The Odd Couple: a magazine and a fuel company

Little League Baseball has an official sports drink. The Super Bowl has an official beer. NASCAR has an official everything - tires, batteries, insurance, soft drinks, shaving products, heartburn remedies, and 45 other "official [items] of".

And now, a magazine (actually, three of them) have an official fuel. That's right, three magazines have an official fuel. Why? Well, when your magazines make their money by talking about motor vehicles, they use a lot of fuel. The magazines (all owned by Hachette Filipacchi) are Road & Track, Car and Driver, and Cycle World. The official fuel provider is Shell.

Having an official fuel will come in handy for these mags - and not only because of the advertising dollars. All three buff books involved in the partnership conduct road tests of cars, trucks, and/or motorcycles. The magazines have frequently used Shell gasoline and Pennzoil and Quaker State motor oils (also owned by Shell) in these road tests; now all parties can extend and leverage this relationship.

According to an article in MediaPost's Marketing Daily, Shell gets extensive benefits for the price of its sponsorship: its logo with an "official fuel of" tag on the mastheads of the three magazines, as well as on data panels for all road test articles; co-branded ads in the three magazines' print, online, and radio broadcast versions; and access to Hachette's market research data, provided by survey management firm Vista Studies.

Road & Track, Car and Driver, and Cycle World all benefit from Shell's sponsorship funding, naturally. In addition, they are able to guarantee that all of their road tests use Shell nitrogen-enriched gasoline, specifically.

The co-branded ads featured in the magazines are rather droll, too. Each features a Shell engineer smiling wryly as the camera catches him hiding his Road & Track magazine (or Car and Driver, or Cycle World, depending) in an open Petroleum Engineering textbook.

All this to say that strategic business partnerships have room for innovation. Perhaps your company can find an official snack food. Or official office supplier. Or official airline. Or official hotel chain. Or official search engine. Or official deodorant. Or official social networking platform. The opportunities are, apparently, endless.