Marketing Communications

MEASURING SPONSORSHIP EFFECTIVENESS 363

have to be achieved by means of additional communications support. But most importantly,

the general principle of integrated communications also applies to sponsorship: the more it

is supported by, and integrated in, the rest of the communications mix, the more eff ective it

will be. For instance, among the sponsoring companies of the 1996 Olympics that also ran

advertising on the events, 64% succeeded in creating the link. On the other hand, of the

offi cial sponsors that did not run advertising, only 4% created the link.^73

Measuring sponsorship effectiveness

Similar to the measurement of the eff ectiveness of other communications tools, isolating the

eff ect of sponsorship is complicated by a number of factors, such as the simultaneous use

of instruments of the marketing and communications mix, the carry-over eff ect of earlier

activities, creative management issues, the pursuit of multiple objectives and the discretion-

ary nature of media coverage.

Sponsorship is to a certain extent similar to advertising in that one of its main objectives

is to build brand awareness with specifi c target groups. Additionally, and equally important,

brands try to improve their image by linking their name to the event sponsored. Furthermore,

in a number of sponsorship projects, communications results are not only obtained during

the sponsored event, but also as a result of their media coverage. Sponsorship research refl ects

these objectives and characteristics of this communications mix instrument.

Four types of sponsorship eff ectiveness can be distinguished ( Figure 11.4 ). Two types of

exposure can be distinguished: the number of people attending the event and the exposure

resulting from the media coverage of the event. By counting the number of attendees at a

sponsored event and/or studying the composition of the audience present, the number of

consumers reached and the frequency of their exposure to the brand name can be estimated.

If the sponsored event is covered by the media, the number of lines, pages or times the brand

name is mentioned, or the number of seconds it is shown on TV or heard on the radio, can

be calculated. On this basis, reach and frequency of exposure can also be estimated, as well

as the monetary value of the exposure obtained. Evidently, frequency of exposure and reach

only give an indication of the probability of having contacted parts of the target group, but

nothing about the actual number of contacts, let alone of their quality or impact.

Figure 11.4 Types of sponsorship effectiveness measures

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