Tag: Evaluation

My 15 Minutes of Fame on the London Hotspots Blog 7th March, 2011

I recently was interviewed for the London Hotspots Blog with Executive Offices Group. The London Hotspots blog has the best of business advice, entertainment, travel, food and drink from across the capital so make sure to check it out.

My interview was a great experience and gave me an opportunity to talk more about the great things we are doing with Slingshot Sponsorship and our newest client campaigns.

They asked everything from the best piece of business advice I had ever received down to what we are planning for 2011 and beyond. I thought I’d give a little sneak peek on our blog with one of their questions on what our average week is like, but you can check out the entire interview here.

What is an average week like for the MD of Slingshot?
There is no average work week for me. Things change all the time and we constantly have to be flexible to meet the needs of our clients and our business. This is one of the best things about what we do. Some weeks involve attending a lot of client events – anything from black-tie balls at the Grosvenor House Hotel to high profile breakfast events in the City. Other weeks can involve white board strategy planning and briefing in creative work for new sponsorship proposals.

As we typically start working with clients at integration stage – with them having little experience in sponsorship – and then taking them to delivery, we can be at many different stages with different clients. This means that one day might be spent tweaking copy for benefits in a sponsorship proposal for one client and the next day spent on the phone setting up meetings to discuss how brands can get involved with our client’s media assets. The variety of our day to day work makes working at Slingshot Sponsorship exciting.

Is Barcelona Football Club Selling Out? 1st March, 2011

In a season where we have seen Torres leave Liverpool for Chelsea (not before he had ‘You’ll never walk alone’ tattooed on his arm) and Rooney demand a transfer only to reconsider once he had an upgrade, football fans would be forgiven in thinking that the game had finally lost its soul.

With all the cash being pumped into the Premier League and numerous new owners buying their way into the hype, as a fan you can’t help but feel less engaged with the game.

Barcelona Football Club is a great example of the shift in football sponsorship funding. For years, Catalan purists raved about 111 years without a sponsor. The positioning showcased their love of the game and created fan loyalty to their brand. This year, they provided the main shirt sponsorship spot to UNICEF – providing this charity a fantastic opportunity to drive awareness and raise much needed funds to the cause. Through this sponsorship, Barcelona was able to create an emotional response from their fans by supporting UNICEF in this way – further increasing their fan loyalty. It also provided a stepping stone for the club into brand sponsorship ensuring that they didn’t isolate their die hard supporters.

The introduction of UNICEF’s sponsorship has helped pave the way for the Qatar Foundation to come on board as an official sponsor through a 5 year deal for a total cost of £125 million. The non-profit foundation funded by the Al-Thani family, has splashed out on one of the most lucrative sponsorship opportunities available. This raised further issues with the winning bid for the 2022 World Cup with many of the rival bids believing the deal was in place before, as the Barcelona team had such an influential part to play in their selection.

Speculation indeed, but whatever the answer this is certainly one of the most far reaching and eye catching sponsorship deals this year. Manchester United’s sponsorship deal worth £80 million over 4 years with AON in 2009 now seems like a distant memory.

The Challenges Facing Sponsorship Evaluation 8th December, 2010

So What’s Wrong With Sponsorship Evaluation? Right now sponsorship evaluation should be a hot topic. Sponsorship spend continues to rise year on year and with the current economic situation you would think being able to demonstrate ROI would be critical right? Despite this evaluation budgets are still seemingly being cut left right and centre. So what prevents the sponsorship industry from embracing evaluation?

Here are seven possible reasons…

1. Poor objectives result in poor evaluation: Effective evaluation relies on being able to evaluate whether sponsorship objectives have been met. So if no objectives have been set, or if they simply aren’t measurable any research you commission is ultimately going to be a waste of money. However, few research companies are going to turn down the opportunity to spend your money just because you give them un-measurable objectives. The result…the industry gets flooded with ineffective evaluation. At this point marketing directors cut budgets as the research tells them nothing they don’t already know.

The misconception that evaluation results in the termination of a sponsorship programme: In reality that is very unlikely. In the majority of cases the decision to sponsor, although not always based on sound consumer insight, is at least logical and follows good common sense. No one is going to question a beer brand that chooses to align themselves with a social occasion like a music festival. So once this basic fit has been confirmed the evaluation should be able to provide a steer to improve the effectiveness of future planned activations. e.g. Increase spend for on-site activations that deliver cut through and decrease spend on radio adverts which research shows are failing to cut through. If the evaluation can’t do this, the conclusion is your budgets probably could be better spent.

