Why Brand Collaborations Matter: Partnerships as a GTM Strategy

e.l.f. Cosmetics and Liquid Death. LEGO and Fortnite. Uber and Spotify. On paper, none of these pairings looks obvious. A makeup brand and a canned water company. A classic toy brick maker and a battle royale video game. A ride-hailing app and a music service. Yet each one became a reference point for what a great brand collaboration can do.

That is the point we make in our own pitch deck: the most iconic brand collaborations have come from the most seemingly unlikely partnerships. The lesson for every organization, whether it is a Fortune 500 brand or a ten-person startup, is that your next growth channel may be sitting inside another company's customer base. You just have to find it, and you have to be willing to build for it.

This article covers why strategic partnerships deserve a seat at the go-to-market table, the main types of brand collaboration, and why organizations should stop treating partnership programs as a side project and start treating them as a core revenue strategy.

Why Partnerships Belong in Your GTM Plan

Most go-to-market plans lean on the same levers: paid acquisition, outbound sales, content, events. Partnerships are often left off the list or handed to one person with a spreadsheet. The data suggests that is a mistake.

Forrester research commissioned by impact.com surveyed 454 companies and found that organizations with mature partnership programs grow revenue nearly twice as fast as those with immature programs. Partnerships made up 28% of total revenue at mature companies, compared with 18% at less mature ones, a gap worth about $162 million a year for the average company in the study. The same research found that breadth, meaning working across many partner types, was one of the drivers of maturity, and 62% of respondents said partnership technology was a high priority.

The pattern holds in corporate–startup collaboration too. Match-Maker Ventures and Arthur D. Little found that 98% of corporates had tried working with startups, and they expected the revenue impact of those collaborations to rise from 12% to 19%. An earlier Imaginatik and MassChallenge report found that 82% of corporates described their interactions with startups as important.

Consumers are on board as well. A Visual Objects survey reported by PR Newswire found that 71% of consumers enjoy co-branding partnerships, and 43% would try a co-branded product from a company they already like. More recent MX8 Labs research covered by StreamTV Insider found that 68% of consumers buy co-branded or special-edition products. That number rises to 82% among Millennials and 91% in households earning more than $150,000. Only 7% said brand collaborations feel overdone.

Put simply, partnerships grow revenue faster, buyers like them, and the market is not tired of them.

The Three Core Types of Brand Collaboration

The examples in our deck show three distinct ways a collaboration creates value. Each one answers a different strategic question.

1. Aligning Audiences: e.l.f. Cosmetics x Liquid Death

The question here is: who already loves what we make, and where else do they spend time?

In March 2024, e.l.f. Cosmetics and Liquid Death, the canned water company known for its heavy-metal branding, launched Corpse Paint. It was a limited-edition, $34 makeup kit packaged in a coffin-shaped box (Inc.). It was not a random stunt. Both brands speak to the same young, irreverent, social-first consumer, and e.l.f. describes the shared philosophy behind the drop as "normalize the bizarre" (e.l.f. Cosmetics). The brands also chose to launch in March instead of at Halloween, which, according to Inc., helped the collection take over social feeds.

The results were significant. Corpse Paint sold out in 45 minutes. According to e.l.f.'s investor presentation, as reported by Marketing Dive, it drove a triple-digit lift in traffic to e.l.f.'s website, and 68% of buyers were new to the brand. The partnership was successful enough that the two brands reunited in 2026 for a second drop, Lip Embalms, on TikTok Shop (Marketing Dive).

Takeaway: when two brands share an audience and a point of view, a collaboration does not need to create demand. It only needs to express demand that already exists, and it can bring in new customers at the same time.

2. Bringing Two Audiences Together: LEGO x Fortnite

The question here is: whose audience is different from ours, but would value what we do?

LEGO's core audience is builders, families, and collectors who love physical play. Fortnite's audience is digital-first gamers. In April 2022, the LEGO Group and Epic Games announced a long-term partnership to build fun and safe digital play spaces for kids and families (Konvoy). The first result, LEGO Fortnite, went live inside Fortnite on December 7, 2023 (LEGO). More than 1,200 Fortnite outfits were converted into LEGO minifigures for launch, and the game reached more than 2.4 million concurrent players, briefly becoming the most popular mode in Fortnite (Wikipedia).

LEGO CEO Niels B. Christiansen said the partnership has the potential to "bridge the worlds of physical and digital play" (LEGO). The bridge runs both ways. In 2024, LEGO launched a line of physical LEGO Fortnite sets, including the Battle Bus and Supply Llama, inspired by the game (LEGO). Gamers came into LEGO, and LEGO fans came into Fortnite.

Takeaway: the best audience-bridging partnerships give each side's customers something they could not get from either brand alone, and they create new products along the way.

3. Providing a Better User Experience: Uber x Spotify

The question here is: what moment in our customer's journey could another company make better?

In November 2014, Uber and Spotify announced that Spotify Premium users could control the music during their Uber ride. The feature launched in 10 cities, including Nashville, and new users got a free week of Premium on their first music ride (TIME; Business Insider). Uber's then-CEO Travis Kalanick called it Uber's first personalized experience, and Spotify's Daniel Ek noted that people listen to music in three main places: at home, on the go, and in their cars (The Drum).

Neither company changed its core product. Together, they made a routine ride feel personal and gave Spotify a presence in the one listening location it did not own.

