YSK: Research brands before you collaborate
Why YSK: working with brands without prior research is a rookie mistake many brand partners make, and are later found out to not be in alignment with their same values or stock-holders.
This article is inspired by one of my favorite reddit communities, r/YouShouldKnow which I describe as a facebook group where people info dump helpful tips to very specific niches.
Things you should know before collaborating with a brand:
The first thing you need to know about a brand is any popular media news articles relating to the brand recently. I check this by googling the brand name, and seeing what google auto predict suggests. If any articles including scam, lawsuit, con, cult etc (negative words) pop up, you should look into those relative articles.
Stock holding brands and partnerships is another thing to check when you do brand research. I will often scroll to the bottom of their website and start to look for logos. You can also find this information on “about us” pages or “corporate sponsorships” pages. This is a good way to vet who else is in alignment with this company.
I also recommend you review their mission statement or “our story” page to become familiar with the brand’s background and what sort of focus they have with their business. This can be as simple as “I help cat owners find amazing deals” to “I want to make everyone in Australia a real estate agent”, they can be broad or hyper specific, and it’s important to familiarize yourself with these goals.
The last thing you should do is check all identifiable social networks associated with the brand, and most especially, browse the comments. Plenty can be revealed by the level of engagement on a social media post, the overall tone of the comments being posted and of course, how active the account really is; this is critical if a company is promising you exposure in place of compensation or a similar offer without backing up their side of the contract with data.
What you don’t need to know before you partner with a brand:
You do not need to know every single statistic relating to a brand before you collaborate. You don’t have to memorize the number of employees, the number of customers helped or the number of countries they are in unless this is relevant to your pitch and industry.
You do not need to know the name of every person on the team, don’t spend time memorizing faces and names. It is acceptable to connect with a few key individuals and become exclusively familiar with them rather than trying to memorize the first 50 employees in the directory.
You do not need to be familiar with every type of client a brand might work with, that’s their job to explain and share with you in your opening conversations about collaborating together. Remember in a pitch, you need to explain how you are in alignment with a brand, but that also requires a bit of legwork to see if you are a match at all. Your research may turn up some facts that don’t seem to reflect your conversations with brand representatives at all — and that is an important thing to be wary of.
Lastly, to reflect soccer coach Ted Lasso; “be curious, not judgmental”. In all your brand research, aim to explore this case as curiously and investigatively as possible. Keep a running list of your questions and observations, and be up front about the kind of collaboration you are looking for, as well as the acceptable amount of compensation you’re expecting.
