Sponsors plug gamely on

Julian Lee, Marketing Reporter - SMH
November 19, 2007

SOME of Australia's leading brands are failing to make themselves heard in the increasingly cluttered $1.1 billion sports sponsorship market. Not that they admit it.

Awareness of Ford, Uncle Toby's, Kellogg's and Vodafone as sponsors has fallen dramatically, according to the latest survey into whether people recall the brands behind the sport.

Awareness has reached record lows across the board, the latest edition of the Sweeney Sports Report said. Over five years, the number of Australians able to recall the big brands' sponsorship areas fell by 11 percentage points.

But Uncle Toby's, despite a fall in recognition that was double the average level, still led the field. Some 27 per cent of the 1000 Australians surveyed between April and September recalled the breakfast cereal and snack company as a sporting sponsor.

Uncle Toby's parent, Nestle, said it was enjoying the fruits of its sponsorship of the surf lifesaving Iron Man event six years after it ended. It now sponsors swimming. Andrew McIver, Nestle's general manager for confectionery and snacks, said: "It is no surprise that with our sponsorship dollars being spread more widely and more companies competing in this space, our recognition would decline from its early highs.

However, it is pleasing to see we are still number one - especially when you consider we are up against significant sponsorships such as those of Nike and Telstra."

But if the result was a disappointment to the many companies that tip millions into sports sponsorship each year, they were not showing it. Ford, a sponsor of domestic cricket, V8 Supercars and Geelong Football Club, said it was "actually quite pleased".

"We look for targeted and cost-effective sponsorships and believe we're getting a good return on our investments. The key for us is leveraging the assets that we have, and we believe we're achieving a positive cut-through of the brands that we link to each sponsorship," said a Ford spokeswoman, Sinead McAlary.

A spokeswoman for Kellogg's, which is a sponsor of surf lifesaving, an event that Sweeney said suffered from a lack of exposure, would only say: "Kellogg's evaluates all of our sponsorships using our own internal research and we are very happy with how they are performing for us."
Just about every brand suffered a fall. Despite sponsoring swimming stars such as Libby Lenton and Leisel Jones, Speedo suffered the largest decline over the year, falling 8 percentage points to register just 12 per cent awareness. Coming in at the bottom of the survey were Qantas, VB and Pura Milk, with just 10 per cent of those surveyed able to recall them as sponsors. The only true winners were sponsors of two very successful national codes, Toyota with the AFL, and 3 with the cricket.

Sweeney Sports's general manager, Todd Deacon, ascribed declining awareness levels to one thing: a "saturated" market. "There's a lot of noise out there and they are all fighting for support - and they are all having to get through more clutter," he said.
Sponsorship consultants acknowledged the sponsorship market was "growing healthily" but denied it meant sponsors were getting less bang for their buck.

Lynne Anderson the managing director of S-COMM, said: "It is true and clutter is a concern. But they [sponsors] keep coming back and keep putting more money, in so there is a reason for that."

She said the "negative results" reflected the fact that Sweeney's research was conducted among the general population and failed to reflect that niche audiences could be targeted through other sports. "Just because it did not make it on to there [the survey] doesn't mean it wasn't successful. They [Sweeney] are talking about top-line awareness," Ms Anderson said.

This was a point reinforced by Vodafone, which said its sponsorship - spanning motor sport, rugby union and Aussie rules - was not focused on raising brand awareness but rather on targeting different regions, fans and codes.

Fiona Murphy, Vodafone's head of sponsorship, said: "Vodafone's sponsorship strategy is designed to engage with our key customer segments to drive brand preference and consideration, as well as awareness.

"Sponsorship isn't about being everything to everyone - we're taking a much more targeted approach to reach our customers through meaningful experiences."

S-COMM Australia merges with Sports Marketing Surveys, global leader in sports research.

February 8, 2007

Lynne Anderson, Managing Director of S-COMM Australia announced today the creation of a new partnership with global sponsorship research company, Sports Marketing Surveys. “The merging in Australia of the two companies will increase our international coverage and position us as leaders in not just media analysis but also in sponsorship research and strategy.” Anderson stated.

The new S-COMM and Sports Marketing Surveys partnership will enable S-COMM to provide not only additional products, services and expertise but also an expanded global reach, which will now include South Africa, UK, USA, Europe, Asia and New Zealand. “The partnership means S-COMM can now access Sports Marketing Surveys’ extensive portfolio of research services and experience.” Anderson said.

Stephen Proctor, Managing Director of Sports Marketing Surveys UK said, “We are delighted to have merged our Australian operations with S-COMM – two of the leading sports research companies under the one banner will create many exciting opportunities to provide our clients with world class analysis.”

