Measuring Results

Sponsorship often turns the wheels in motorsport. So it's no surprise drivers, teams, manufacturers, tracks and series want to show how motorsport drives results for sponsors. But can sponsorship be quantified? And is it quantity or quality that counts?

I asked Eric Wright, vice-president of research and development for Joyce Julius & Associates, Inc. Both the American Le Mans Series and the GRAND-AM Rolex SportsCar Series are clients of the Michigan company. It has been measuring sponsorship results for 25 years, using formulae that calculate the value of sponsor brand visibility in equivalent advertising dollars. For example, if MegaSponsor's logo is clear and in focus for 30 seconds during a SPEED race telecast, and if the network charges $25,000 for a 30-second commercial during that telecast, the visibility is considered to be worth $25,000.

Wright explained, "We're not saying it's literal, it's just the means to get a handle on, 'Did you get a lot of exposure in the broadcast or did you not get that much?'"

Joyce Julius researchers watch race telecasts frame by frame, freezing the screen to count all the sponsor logos. They bolster their analysis with factors like the size, placement and clutter of the logos. During this year's Daytona 500 show, they counted 348 brands, with 175 different logos on driver suits. (Quick, name the top 40!)

The researchers also track audio mentions during race telecasts and can monitor impressions – the number of times a brand is seen or mentioned – in television and radio shows, newspapers, magazines, Internet stories and onsite promotions. It's all converted back to the cost of traditional television advertising, giving companies a consistent measurement across different media.

"Basically, what we're doing is determining how many people witnessed that messaging and what the value of that was back to that brand," Wright said. "We're just using and trying to find some common language so you can look at this unpredictable side and have some measurement out of it."

The underlying premise is more eyes on logos translates into more product sales, which makes for happy sponsors. But is that the case?

"The answer to that depends on who you are in terms of being a brand and who you're selling to and what type of product or service or offering that you have," Wright noted. "If your objective is to increase name recognition, sports sponsorship is a great place to be able to do that. Increasing those impressions and comparable value that way is important to eventually reaching those goals of selling more."

If sponsorship is based on product sales to a mass market influenced by the number of times a brand is seen or mentioned, Joyce Julius can estimate how many people the sponsor reaches, so they can predict or track sales results. (That's assuming the repetitive impact is positive ...)

But the most market-savvy race participants offer sponsors more than signage on a car or gratuitous product plugs. In fact, some sponsors aren't interested in public visibility. If their objective is to reward employees or entertain clients, results are measured in guest fun. If the goal is to create opportunities for business-to-business deals, success is determined by the resulting contracts. If sponsor executives join a race team to learn strategic thinking in an intense environment, their future decisions will reflect the value of the program.

And if a sponsor wants to reach a niche market, social media could be the best way to communicate. The message may not be seen by the masses, but if it reaches the people who will respond the way the sponsor wants, the program is a success. That's still a frontier for companies like Joyce Julius.

"It's a challenge," Wright agreed. "A lot of our measurement is based on the simple notion that the more people see the messaging, the more valuable it is. In the social landscape, you might not have those large numbers like that, but you might be hitting some pretty key components.”