MRG Evening Meeting – Broadcast Sponsorship Research

The most recent MRG evening meeting covered Broadcast Sponsorship Research, with Ivor Millman and Jim Kite of BSkyB speaking.

Ivor Millman from TSMS revealed details from ITV’s research initiative with Millward Brown. This aimed to answer two key questions; what are the viewer’s views on sponsorship, and what does it actually do for the sponsor?.

The research, which was carried out jointly with Millward Brown, was the largest research programme to have been carried out; it included continuous tracking, quantitative and qualitative work and some hall tests.

Viewer’s Views

Some of the findings were that sponsorship messages were seen as different from ordinary advertising; they stand out as special as far as the viewer is concerned; they are seen as part of the programme not part of the break. It is important that 4 rules of creativity are followed;

• that the sponsorship is within the ITC rules
• within the programme style
• within the advertising style
• the sponsorship must entertain or amuse viewers, (but not baffle the viewers with irrelevance).

TOM or the Television Opinion Monitor, which provides a continuous study of viewers’ opinions on advertising by ITV areas was used in the study. Only 8% of viewers find broadcast sponsorship unfavourable, with 47% actually agreeing it is favourable. Also all demographic groups favour sponsorship. Viewers were asked if they had seen any unacceptable broadcast sponsorship ad in the past year; 3% of adults had, and 2% of parents. The main complaint was tobacco sponsored sports on TV.

Does broadcast sponsorship do anything for sponsors?

This part of the research involved Millward Brown in a tracking programme of all network broadcast sponsors on ITV since April 1995. A nationally representative adult sample was used, in over 300 interviews per week.

In an awareness study, Death By Chocolate’s sponsorship of Vanessa came out top at 73%, followed by Diet Coke at 70%, Powergen at 59% and Frosties at 57%.The tracking study also attempted to measure appropriateness, which was scored out of ten as to the appropriateness of the link, and also about the enjoyment.

The more appropriate the link, the more enjoyment gained. Ivor said they are currently lobbying the ITC that far from being inappropriate, the closeness of a product with a particular programme is actually enjoyed by viewers.

Viewers also had more favourable attitudes towards a brand if they were aware of the sponsorship; awareness of Death By Chocolate as a product rose by 17% points after sponsorship. Spontaneous awareness of Commercial Union amongst all adults doubled after their sponsorship of London’s Burning, as did their image.

Jim Kite from BSkyB then presented some qualitative research commissioned by Sky through The Sponsorship Research Company, as a follow-up to 1994’s View From The Couch. A different attitude was perceived between satellite viewers and terrestrial viewers. Sky viewers were:

• More confident with programme contents
• More knowledgeable about programmes and broadcasting as a whole
• More interested (illustrated by sponsorship recall levels)
• More involved.

On terrestrial, sponsorship is associated as with the programme; on Sky, the association comes at more levels, i.e. first the programme, then the channel and also the broadcaster.

The research also uncovered some practical differences in how sponsorship works on Sky; because of Sky’s “umbrella brand”, i.e. communication working on different levels up to the channel and the broadcaster, long-term sponsorship is better suited; a certain level of scepticism is detected with new brands.

Sky viewers are also more tolerant of creative considerations; lengthy or intricate credits are seen as acceptable as long as they do not interfere in the programming.

In summary, non-terrestrial sponsorship receives the same positive attitudes as terrestrial, but because the communication is on three levels, there is a longer term role for sponsorship. Whilst there are also more lenient attitudes towards sponsorship, programming remains the “king”.

Jim Kite finished by saying that the research gave them some insight, and reaffirmed in their minds why sponsorship cannot be bought or dealt with in the same way as spot advertising.

Questions from the floor afterwards included how far can sponsorship levels increase before a saturation point is reached? Ivor Millman responded that all he could say was “we can still go further”.