As a further part of S-COMM’s aggressive growth strategy, we are excited to announce the re- launch of our website, showcasing our new direction - 360˚ Sponsorship Intelligence. In addition, S-COMM and Sports Marketing Surveys have relocated to new premises to accommodate the expanded business.

S-COMM is rapidly becoming recognized as the industry accepted standard for sponsorship evaluation by major sponsors and sporting rights holders in Australia with Cricket Australia, AFL, NRL, NBL, Rugby Union, FFA and Tennis Australia all now using S-COMM’s Spindex valuation currency and Magellan automated recognition.

Australian sport lifts its business game!

The Australian sport industry, in particular, the major professional leagues, has been undergoing a revolution in its business practices over recent years. In the past we have often heard complaints by sponsors that their investments in sponsoring sports and events were not being treated professionally by the respective rights holders, and the perception was that often it was more of a donation than a legitimate marketing option. In looking back over the last decade, it is clear that the industry has matured.

As the leading sponsorship research and evaluation company in Australia, S-COMM has seen a steady and significant shift within the sponsorship industry, in particular among what we call the rights holders segment i.e. sporting organisations/head bodies, clubs/teams, event owners. When we first started sponsorship evaluation back in 1993, the feeling was that “sponsorship can’t be measured”. There were no specialist sponsorship research companies, and no evaluation tools. Only a handful of NRL clubs saw the need to look at the benefits they were providing to sponsors. In those days, we tracked the games only and used an advertising rate to "determine" a value of potential exposure from sporting sponsorships. While very conscious of the fact that this was potentially very misleading (ie potential exposure from sponsorship branding only does not equal a 30sTVC in the ability to communicate specific, overt messages), we used it rather as a benchmarking tool to facilitate improvements etc., and to develop desired performance ratios. In these early days, not much attention was paid to the opportunity to be utilised, or the sponsor’s objectives.

In 1997, there was the beginnings of subtle shifts within the understanding of sponsorship, and the question shifted to “can sponsorship be measured”. We saw the emergence of the first small specialist companies. These companies used stop watches and advertising media equivalencies. As well as the early adopter NRL and AFL clubs, a few sponsors were now seeking independent verifications.
   
We then had the more forward thinking sports administrators suggest ways to improve these valuations by including all potential exposure beyond the games themselves. During 1998, Melbourne Storm took on the gargantuan task of taking on the might of the AFL in its own backyard. While battling for mainstream TV scheduling of game time, they nonetheless had success with their marketing efforts, especially in their first two years, in achieving a very good level of attention with their PR - ie across news programmes, sports programmes even lifestyle shows. The Storm asked us to include this in our tracking, a move that was extended to all clubs. In today's age of media saturation and marketing savvy publicity machines of our football codes, this non game exposure is significant - up to 45% for some AFL teams. It was a significant shift for all, as this non game exposure is an element that can be planned and controlled to an extent, unlike in game exposure. Marketers of both teams and sponsors began to plan for strategic leverage opportunities.

In 2000, S-COMM introduced our Spindex™ sponsorship evaluation system, which is the only one of its kind that does not use advertising rates to value sponsorship exposure. The system is underpinned with research specific to sponsorship, its market value, and how it is "consumed". For the rights holders this was more than a little scary, as there was the obvious temptation to hold on to the comfort level of a sponsorship value that is inflated by ad rates. However, what they have found is that using the more realistic valuations has facilitated sponsor acceptance and interest.

About this time, not only was sponsorship exposure valuations being done by more and more clubs, the governing bodies saw value in the group using an independent and market accepted evaluation, with the aim of presenting to the corporate world a more professional and consistent pricing model.

This sophisticated software programme also paved the way for another change to the scope of sponsorship analysis by allowing for the establishment of a database of industry activity. Again, the smarter clubs led the way, this time it was the AFL teams who saw value in being able to benchmark their performance for their sponsors. Accordingly, we began to track all sponsorship activity and exposure on TV, as well as in the print media.

Sponsors too were seeking to improve their sponsorship potential and return on investment. We were now being asked to go beyond exposure and determine the many varied benefits available from sponsorship. Very clearly, the market needed more than just the outputs, but rather the outcomes. So we introduced SponsorLink – the largest sponsorship omnibus research programme in Australia, with a sample of 5,200 annually. Now, there is an industry wide study that benchmarks such common sponsorship KPIs as level of interest (in the sport and the team); awareness of sponsorship (by sport fan and team fan) as well as buyer behaviour (by general population, sport fan and team fan). The attached graph shows just one snapshot of the types of data that can now be accessed to analyse sponsorship effectiveness.

