MRG Conference 2008:What Lies Beneath – Getting Under the Skin of Sponsorship

Thinkbox’s David Brennan began the 2008 MRG conference’s final and winning paper by speaking about Thinkbox’s research into programme sponsorship.

Although many recognise that sponsorship performs well, Thinkbox wanted to provide hard evidence about how and why it works, and to attempt to explain the differences between it and spot advertising.

Using a variety of methods, Thinkbox measured the effects of sponorship on fans, viewers and non-viewers across a variety of brands, categories and programme types and found that consumers are clear about the differences between it and spot advertising.

Nicole Greenfield went on to talk about how their research had looked into the effect of sponsorship on the implicit mind and how viewers’ relationships with programmes affect sponsorship’s key performance indicators; the more that viewers like a programme, the more powerful the sponsorship.

Brands gain fame through their associations with programmes but for sponsorship to be successful it is crucial that the bumper and the programme are linked, even if the product and programme are not. Consumers don’t learn much about brands unless the creative is sensitive to the programme style because the main power of sponsorship is through association and not communication.

Thinkbox’s research found that long term sponsorships work better, using strands is more effective at building fame and that programme attributes can “rub off” on brands. Greenfield argued that these benefits can slip under the radar as their impact is on the implicit mind, making it difficult to measure but that sponsorship should be measured and appreciated in these terms.

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