The Age Of Cooperation

This post is sponsored by Blogitive.

In our era, captalism and competition have been mainstays. Well, it's time for a new age of cooperation. Some of the tactics used commonly by women in management are now becoming more relevant to businesses. With the fragmentation of the marketplace and many new players brought in by the Internet, these players are starting to band together into cooperative parnerships.

Some advertisers are teaming up with movie studios to put their ads within a movie in real-time. Progressive got Universal Studios Home Entertainment to insert a running tally of the destruction of cars into the recent HD DVD release of "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift." As cars smack into one another in Tokyo (in the movie), a display in a small window keeps track: "Roof repair: $209, taillights: $451, fender: $618. In exchange for this bit of advertising at Universal Studios, Progressive set up a website that links back to the movie. And, of course, we know that advertisers are also putting an add in the context-rich environment of a blog.

Even car insurance companies are also wondering how to team up and cooperate with other companies and ways of doing business to increase their exposure. Carinsurance.com is advertising Progressive's cooperative venture to try to tie into their ability to generate viewers. This seems a bit odd, but when you consider that carinsurance.com includes quotes from Progressive and it does provide the ability to shop for car insurance online, this little bit of name-dropping may actually work. Consumers can receive quotes from many insurance companies from carinsurance.com, in some states you are able to purchase your insurance instantly, online. They claim you don't have to drive your car to buy car insurance (I suppose that's for those of us who have antique collectible Rolls Royce's sitting in our garage).