Close-Up: Advertisers pull together to face the recession.

Agencies are starting to recognise that partnership marketing is one answer to the credit crunch. Matt Williams investigates.

If the recession has been good for anything so far, it's that it has encouraged a number of ad agencies to look at alternative, more cost-efficient ways of helping their clients' brands cut through.

So when Fallon launched 'eyebrows', the creatively acclaimed follow-up to its 'gorilla' TV commercial for Cadbury, the strategy went well beyond TV advertising and web seeding.

Fallon partnered Cadbury with Orange, another of its clients, to offer consumers the chance to download the ad's soundtrack as a mobile ringtone.

More than 250,000 customers downloaded the track on to their phones, making it Orange's most successful ringtone download ever. So, by partnering the two brands, Fallon had not only helped prolong the success of its TV ad, it had also managed to elevate the status of another of its brands too. Win-win.

Partnership marketing might sound like a dry stick of a marketing tool, but agencies are increasingly using the principle to forge mutually beneficial relationships between clients on their roster.

For an agency, it makes sense to get two (or more) of its clients involved in campaigns. The agency knows both clients' markets and objectives intimately and can spot crossover opportunities that work cost-effectively to leverage and complement both brands.