.

Roy Williams created a powerful presentation called “The 40 Year Pendulum” that illustrates how North American culture shifts from idealist values (self) to civic values (community).  This shift has happened, over and over, with stunning regularity, every 40 years.  According to Roy, we are heading into the peak of a civic cycle.  Instead of James Bond, we celebrate Jason Bourne.  Instead of going to see Wall Street we go to see The Inconvenient Truth.

Based on the 40 year pendulum concept, it makes sense that Eminem’s early music would come across as self-important and bloated in today’s environment.  It makes total sense that his comeback music is more honest, real, and connected than his previous work.

How can your brand learn from Eminem and the 40-year pendulum?

You are part of a generation that rejects hype and embraces honesty.

You no longer need to get it done alone.  We can accomplish greatness as a community.

Scripted stuff is passe.  Today we want to watch reality unfold before us.

Selling your crap to me won’t work.  Sharing your vision with me will.  It is about what you stand for, not what you sell.

If you stop and pay attention to the cultural shift going on around you, your brand stands to benefit.  If you listen to the changes, you might find yourself like Eminem, once again on a tremendous wave of success.

The honesty that drove Eminem’s comeback is the central tenent of Chapter Nineteen of Brand Like a Rock Star.  You can pre-order your copy here, and then download Chapter One here for free so that you can get started reading right away.

And if you’d like to discover more about the 40-Year Pendulum, you can read Steve Jackson’s impressions of Roy Williams “40 Year Pendulum” here.  Roy’s 2008 posting about the pendulum is an interesting one, and well worth exploring. It will also become a book in 2012.

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One of the hottest songs this summer is “Airplanes” by B.O.B featuring Haley Williams (from rock band Paramore) and Eminem. Punch around the radio dial in almost any city in North America, and the odds are pretty good that you’ll hear it.

B.o.B. is Bobby Ray Simmons, a hip hop artist who has become of the 2010′s big success stories.  But like most hip hop artists, his big hits involve more than just his own music.  His previous hit, the #1 “Nothin’ On You” featured help from popular producer/writer Bruno Mars.

B.o.B. isn’t alone in seeking partnerships.  Here is what this week’s chart looks like on the Billboard Hot 100:

#1. California Gurls – Katy Perry featuring Snoop Dogg
#2. OMG – Usher featuring Will.i.am
#3. Airplanes – B.o.B. featuring Haley Williams and Eminem
#4. Billionaire – Travis McCoy featuring Bruno Mars
#7. Break Your Heart – Taio Cruz featuring Ludacris

Exactly half of the week’s top 10 songs are collaborations!

Does your brand seek out these kinds of worthwhile partnerships?

Smart brands partner with those who can add to their brand experience. Haley Williams brings something to “Airplanes” that B.o.B. couldn’t.  Likewise, Snoop Dogg adds something entirely unique to “California Gurls” and Luda does the same for “Break Your Heart”.

Sometimes these partnerships are natural relationships and other times they are paid relationships such as Coke and the World Cup, where one partner (Coke) has paid the other (World Cup) for the alliance.

Yet 90% of brand alliances don’t work.  Why?  Martin Lindstrom suggests three reasons in his book “BRAND sense“.
1. There isn’t equal value for the brands in the relationship… one gets more out of it than the other.
2. The brand values don’t match each other… one brand is edgy, the other conservative, or one targets children and the other adults.

3. The relationship strategy doesn’t connect with consumers… it just doesn’t make sense to the person on the street.

When they do work, brand partnerships work very well.  McDonalds and Dreamworks have established numerous successful partnerships to promote Dreamworks’ animated movies, including the recent Shrek sequel “Shrek Forever After”.  LegoLand California and Volvo have worked together to create a driving school for kids at the LegoLand park and to profile the LegoLand theme park to adults planning family vacations via the Volvo dealership network.

If you examine a partnership opportunity and find that there is equal benefit, mutual brand values, and an easy match for the customer to grasp, you might just have a #1 hit on your hands.

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