Takeaway: experience partnerships win when they remove friction or add delight at a moment the customer already cares about.

Other Collaboration Models Worth Knowing

The three models above are a strong starting point, but they are not the only ones. Several other formats show up again and again in successful partnership programs.

Co-Marketing and Content Partnerships

GoPro and Red Bull are the textbook example. In 2016 the two companies formed a multi-year global partnership in which Red Bull took an equity stake in GoPro, and GoPro became the exclusive point-of-view camera across more than 1,800 Red Bull events in over 100 countries, with the two companies sharing content rights (GoPro). Their earlier Stratos space-jump content drew more than 23 million YouTube views, and one industry write-up credits the campaign with a 7% lift in Red Bull sales (Branding Nerd). One brand brought the extreme moments and the other brought the camera to capture them.

Ingredient Branding and Co-Op Marketing

Intel Inside, launched in 1991, showed that a component supplier could build a consumer brand through its partners. Intel subsidized PC manufacturers' advertising in exchange for carrying the Intel logo. By the end of 1992, more than 500 manufacturers had signed on, and 70% of eligible ads carried the logo. Advertising Age called it the most effective co-op program in history (Intel). Every manufacturer's ad also became an Intel ad.

Technology Integrations

In B2B, the most durable partnerships are often product integrations, where two platforms connect so that customers get more value from both. Uber and Spotify is a consumer version of this. In software, integrations reduce churn, shorten sales cycles, and open the door to co-selling.

Licensing

LEGO x Fortnite is, at its core, a multi-year licensing partnership, with co-branded digital experiences that grew into physical products (The Licensing Letter). Licensing lets a brand extend into new categories without building new manufacturing or distribution, while the partner gets instant brand equity.

Corporate–Startup Collaboration

Large companies partner with startups to access innovation and speed, and startups partner with large companies to access distribution and credibility. BCG notes that these relationships work best when both sides get real, two-way value, which is the same rule that applies to every model on this list.

Don't Be Afraid to Build a Partnership Program

If the upside is this clear, why do so many organizations hold back? The hesitation usually comes down to a few fears.

"We don't know who the right partner is."

This is the most common blocker, and it is a real one. Fit matters more than anything else. In the Imaginatik and MassChallenge study, about 45% of corporates named strategic fit as the most important factor in collaboration success (Imaginatik/MassChallenge). Consumers feel the same way: 51% said the top driver of their interest in a collaboration is brands that naturally complement each other (StreamTV Insider). The answer is not to avoid partnerships. It is to get better at finding fit.

"It takes too long and costs too much."

Traditional partner research does take a long time. Our own analysis shows that more than 75% of a business development rep's week goes to manual work, including research, outreach, coordination, and admin, and that the traditional research cycle can take one to three months before a single meaningful conversation happens. That is a process problem, not a partnership problem, and process problems can be fixed.

"What if it hurts our brand?"

Every GTM motion carries risk. A bad ad campaign can hurt a brand too. The way to manage partnership risk is to start with complementary partners, define shared goals up front, and scale what works. The examples in this article show that even unlikely pairings succeed when the audience, the experience, or the value exchange is aligned.

"We're too small to partner."

Size is often an advantage. Smaller companies move faster, bring niche audiences, and offer innovation that larger brands want. With more than 5.6 million new business applications filed in the U.S. in 2025 (Finder), the pool of potential partners has never been bigger.

All Boats Rise

The common thread across every example is mutual benefit. e.l.f. won new customers and Liquid Death extended its brand into beauty. LEGO reached a new generation of digital players and Fortnite gained a new way to play, along with physical products. Uber made rides personal and Spotify reached listeners in the car. GoPro got content and Red Bull got storytelling. Intel built a brand and PC makers got ad dollars.

That is what separates a strategic partnership from a transaction. In the best collaborations, both companies grow, the customer gets something better, and the market expands rather than splits. When partnerships are built on real fit, all boats rise.

For organizations, this changes how partnerships should be measured. A strong program does more than produce a one-time spike. It creates repeatable revenue, new audiences, better products, and relationships that compound over time.

How PartnerFit Makes It Easier

PartnerFit was built for the exact problem that keeps most organizations from committing to partnerships: finding the right partner quickly and with confidence.

• Find: Search for partners based on your goals, audience, needs, and capabilities instead of starting with a cold list.
• Be Found: Make your company visible to organizations that are already looking for what you offer.
• Engage: Reach the right decision makers with context on why the partnership makes sense.
• Operate: Manage partnerships after the first conversation so they turn into revenue.

At the center is the PartnerFit Strategic Fit Score, a 0 to 100 score based on complementarity, engagement likelihood, and access to decision makers. It shows why a partner is a good match, not just that they are one. Because PartnerFit looks past the usual names, it also surfaces hidden gems, the less obvious partners who are often behind the most iconic collaborations.

What used to take one to three months of research can now start in minutes. Our founding team has driven more than $500 million in partnership revenue, and we built PartnerFit so that more organizations can do the same without the guesswork.

The Bottom Line

Brand collaborations are not a nice-to-have. They are one of the fastest-growing, most customer-friendly revenue channels available. Whether you are aligning audiences, bringing two audiences together, improving the customer experience, co-creating content, or integrating products, the formula is the same: find the right fit, create shared value, and grow together.

The next iconic partnership may look unlikely today. Organizations that build a partnership program now will be the ones that find it first