Helping those who help us: Co-branded and co-created Twitter promotion in CSR partnerships

Partnerships between brands and non-profit-organisations (NPOs) must be strategically managed for each to maximise their benefit from the relationship. Twitter, with its potential for pass-along of messages, provides an ideal channel for reciprocal promotion within the network of an NPO and its supporting brands. For any one brand within that network, brand building will be amplified if messages are passed on to others using co-branded and/or co-created communications, providing an opportunity for a brand to engage a new audience of consumers who are part of another organisation's network. This research examines the extent of co-branded and co-created communications by a popular NPO and its network of corporate partners on Twitter and compares that Twitter promotion with promotion of the same activity in traditional news media. The findings revealed surprisingly limited use of Twitter to promote the partnership efforts of brands with the NPO, and only limited evidence of the expected reciprocity between the NPO and its partners. We find even less evidence of co-branded communications between partner brands in the network and no co-created communications. The results have important implications for corporate social responsibility partnerships, suggesting that more innovative use of social media could provide reciprocal benefits from partnerships between brands and NPOs.