Partnership marketing is boring.

It’s riddled with predictability. 

Brands and retailers team up in ways that make sense on paper but fail get anyone excited or engaged.

Unfortunately, it’s turned into a list of checkbox exercises. Aligning demographics, market shares, product synergies—all resulting in collaborations that are safe, boring, and quickly forgotten.

The fundamental flaw is the assumption that logic and reason are the best drivers for partnership success. 

But when people are bombarded with countless messages daily, sticking to this sort of logical path leads to invisibility. The safe route has become the risky route because it guarantees you’re going to blend into the rest of the background noise.

I’ve been just of guilty of this in the past.

Now, I’m going to draw from something totally off the f**king wall to try and shake up this type of work.

Absurdism, a philosophy pioneered by thinkers like Albert Camus, explores the conflict between our search for meaning and the meaningless nature of the universe. If you let me translate this into marketing, it’s acknowledging that people are searching for something impactful in a sea of the meaningless.

By embracing the absurd, brands can create partnerships that defy conventional logic, sparking curiosity and engagement. Stop people in their tracks and make them think, “wait, what?"

How can we apply absurdity to partnership marketing?

• Create contradictory campaigns

  Embrace paradoxes and develop messages that play with contradictions. Stimulate thought and encourage people to engage more deeply to resolve the apparent contradictions you’ve framed up

• Playful subversion

  Use humour and satire to subvert all the traditional marketing tropes. It makes both brands more relatable and human

• Surreal experiences

  These partnerships should be more about real life experiences. Pop-ups that transport people into an absurd world related to both brands. Surreal experiences have a stronger emotional response leading to better brand recall

Why does absurd stuff work?

Absurdity stands out in a space overloaded with similar crap.

It generates conversation both on and offline. Earned media anyone?

It’s more authentic than any of the other junk - bold risks show your confidence which is deeply valued by people.

It triggers a range of emotions from amusement to surprise to curiosity to disgust (oh and I’d rather be disgusting than boring).

Yes, some people won’t ‘get it’, but that’s ok. It’s better to be misunderstood by a few than ignored by the many.

And yes, you CAN find the balance between shock value and brand integrity if you work hard enough at it. How?

• Understand your audience, know their humour, find out what they find intriguing and funny
• Ensure your absurdity doesn’t cross into offensiveness
• Find a common thread that connects the two brands - a shared joke, a mutual challenge, a cultural reference - something along those lines
• Plan meticulously - absurdity requires it.
• Measure impact - set clear metrics UP FRONT to evaluate success beyond viral moments

Fed up of me yet? Nice work for reading this far.

Embrace the absurd as a bold response to the flaws inherent in traditional partnership marketing.

Everyone is oversautreud and overstimulated with dull, boring and ineffective junk advertising. 

Step outside the bounds of logic. The old ways aren’t working. The safe bets have become the biggest risks.

To fix what’s broken we must be willing to break the mould. In a world that’s stopped paying attention, be an anomaly that demands it.