We don’t enter partnerships lightly. So when we say we’ve chosen to partner with Pargentic, it’s because this wasn’t a commercial decision in isolation. It came from seeing the same tension surface repeatedly in our work with our Microsoft Partner clients.
Most of the partners we work with are ambitious and commercially sharp. They want to invest properly in demand generation. They’ve earned Co-Op funding and they want to use it well. But the space between making a marketing decision and feeling confident about how that decision will stand up at claim stage can feel uncomfortable. Not because the idea is wrong, but because the operational consequences sit further down the line.
Same issue, different perspectives
Through conversations with Rob Smith and the team at Pargentic, we realised we were seeing different sides of the same issue. Rob works deep inside the Microsoft Partner ecosystem, helping partners understand incentives, Partner Center and how Co-Op claims actually play out in practice.
In the first eight months of that work, a clear pattern has emerged. Roughly half of the partners they supported were unaware of funding available to them. On average, around $6,000 per partner was sitting unused. In one case, nearly $40,000 hadn’t been identified internally.
This is what happens when complexity meets caution. When guidance is detailed and scrutiny sits downstream, sensible people hesitate. Funding exists, but the confidence to deploy it safely doesn’t always travel with it.
At Bright Star, we see the same hesitation at the point where marketing decisions are made. Activity doesn’t usually stall because partners lack ambition. It stalls because uncertainty around funding rules makes otherwise sensible decisions feel exposed. If eligibility feels unclear, decisions slow. If claim interpretation feels opaque, scope narrows. The instinct is to reduce risk, even if that means reducing impact.
A partnership that makes sense
This is why the Bright Star-Pargentic partnership made sense. Rob had already seen our work first-hand through our long-standing relationship with Advania Group’s Microsoft-focused brands, including Fresh and Mirus-IT.
He had also turned down approaches from other agencies. What mattered to him was not polish or scale, but judgement. As he put it to me, Bright Star understands how Microsoft Partners operate and the pressure they are under when making marketing decisions. Our work reduces risk rather than introducing it.
That line matters. Because if marketing is going to be funded, it has to do two things at once. It has to resonate with buyers, and it has to stand up operationally later. We have always taken the second part seriously. Not as an afterthought, but as part of the design.
Commercial risk is not overspend but underuse
Governance expectations inside vendor ecosystems are not getting looser. If anything, they are becoming more structured. That changes behaviour. Partners delay activity. They scale back plans. Or they leave funding untouched because it feels safer. From where I sit, the greater commercial risk is often not overspend but underuse. Funding earned, not deployed.
Co-op claimable demand generation campaigns
Alongside this partnership, we have introduced four structured Co-Op claimable demand generation content packages designed specifically for Microsoft Partners, starting from $2,500. Not because everything should be packaged, but because structure can make decisions easier.
Each package is built to align with Microsoft Co-Op Demand Generation guidance from the outset. Activity is executed rather than advisory. Assets are published and evidencable. Agency fees are clearly tied to delivery. Microsoft solutions or workloads are explicitly represented.
The intention is not to guarantee claim outcomes. No one sensible would promise that. The intention is to remove avoidable ambiguity before activity begins. For some partners, that clarity is enough to move forward with confidence. For others, a bespoke route remains the right option.
Either way, the principle is the same. Marketing should be commercially useful, and something you can stand behind later. This partnership exists to make that balance easier to achieve.
If you want to reach out for a chat, email me [email protected]
