PPPPartners 'Til the End (Four Ps #261)
4 Ways To Think About Partnership That Will Improve Your Life
There’s no point sugar-coating it.
The world is shifting. The market’s shifting. Selfishness rules the day. Recession fears are creeping in. Buyers are getting colder. Margins are tighter. Layoffs. The rise of AI machines coming for your jobs.
Even the platforms you depend on? Middlemen at best, parasites at worst.
If all your visibility, your growth, your relevance lives on borrowed land... your pipeline’s at risk.
Now more than ever, you need allies. Partners. People, platforms, and principles you can lean on when things get uncertain, painful, or downright brutal.
Because we cannot do this alone.
That’s true in business. It’s true in politics. It’s true in life.
THE PRACTICAL: The Partnership Stack: Why Build, Buy, or Borrow No Longer Cuts It
In every era of disruptive innovation, businesses face the same fork in the road:
Build? Buy? Borrow?
But here’s the uncomfortable truth no one wants to admit: In fast-moving spaces like AI, media, adtech, and martech, none of those models are built for the pace we’re living in.
The past two years have been a masterclass in this mistake:
🚨 Companies rushed to build AI wrappers, video generators, and chatbots.
🚨 They poured resources into shiny new apps, walled-off experiences, or single-use features.
🚨 A year later? Most are collecting digital dust or quietly sunsetted.
Because the market moved on. The tech evolved. The consumers evolved even faster.
The Takeaway: When the ground is shifting, stop trying to pour your own concrete.
Partnership is the new operating model. Partnership doesn’t require guessing where the innovation ends up. It gives you:
Built-in flexibility to pivot as the tech and your needs evolve.
Low to no upfront costs, especially when structured with revenue-sharing or performance-based terms.
Expertise on tap, from partners who live and breathe the space and have a vested interest in keeping you ahead of the curve.
A layered stack approach, not a single feature that will be swallowed by the next ChatGPT plugin or OS update.
Look at what happened in media and adtech:
Brands that tried to build their own DSPs or walled gardens are now stuck with outdated tech and stranded teams.
Meanwhile, those who partnered with modular infrastructure players can keep evolving, turning on new features, channels, and formats overnight without rebuilding from scratch.
FYI, this is exactly why Genuin isn’t just a platform. It’s infrastructure. We didn’t build a video app or community feature. We built flexible, embeddable video-powered engagement infrastructure that integrates into your existing properties — websites, apps, portals — and grows with you.
👉 Need to activate ownable, social video next month?
👉 Want to monetize it the month after that?
👉 Want to expand to loyalty integrations next year?
👉 Want a full-stack AI solution to help create, curate, moderate, and optimize with no human lift?
No problem. Same partner. Same infrastructure. No rebuilds required.
In periods of uncertainty, the winner isn’t the one who builds fastest. It’s the one who partners smartest.
Partner with those who’ve already built the infrastructure... and are still building it... so you don’t have to.
THE PROFESSIONAL: Personalization and the New Rules of Engagement
Partnership. Personalization. Two words that dominated the conversations last week at the Evolution of Commerce Summit hosted by Brand Innovators and IPG Mediabrands in NYC.
But these aren’t just buzzwords anymore. They’re becoming the operating system for modern commerce, media, and marketing.
Because if one thing is clear in 2025, it’s this: No company wins alone anymore. And no brand gets a second chance at irrelevance.
In a packed room of industry leaders, a few key voices stood out, each offering a different lens on how Fortune 500 companies are redefining what partnership really means:
💊 Parbinder Dhariwal, VP & GM, CVS Media Exchange:
“Our criteria for partnership is that it must be a win-win-win: win for retailers, advertisers, and consumers.” “2026 is the year of partnerships.”
His call to action was simple but powerful: It’s not enough for brands and retailers to shake hands over media dollars. The consumer needs to win at the end of the funnel, through experiences, offers, and engagements that actually improve their day, not interrupt it.
✈️ Aaron Gallagher, Managing Director, Kinective Media by United Airlines:
“Retail and commerce sit at the center of everything now.”
Gallagher offered a fascinating view into how travel media networks and retail media networks are starting to collaborate in previously unimaginable ways.
With United + Connected, he outlined how United is connecting media, loyalty, and consumer touchpoints across the entire travel journey, from the ride to the airport to the post-flight email offer.
It’s not just about advertising anymore. It’s about embedding commerce into every interaction, amplified by loyalty programs, rewards, and content that actually makes the journey smoother (and more profitable).
🏦 Lauren Griewski, Managing Director, Chase Media Network:
“We think of our audience as either new, loyal, or lapsed.”
Griewski highlighted how Chase has built an attribute-based sales partnership model, where personalization and consumer trust are non-negotiable.
She also reminded us that AI is not the disruptor. It’s the enabler for brands looking to scale these trusted, personalized experiences.
🧠 Elizabeth Donovan, SVP, Retail & Commerce Media Networks, Acxiom, Kinesso, IPG: Donovan brought it back to the why behind these partnerships:
“It’s about driving better consumer outcomes.”