In 2005, the question now is “what to measure and how to measure it”. We have a choice of professional sponsorship research companies, with global alliances. There is an ever increasing array of sophisticated research tools developed for sponsorship, and not borrowed from other disciplines. Just this week we had the launch of an exciting new tool for understanding the unique passions and involvement with the various sports, Passion Drivers – a research toll that has been developed by the global giant Octagon Worldwide to facilitate sponsorship leverage planning and activities. The stop watches have been replaced by automated image recognition systems, overseen by skilled analysts with local industry experience and expertise. And, most significantly of all, the focus has gone beyond potential awareness to tracking against objectives and determination of an ROI that is then incorporated into forward planning. 

In summary, over the last decade, we have seen a big change in both attitude and ability from rights holders and sponsors, who have come a long way from the days of seeing tickets in the box as the primary justification for sponsorship investment. Nowadays, they not only aim to deliver independent reports of what they deliver for a sponsor, but many are seeking to explore, both with us and their sponsors, ways to improve the ROI for their sponsor.

Australia Global Sponsorship 2006:
The S-COMM Perspective

As part of S-COMM annual industry study, we attended the international IEG Conference in March, this time extending the study to include some European sessions in order to determine a more complete understanding of the global sponsorship industry. While the IEG event did not live up to its usual high standard of innovation and thought leadership, the UK events more than made up for this. There is clearly a heightened appreciation of sport and sponsorship, and their potential for both business and the community from the excitement of winning the 2012 Olympics for London. While IEG this year looked “back” at what happened in sponsorship, the UK industry has looked ahead, and tried to determine what is needed in the future. The traditional England/Australia rivalry is being stimulated - the Brits clearly have Sydney 2000 in their sights as they try to take our mantle of “best ever” away from us!

The focus was very much on the consumer and how they are changing their consumption of media. While the aging population and increasing globalisation and affluence are obvious, there were some interesting new thoughts and statistics provided by The Future Foundation which must impact on sponsorship strategic thinking. Some of these are:

• The explosion of the network society – witness the huge growth in myspace.com, something that has not escaped the Murdoch empire’s attention. Word of mouth, and the existence of shared interest groups, are more powerful than ever as viable communities develop into new media channels and opportunities.

• Life in a 24 hour society – media consumption is less about slotting into the broadcaster’s timetable, but more about access when we want it

• Time out of home has more than doubled since 1960 – this has become the 3rd significant time space in our life, no longer just home and work

• In 1990 there were less than 10 TV channels in the UK – now there is nearly 900

• The growing desires for self expression and new experiences – customisation and relevance are critical

• News content trends have changed radically – increasing space given to non public affairs : lifestyle, reality, entertainment, sport

• Content has become a new social currency – the latest Big Brother story etc are used to make connections, increase knowledge
• Blurring boundaries between emerging technology/platforms, communications and media – old media delivered in new ways eg radio on internet; simultaneous media usage, consumer in control

The marketing dynamics are shifting rapidly under us and we need to incorporate these into strategies for sponsorships. The new order however is tailor made for sponsorship. The premise behind sponsorships is that it has the potential to be the most powerful of all marketing media, as it is largely emotional and personally relevant for consumers. Changing technology and marketing imperatives are aligning beautifully for sponsorships that understand the new order.

The trends above point to the need to be relevant and important to the consumer before they will accept marketing messages. Life for all of us gets busier and more crowded. The increasing media fragmentation, and shift of control to the consumer, has prompted brands to get as close to attractive editorial as possible. Broadcasters talk of going beyond the spot, sponsors must go beyond the signs. To achieve this, sponsors need to know the fan or patron well, and demonstrate an empathy that is real not cynical lip service. Coke’s sponsorship of the English Football League’s Divisions 1, 2 and 3 sought to demonstrate to all fans they were on their wave length. When the season kicked off, Coke changed their corporate colours for the first time with Coke perimeter boards at all 72 Football League grounds in the colours of the home team. In addition, an on pack promotion gave fans the chance to not only win £10,000 for themselves, but also £250,000 for their club to spend on players. This lies at the heart of a fan’s raison d’être – help my team win!

Sponsorship in the future must offer relevance, creativity and unique concepts. Sponsors want to see activation ideas rather than benefits menus from rights holders. Sponsors want the opportunity to change the landscape of the property – add unique value to the experience that would be missed by the fans if not for the sponsor. To do this, both sponsor and rights holder need to really know their fans and consumers, they need to really listen to what they want and then they need to have great creative and communications skills to execute on target.