As the FIFA World Cup 2014 gets under way, Joseph Eapen stresses the need to evaluate ROI of sponsorship in sports events, with finances of high magnitude and the fervent passions of entire nations at stake
Sports makes a lot of sense as a way to enhance a corporate’s image and increase product visibility. Sports sponsorship in India is pegged at Rs 3,250 crore and is estimated to grow to Rs 12,500 crore in the next five years. With so much of money involved, the sports industry has embraced sponsorship ROI/ROO and statistical analysis as never before. Sponsorships are made for sound business reasons and need for effective data and research to advise that decision is vital. Sports attract a strong and engaged audience, and certain sports can attract a hard-to-reach demographic. Though most of it is driven by live viewing, social media is also driving the conversation hard and can be used as the counter on sports. Social media tells the whole story about attitudes of people sitting out there in living rooms, venues and even bars. The relationship between sports and entertainment is inseparable.
NEED TO EVALUATE
In a country as obsessed with sports as India, sports sponsorship evaluation is the foundation of all relevant information, public perception and to-the-minute statistics. With finances of this magnitude and the fervent passions of an entire nation at stake, a sustained and reliable inflow of premium information and analytics is of crucial importance. The best way to make sure the sponsor understands the returns is to provide an evaluation report detailing the benefits received. It is also good business practice to show evidence of accountability. Evaluation also helps a club/franchise/right owner/sponsor to formally review its activities, and provides a frame of reference for future projects while aiding the planning process. The key to success lies in bringing a marketer’s sponsorship to life in real and meaningful ways, and determining what success looks like at the outset of a campaign. You can’t start measuring success until you know what success means for you; any evaluation programme is therefore a measurement and a comparative tool. It doesn’t also help if key constituencies have a different view of desired results and don’t have a clear understanding of what success looks like before committing money and resources needed to support a sponsorship investment. Other common problems in developing sponsorship programmes is spending the majority of marketing dollars on the cost of sponsorship with little or nothing left to advertise, promote and publicize a company’s involvement. And more importantly, in assigning value on a sponsorship, brands should consider the cost of not being a sponsor. For developing strategic and creative sponsorship campaigns, one has to consider all elements in the marketing toolbox. More often than not, public relations, product placement and social media set the stage for future advertising, sales, events, promotions, and hospitality that will drive the sponsorship message home. And all of these need to be evaluated, benchmarked and developed into a KPI scorecard. The key elements of sponsorship evaluation area as follows:
MEDIA EVALUATION
Media evaluation and audit involves constant surveillance on sporting ventures, cutting-edge media monitoring and analytics to determine the nature, impact and presence of sports sponsorships for individual types of sports, across multiple broadcast environments in various cultures, geographies and investment markets. Combining updated and intensively verified information and valuable industry insights from experts, media evaluation and analytics incorporate extremely comprehensive and accurate market analytics on in-stadia, print, online and on-air broadcast networks; maintaining exclusive databases containing exhaustive details, Press bytes, performance benchmarks and competition analytics that allow unrivalled access to brands, signage points, teams, stadiums, sporting meets and sponsorship bodies. Add to it the use of all emerging social media channels to constantly track properties and monitor sports assets, giving the clients a hawk-eye insight into the chaotic world of popular commercial sports. All these are used to build extensive databases that deliver analytics and insight. The outcome of Media Evaluation is the universally accepted measure called Quality Index (QI) developed by Repucom - used to measure the quality and duration of sports fans’ exposure to sponsorship elements such as on-screen graphics, branding on apparels, courtside signage and courtside branded assets such as cups and coolers, etc.
RESEARCH & ANALYSIS
Social media measurement, syndicated sports studies and fan research are the heart of the whole process as the ultimate focus is to deliver intelligence and analytics on viewer behaviour and sports fan access for major sporting events. There is almost always a massive buzz of feedback, reviews, expectations and analysis from sports fans around major sporting events and tournaments that happen in the public sphere, from broadcast media to blogs and social media networks. It is imperative to understand sports markets through fan research to identify and tap into exclusive catchment areas of each sport, asking the right questions and gathering unique insights. Continuous studies, fan interviews, market surveys and monitoring brand associations with individual supporter bases to deliver accurate and highly customizable brand insights form a knowledge base for clients, who may use these databases to gauge future business opportunities.
CELEBRITY DBI (Davie-Brown Index)
The Celebrity DBI is an independent index that quantifies and qualifies consumer perceptions of celebrities. It provides brand-relevant insights through research methodology that goes deep inside celebrity catchment areas. Be it an international rockstar or the next Diego Maradona, celebrities all over the world have an immense capability to influence consumer habits for a multitude of products, and celebrity evaluation services provide updated, relevant market intelligence to identify key markets that account for maximum celebrity brand impact.
(The author is Senior VP, South Asia of Repucom, a sports marketing research organization.)
Feedback: jeapen@repucom.net