Connected to point two is point three…

3. Conflict of interests: The person most likely to commission sponsorship evaluation is the very same person that created the programme or brokered the deal. Why would you want tangible evidence to show you have wasted your employers’ money? Suddenly selling sponsorship evaluation has become a lot harder! However, let’s go back to point two. There needs to be a mindset change, sponsorship evaluation should be commissioned to help fine-tune the effectiveness of the campaign. Evaluation is a tool that can help the sponsorship look better not worse, if vanity is really so important.

4. Limited understanding of the benefits: Sponsorship evaluation should be your friend. Here is how it can help. i. If you have tangible evidence that proves sponsorship has driven bottom line value it is much easier for you to protect your future sponsorship budgets. ii. Evaluation can be used during re-negotiations to ensure rights fees are kept in-line with the likely returns for the business based on previous experience with that property. iii. Consistently planned evaluation can be used to compare the performance of sponsorship programmes within your portfolio, so you can easily see which ones are delivering the best returns and how best to allocate future budgets. iv. Evaluation helps you understand the effectiveness of all your communication touchpoints, so if radio is providing less consumer cut through you will know to switch your focus to an activity which is working more effectively.

5. It’s too expensive: It is true consumer research can be expensive, but anyone can begin to understand and benchmark their sponsorship activity without spending a penny. Ok this output data won’t tell you about the effects of sponsorship but it can help you understand the reach comparative to the other activities within your portfolio, and that’s a start. Output data can include: Unique website visitors, event attendee numbers, number of free samples distributed, competition entries, number of VIP guests that actually showed up. Suddenly you have a way of benchmarking your sponsorship portfolio.

6. Advertising equivalency values (AVEs) / media evaluation has damaged the credibility of evaluation: The sponsorship evaluation industry was founded on media evaluation with students using stopwatches to calculate the length of time a sponsors’ logo was exposed, this exposure time was then turned into a figure purporting to show what this coverage would be worth if it was bought as advertising. How on earth did this ever become the established form of evaluation?

Well going back to point 3 if you don’t want to risk your programme from being cut, this is perfect. You get a simple figure, which suggests to your bosses you are delivering real monetary value to the business and no one has the time or desire to rock the boat. There are tons of reasons why advertising equivalency value is pointless, but here is one. Advertising is evaluated on effectiveness, not the cost to buy the space. So why should sponsorship be different?

7. The poor definition of sponsorship: Every sponsorship agency has at some time tried to write their own definition of what sponsorship actually means. Most practitioners would agree it is a two-way or mutually beneficial transaction between the rights holder and the sponsor. The sponsor gains access to valuable rights and the rights holder benefits from sponsor money or expertise through a value in kind deal. However, incredibly very few definitions ever suggest that a sponsorship should be directly linked to the business bottom line and generate actual sales. What message does this send out? You can blow thousands if not millions on sponsorship activity and never have to worry about proving a return. Sounds like a cop-out.

History suggests that in times of recession creativity and business agility come to the fore. Could this be the time when sponsorship finally grows up and begins to prove its true worth? Let’s hope so.

How to Integrate Sponsorship & Deliver ROI 3rd November, 2010

Sponsorship and brand partnerships are on the rise and almost mentioned as much as the terms social media and integrated marketing. However, not everyone seems to understand how to go about finding sponsorship funding or how to deliver a return on investment. Perhaps not as sexy as integration or social media, sponsorship and brand partnerships are actually much more interesting as they work within these medium as well incorporated above and below the line channels. The flexibility of sponsorship in the marketing environment opens up a world of possibilities, but with so many options, it can be difficult to understand the benefits.

Three top tips when considering sponsorship opportunities for your brand:

Is sponsorship right for me? Even before you decide on your goals, you must first make sure that sponsorship is the best way to communicate with your audience. Sponsorship is a great addition to your marketing mix, but only if it achieves your objectives and is planned out in a strategic way. A starting point for deciding whether sponsorship is the right fit would be understanding the audience and making sure that the audience is your target market. If they are not, any sponsorship messages, no matter how amazing they might be, will be lost.

