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Attractive TV Show Seeks Interesting Website for Serious Relationship
Product: What Makes a Strategic Partnership? Panel
Company: SXSW
Date: 03/23/2008

The Internet is a scary place... if you want to survive, you'll need to stick together with friends. At least, it certainly seems like a good idea. The purpose of this panel was to illustrate what makes a good strategic partnership and what does not.

The "What Makes a Strategic Partnership?" panel featured: Mark Gall, Sr VP at BBC America & BBC.com, Mark Richardson, VP Midwest Region at BBC America and Brian Matthews, also from BBC. They listed three aspects of business that could be expected to be improved by a good strategic partnership: productivity, effectiveness and profitability. The best way I could describe the ideal strategic partnership based on what I learned from this panel would have to be, "a symbiotic relationship between all partners that allows for cross referencing, while staying relevant for each." To illustrate this concept, an example was given whereby there was a television ad for a TV show that also mentioned the URL of a partnering website. The website, on pages concerning this content and, perhaps during the relevant time, its front page, has an advertisement for the television show and what its local showing times are. Finally, print advertisements announce the date and time of the airing of the show and say, "If you would like to research this topic further, check out the website." In this way, each partner is popularized by the next, but the messages are always on topic and of interest to the viewer.

This concept was referred to during this panel as an "integrated media solution," and in such a solution, more value is created for both partners. These typically have increased revenue, increased CPM, a long-term focus and are mutually beneficial.

As for determining the compatibility of different outlets, the way that they explained it is that there were three questions to ask. Was it endemic to our environment? Did we understand our customer? How do we execute the plan?

Geck0 aka Robert Perkins

GameVortex PSIllustrated