NAMING RIGHTS: Justine Fedak, VP of sponsorships and special events at BMO Financial Group, in the stands of BMO Field-the stadium that will be home to Major League Soccer’s Toronto FC and Canada’s national soccer teams
As event sponsorship grows in popularity, marketers expect more than the usual assurances that a sponsorship will generate great brand awareness. The hurdle has been a lack of consistent measurement for events.
Hearing that call, a number of companies are developing comprehensive tools to better evaluate the ROI of event sponsorships. Last year, Fusion Alliance Marketing, a unit of Cossette Communication Group, unveiled SponsorScope, an online tool to determine the total value of a proposed sponsorship.
Having entered about 100 evaluations into a database, Fusion gave values to tangible factors-including the media campaign, media and sponsor visibility and promotional tools-and 22 intangible factors such as the number of event sponsors, the property’s reputation, category exclusivity, leveraging potential for employees and the property’s communications plan. The final sponsorship value is further weighed against the specific objectives of each brand.
“For us, SponsorScope is not a strategic tool, it’s an evaluation tool to know if you have enough value for the amount of money that the property is asking for,” says Pascale Chasse, vice-president and general manager of Fusion in Montreal. The report, which is continually updated and upgraded, helps all involved set out the objectives and priorities while assisting with negotiating a sponsorship deal. SponsorScope has helped garner repeat business, Chasse says, and “some properties have asked us to evaluate their sponsorship proposal because of this.”
Another evaluation tool recently introduced is Passion Drivers from Octagon Canada, a sports and event marketing division of Interpublic Group. Proprietary research for eight countries including Canada, it looks at the “why” behind the passion for sports events. For example, an audience might be attracted to an event because of particular players or because of a rivalry between teams, so the sponsorship should be focused accordingly.
The scrutiny goes beyond the usual insights on demographics, says Kim Smither, managing director at Octagon Canada in Toronto. “We took a very analytical approach to what we were doing in the packaged goods area and applied the same methodology to sport. When you know ‘why,’ it gives you a better opportunity to develop your activation program.”
Octagon invokes a “return on objectives” methodology for event sponsorship. “There are quantifiable ways to measure your sponsorship, but it really starts with defining your objectives and identifying key metrics and measurement tools,” says Smither. Factoring those tools into the marketing budget is critical, especially with rights’ fees increasing and companies spending more on sponsorships. Inevitably budgets are cut, she says. “It seems easy to let go…but, at the end of the day, they can’t measure all that investment.”
Not all marketers are convinced such tools are the answer. Justine Fedak, VP of sponsorships and special events at BMO Financial in Toronto, says she increasingly hears of new programs to review event sponsorship investment. “It’s such a new area of sponsorship, it’s not one I would imagine anybody has a great depth of confidence with or information on, but it’s a growing area and one I’m very interested in learning more about.”
BMO’s in-house team, devoted to evaluating the potential and execution of sponsorships, looks at measuring ROI from several different perspectives such as brand alliance, strategic fit and the potential for a long-term relationship (as seen in its partnerships with Figure Skating Canada, Spruce Meadows and the Canadian Opera Company), and the ability to be active in the community or sustain an organization.
“Brand awareness is an expectation of event sponsorship, certainly not why you’re in it. So it needs other components and a full activation program for it to actually be relevant from an ROI perspective,” says Fedak. “When you’re going to get involved in these groups, it’s not a flash in the pan, they really have to be something you build upon… I won’t go so far as to say we get down to tracking how many dollars got transferred, but certainly we track how relationships deepen and what the experience was able to create,” in terms of prospecting clients and employee participation.
Evaluating return on investment is frustrating everyone these days because there’s no common ground and the events industry desperately needs a solution, says Tony Chapman, CEO of Capital C in Toronto. Citing clients such as Nokia and Doritos, he says a sponsorship must be evaluated on how it can activate areas such as the sales force, media, sampling and new products. “The bottom line is: Is this relevant to my target audience; have I made it easy to understand, exciting and easy to get involved with; and is it driving sales? It’s all about activating and amplifying an idea at a variety of touch points, all laddering to drive brand equity and brand results. That’s where the measurement will come in for the future.”
For now, people are spending “an awful lot of time trying to scramble to make up rules to demonstrate ROI because there are no consistent formulas and measurement,” Chapman says, and the agency-branded tools really just means everyone is creating their own currency.
SARAH DOBSON is a freelance writer in Toronto.
