And, it's about bloody time!
Hold on a second, what is a Reverse Media Partnership?
Well, historically, brands have created content and then partnered up with media outlets to get eyeballs on their content.
But, as brands have evolved to become legitimate media players, they too can provide an 'audience' to traditional content creators.
Still confused?
Let me bring it to life with a hypothetical example...
Cross promotion in reverse: A hypothetical example
A production company has just sold me a documentary on the history of coffee.
It is set to air on Channel 4 at the end of the month.
My job, as the channel owner, is to sell advertising space.
This is helped when a lot of people watch my shows.
I normally spend a lot of money generating pre-premiere buzz by asking other media channels to publicise my programme (which rarely works) or I have to exhaust my own channels.
But, these tend to be very broad audiences.
Now, who will lap up a show like this? Coffee lovers of course.
Where do these guys spend time online?
Well, a very obvious one is Facebook, and the fan pages of the major coffee shop chains.
Wouldn't it make sense to team up with Costa Coffee for example and provide them with exclusive content from the show before the on-air date?
The assets could include:
- Teaser video clips
- Behind the scenes footage
- Interviews
You've just reached more than 500,000 passionate coffee fans in a way that will be received well.
It doesn't have to be something as explicit as a documentary either - perhaps you've created a mobile game based around the love of coffee? Or, an infographic on coffee drinking styles. They'd be lapped up too.
What's in it for the brand?
And brands can't talk about their own products all day long, they need truly engaging content that will excite their communities.
I've always wondered why this approach isn't considered more by brands and media owners.
Even in a brand-to-brand situation (as long as the category is non-competitive).
Brand fan pages require content. Lots of it.
And, the most efficient way of creating and sharing content is to re-purpose existing stuff, as opposed to generating stuff from scratch.
So it makes sense to collaborate and create mutually beneficial situations like these.
How can you make this happen?
Firstly, brands have to make it easy for you to approach them and assess partnership requests.
This could be as simple as a note on your Facebook page saying:
If you have some content you think is suitable for our community, email us at
As the content provider, your job is pretty simple too.
Study pages closely and work out if your content would suit the community.
And I'm not talking about pushing products, I'm talking about content that will genuinely add value.
This is just one simple way of getting your content seen by more of the right people.
There are a million other opportunities out there like this, it just requires some lateral thinking and some decent research.
And, you'd be doing the community managers / content editors of these pages a HUGE favour too - and these guys will become as influential as anyone in there niche so the sooner you think of them the better!
Disclosure: Paratus manage the Facebook page for Costa Coffee.
