Brand Extension : Optometrists
Aside from having the products (pillow/sneakers) as a brand extension. We were thinking of making a partnership with an optometrist. From Anna and Nathan’s interview, we found out that many down syndrome children need glasses. So it makes sense for UpsideDowns to explore this avenue and form a partnership with local optometrists.
• One way of going about it would be to get funding from optometrists and in return UpsideDowns will recommend or redirect their families to them. • Another way would be to have a deal where when one person buys a pair, they can donate another pair to a down syndrome child, or the optometrist could donate a pair. Basically a buy one donate one system.
In this way the partnership becomes one with mutual benefits. UpsideDowns benefits and the optometrists benefit. As research covered in a previous post shows, the best way to get corporate sponsors is to identify what you can offer and how the partnership will mutually benefit both parties, rather than a one way benefit.
In addition to partnering up with an optometrist and in some way getting funding either in money or in glasses (both which will benefit UpsideDowns down syndrome children), we needed to put the brand on it. The way we would do this is to have a select range of glasses that had the ‘u’ smiling face logo on the side in small as seen above in the sketch. Also we could brand the case which the glasses comes in. So not only for down syndrome children, but those who participate in the buy one donate one, would get the special UpsideDowns case instead of a plain boring case. In doing so, we hope the brand will get out to more people.