Opinion, May 25, 2026, 4 min read
Why every head of marketing should have partnerships front and centre
PerfectTed x Free Soul is a masterclass in using brand partnerships to reach your ICP without buying a single new ad. Here is why it works.
Free Soul and PerfectTed just launched a Matcha Protein and a Matcha Collagen Latte together. Two female-founded UK brands, one SKU, into Holland and Barrett with Tesco rolling out in June. If you run marketing and partnerships are still a side quest for you, this is the case study to put in front of your CEO. Here it is through the four checkpoints I run every collab through.
Audience overlap. Free Soul's community is women buying functional nutrition. PerfectTed's community is the matcha-curious crowd already adding protein and collagen to their routine. Same person, two brands, two different shelves. The collab does not invent demand, it stitches together two audiences that were already overlapping in the basket.
Values alignment. Both female-founded, both ingredient-led, both built on a community that asks for products before they exist. Lucy at Free Soul literally said the community had been asking for a matcha moment. Marisa at PerfectTed said the same from her side. When both founders can point at the same customer insight, the partnership is not a marketing decision, it is a product decision.
Perfect timing. Matcha is having its biggest year, functional drinks are eating coffee's lunch, and Tesco is actively giving shelf space to the category. Launching now, with a Tesco rollout locked in for 1 June, means the listing meeting is doing the trend work for them. Six months earlier this is a DTC drop. Six months later it is a me-too.
Partnership elements. Two products, not one, so each brand gets a hero SKU instead of a logo lockup. DTC plus Amazon plus TikTok Shop plus Holland and Barrett plus Tesco, which means every customer type meets the product where they already shop. Both founders on the PR record, both communities reposted into, and zero compromise on the ingredient story.
This is why partnerships belong on the marketing org chart, not in a quarterly project tab. PerfectTed have built a brand on this playbook. They reach their ICP through other people's audiences, with products their ICP already wanted. A paid channel cannot do that, and it cannot do it this cheaply. If your head of marketing is not thinking this way, you are paying full price for attention your partners would have introduced you to for free.