Southern Swim Co-Branding With Backroad Anthem
by July 21, 2014 12:00 am 136 views
Southern Swim, an online swimwear company owned by branding studio BLKBOXLabs, is getting creative with its marketing strategy.
“Being a small startup, there’s not a huge marketing budget,” owner Joey Nelson said, “but we have a lot of people who like our brand.”
And the company is finding ways to leverage its popularity.
The Fayetteville-based startup recently launched a brand ambassador program in markets throughout the South and announced a co-branding effort with local country band Backroad Anthem for an upcoming music video and a tour at 10 college campuses throughout the South.
BLKBOXLabs will produce the music video, which will feature Southern Swim apparel worn by the band, models and several pageant participants — Miss Arkansas, Miss Oklahoma, Miss Nebraska, Miss Kansas and Miss Missouri — who will also appear in the video.
The video will debut in a few weeks, exclusively on the Southern Swim website and will be available on iTunes afterward.
The Southern Concert Tour is set to kick off Aug. 22 at the University of Mississippi.
The co-branding effort spawned from a drawn connection between the two brands.
“We share the same demographic as Backroad Anthem. They are targeting 14 of our markets,” Nelson said.
Nelson is hoping the partnership with the band, which recently signed with William Morris Agency in Nashville, Tennessee, will extend Southern Swim’s reach.
The company has also made a splash on social media, garnering 11,000 Instagram followers and more than 42,000 “likes” on Facebook since it opened in December.
The number of orders has doubled each month, totaling about 500 orders for the month of June, said CEO Tarah Hill.