toy truck

At first sight, the toy truck looks like an ordinary truck that was produced for small kids to play with. Of course, this is one of the many functions of the toy truck, however there is a bigger idea behind the truck than it just being regarded as a toy. As you look closer, you will notice that there are two logos on the package. Quite logically, the Matchbox logo, because Matchbox is the company which manufactured the truck. Besides the Matchbox logo you will also find the bright and shiny Mcdonald's logo. However for someone who is not a marketing expert, this seems kind of strange, because you wouldn't associate Mcdonald's with toys, but rather with food. This weird observation can be explained by the term of external corporate synergy in which two totally different companies work together in order to reach a bigger target demographic and thus create more buzz about their product. Matchbox on the one hand benefits in this partnership from the huge recognizability value that Mcdonald's has on kids. So when kids see the toy truck with the Mcdonald's logo on it, they will most certainly buy it. Mcdonald's on the other hand tries to expand its market or get better access to its target demographic by collaborating with a company that produces a product which is very appealing to kids.
The opposite of an external corporate synergy, emphasized by the example of Matchbox and Mcdonald's, is an internal corporate synergy. An internal coporate synergy is also driven by the profit motif, however the fundamental difference is that, as the word internal suggests, in an internal corporate synergy, two companies of the same coporation are working together. An example for an internal corporate synergy is the new released of a movie produced by paramount pictures. In order to creat buzz around the new movie, paramount pictures asks MTV to advertise the upcoming movie in a special edition. Since both companies belong to the viacom group, this is doubly profitable for viacom, since the advertisement campaign results in many people watching the movie which is good for paramount pictures and MTV is rewarded by high viewing rates.