She emphasized the importance of data readiness, strategic alignment, and personalization at scale. Because partnerships aren’t just about reach—they’re about relevance.
The Takeaway: The walls between industries are crumbling. Travel is retail. Finance is commerce. Loyalty is the new advertising currency.
But partnerships only work when they create real value for the consumer first. And personalization is no longer a strategy. It’s a survival tactic.
2026 may be the year of partnerships... But 2025 is the year brands need to prove they deserve them.
THE POLITICAL: Trade Partnership (Or, How Not to Do It)
Of course, partnership doesn’t always look this pretty.
International trade partnerships used to be built on a simple premise: Mutual benefit. Diplomacy. Shared growth. A rising tide lifts all boats.
But over the past few months, that premise has been absolutely torched, along with any remaining illusion that global trade is still guided by diplomacy, respect, or even basic math.
Thanks to the Trump administration’s escalating tariff war, what once resembled an interconnected global economy now looks more like an international game of “winner takes all (and leaves you the bill).”
We’re watching the playbook in real time:
Slap tariffs on China (again).
Watch American consumers and businesses eat the costs.
Declare it a “win” on Fox News.
Pivot to the next target.
Meanwhile, behind the chaos curtain, Trump’s Middle East last week tour looked less like statecraft and more like a billionaire boys’ club golf outing, where deals are inked over gold-dusted steaks and private jet bribes.
Saudi Arabia, once a reluctant player in the global tech race, is now writing blank checks for AI dominance:
Nvidia handing over 18,000 advanced chips.
AWS investing $5B in an “AI Zone.”
Google fueling a $100M VC fund.
And the likes of Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg are lining up for their slice.
It’s not just tech. It’s arms, oil, influence, data. And it’s not being built for the people of these nations. It’s being built for the ruling elites. For the few. For the cronies.
Even Qatar’s gift of luxury planes to Trump World allies to curry favor... that’s not diplomacy. That’s bribery in first class.
What’s getting lost in this feeding frenzy is what real trade partnerships are supposed to be about:
Reciprocity: Not one-sided demands and strong-arming under threat of sanctions.
Shared prosperity: Not gilded AI cities in authoritarian regimes while workers in the U.S. and abroad get laid off.
Transparency: Not backroom deals behind velvet curtains.
Stability: Not whiplash-inducing tariffs that send markets into chaos overnight.
Today’s deals aren’t about partnership. They’re about spoils. And they only benefit the players at the top of the food chain. The rest of us are just footing the bill.
The Takeaway: When trade becomes a zero-sum game designed to enrich the few, it stops being trade. It becomes extortion.
We need to get back to the table with values, not vengeance.
Or the partnerships that matter, the ones that actually help workers, communities, and companies, will keep getting torched.
Until then? Expect more billion-dollar deals in Dubai... and more empty shelves at Walmart.
THE PERSONAL: Partnerships You Can’t Measure
And finally, the most important partnerships...
In business, we talk about partnerships as if they’re clean. Symmetrical. Measured. Two sides bringing equal value to the table, carefully defined in pitch decks and SLAs.
But real partnerships, the ones that happen inside families, marriages, parenting, are nothing like that. They don’t work on a give-and-take schedule. They don’t follow a 50/50 rule. And if you try to track them like a ledger, you’ll drive yourself (and everyone around you) insane.
Instead, these are the partnerships built on trust, resilience, and an unspoken willingness to take turns carrying the heavier load.
Sometimes you give more than you get. Other times, you take more than you deserve.
But over a lifetime, if you do it right? It balances. Or at least... you stop worrying about the balance.
Right now I’m the taker.
I’ve been dealing with some unexpected (and hopefully temporary) health issues. Nothing catastrophic, but enough to throw me off my game. (I'm literally writing this in the waiting room before going to get another MRI). Between that and the meds, it's enough to make me anxious, restless, and if I’m being honest... a big baby about it.
I've learned something about myself. I’m not as tough as I thought. I’m not brave. I’m the guy Googling symptoms at 2am and catastrophizing everything. (Don’t recommend it, by the way.) And while I’m spiraling, my partner — my wife — is the calm in the storm. She’s the one holding it all together. Handling the logistics, the emotions, the stuff I don’t even notice because I’m too busy feeling sorry for myself.
And that’s the thing about family partnerships. They don’t keep score. They don’t say, “Hey, I did X, so now you owe me Y.” They just are.
We show up. We carry each other. We take turns being the strong one.
I hope I never have to fully reciprocate in exactly the same way. But if life throws that curveball? I will. Because that’s what the best partnerships do. They flex. They adapt. They endure the lopsided seasons without resentment.
It’s not about balance sheets. It’s about balance over time.
It’s about showing up when it’s easy. And more importantly, when it’s not.
It’s about the nights you sit silently in waiting rooms. The mornings you drag yourself out of bed to show up for someone else, even when you feel like hiding under the covers.
Some days you’re the anchor. Other days you’re the one being carried.
And that’s the kind of partnership that actually lasts.
Not clean. Not measured. But messy, human, and real.
The kind that doesn’t need a contract. That's the right kind of partnership.!
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