Know your goals – In the planning stages, it is important to know your objectives for sponsorship at the outset. Sponsorship chosen to help get your brand some ‘face time’ will have different measurables than sponsorship chosen to give back to the community. Typically it will be a mixture of a variety of key benefits: showcasing expertise, aligning with another brand, sharing costs of marketing, supporting a good cause, and corporate entertainment. As mentioned, regardless of the key benefits you are looking for as a sponsor, in order for sponsorship to be effective, you must certain that you are reaching your target audience. The rights owner should have a proven track record of engaging with your target audience.

Set objectives for your sponsorship campaign – Make sure that you are measuring both brand engagement as well as sales increases. These should be measureable and have targets set. Throughout the term of the sponsorship, these targets will assess which elements of your sponsorship are most successful and will allow you to focus more on the activation of that element. By continually measuring and assessing your sponsorship campaign against targets you will be more cost-effective as well as flexible to take up new opportunities to further leverage your original rights package.

Sponsorship is not just about attaching your logo on the next promotional bulletin or making sure your brand has ‘face time’ at the next event, it is strategic and should engage your audience to be effective. Thought needs to go into developing these sponsorship relationships so that they reach their full potential. When they do – they can be incredibly successful and your audience will be begging for more!

Need Sponsorship? Our top tips will show you how! part I 10th September, 2010

With the recent surge in corporate sponsorship in the UK, sponsorship proposals are coming in faster than ever. However, with so many new organisations and events trying their hand at sponsorship funding, not all of these sponsorship proposals are maximising the total funding available. This is due to the lack of specific knowledge in this area as sponsorship professionals can be hard to come by and are rarely located within an organisation. Most often sponsorship is championed by the Marketing Director who rarely has the time and resource to make the most of their sponsorship opportunities.
To save some time and money take note of Slingshot Sponsorship’s top tips for organisations requesting sponsorship:

Tip: Sponsorship isn’t about you!

Sponsorship happens because you can provide an audience, which helps sponsors reach their objectives. Sponsorship is not simply about someone helping you fund your opportunity or great idea. You need to look at sponsorship as a product you are selling. Most people do not like to pay for something and leave the store empty handed.

Tip: Sponsorship proposals should focus on benefits

Your sponsorship proposal should focus on the benefits you can help them realise. Although there are sponsorship programmes that are for corporate social responsibility, the majority are not, and even if they are, they still need to see ROI. Make sure to focus on these commercial benefits rather than the event itself in the sponsorship proposal.

Tip: Get the right fit

Prospects should be approached who share the same target audience and values. This will not only ensure that the prospect is marketing to their key audience, but also creates an associated brand experience.

Keep following our blog – part II is coming up next!

Sponsorship Measurement 26th August, 2010

Measuring sponsorship is one of the most important services a sponsorship agency or property partner can provide. With innumerable ways to measure marketing ROI, it is important that sponsorship provides the same value. It is also one of the crucial points that will decide whether or not sponsors renew.

A sponsorship agency should not only help you deliver value, but it should also measure it.

Three key tips to measuring sponsorship

1. Understand the audience

This should go beyond standard demographic information and include insight on how the audience you are targeting engages with the brand. In order to build a brand relationship through a sponsorship platform, you need to understand where the current relationship sits. This will act as a baseline for measurement as well as informing the brand and activation teams in order to help leverage the sponsorship.

2. Lay the groundwork

In any type of collaboration, it is very important that each party understands the roles they will undertake to achieve their objectives. It is also very important that all parties understand the other’s business – the better understanding of the partner and nature of the relationship, the easier it will be to understand where synergy can be achieved.

This should be discussed right from the beginning of the contract negotiation. Once signed, both parties should walk away knowing exactly what they will be bringing to the relationship. By encouraging this, measurement goals can be set against achievables.

3. Provide valuable data

Data capture during the entire sponsorship campaign – include post-event, is incredibly valuable for assessing the success of the sponsorship. Measuring a sponsor’s impact can be done through fulfilment surveys, surveying social media buzz, interviews, focus groups and third party research.

Surveys and feedback forms can be an easy way to not only measure the success of the sponsorship programme, but also can add value to the sponsor by providing them a few sponsor-related questions. In addition, feedback can provide both parties with insight needed to make the next event even better.

These tips are just some of the ways you can work together to ensure that the sponsorship relationship you build is tangible, which will be key in creating sustainable partnerships.