But ‘value’ is a concept that becomes increasingly blurred when looking at sponsorship vs traditional media.

To look at broadcast sponsorship as an example, there are several measures that we could look at allowing us to compare it to traditional media, and therefore come up with a value.  

Similar to a TV model, we could look at time length and ratings of bumpers in a given sponsorship, and from that arrive at a number of ratings that in media terms equate to a value.

But arguably sponsorship has inherent advantages that boost its value over and above traditional media. 

Sponsorship’s selling point is its ability to add qualities to a brand by association. 

Sponsorship can give credibility to a brand, or can take a flagging brand and make it cool again - Baileys used Sex and the City to great effect to do just that. 

Low interest categories use sponsorship to give a brand prominence, a good example being the extortionate amount that AIG have paid to put their name on Manchester United’s shirts; in fact you can be almost certain that every finance brand will be involved in sports sponsorship of some form. 

Brands in categories with little tangible differentiation will use sponsorship to stand out – we only need look at the mobile market to see how brands there have looked to form strong content associations whether that is through film, music or sport.

Whatever content people consume, they are doing so because they enjoy it and it has relevance to them. Likeability and relevance is ultimately what a brand is gaining (over and above traditional media) by sponsoring something. 

Ross Minton
Sponsorship Manager, OMD Fuse