Tell Your Sponsorship Story With These 7 Metrics
- January 1, 2021
- Adam Mitchell
Turning Data into Insights
There is an endless buffet of information out there. Brands and properties can gorge themselves on data past the point of satiety. And then go back for more. Debra Bass, President of Global Marketing Services for Johnson & Johnson Consumer Products, calls it “infobesity.” Too many empty calories, too few nutrients, and your organization becomes bloated with information.
When it comes to measuring property health, balance is key — and moderation is essential. Examining seven core health metrics provides you with the information you need to accurately, and strategically, gauge opportunities. Not a hundred. Not a thousand. Seven.
Let’s unpack how we’ve organized our millions of data points into three categories and seven core health metrics:
Category #1 - Behavior
1. Engagement: Start here. This metric shows you how people are currently engaging with properties - whether leagues, teams, venues, festivals, award shows, community events, or causes. There are nine individual ways that you can measure engagement behaviors, as shown here:
This gives you the size and overall magnitude of a property. For example, the NFL engages over 153 million people in the US. It’s also important to note that the calculated total of engaged individuals is unduplicated. Meaning that if one person engages with the NFL by, say, going to a game, buying merch, placing an online bet, and sharing on social, it's still only counted as 1 engaged person in the Engagement Health Metric. Just another way we’re ensuring the data is transparent, trustworthy and ready for you to use in your narratives.
But engagement is only part of the story. To get a more complete picture, we need to dig down further.
2. Intensity: To use the example above, 153 million people engage once or more per year with the NFL. But how many engage on a weekly basis or more? Turns out, over 98 million Americans do. This is 98 million people with whom you can engage and add value to on a weekly basis. This is a significant opportunity for any brand.
But again, you may need a fuller view, which is why we also look at:
3. Momentum: This third factor of engagement shows you if interest is increasing, decreasing, or remaining neutral month-over-month.
Of those who engage with the NFL, over 58 million say that they will continue to do so, or will do so with more intensity, over the next 12 months. This metric helps you determine if a property is trending up, down, or sideways in terms of key behaviors.
Category #2 - Emotion
4. Passion: Passion and excitement are the two sides of the emotion coin.
Passion is representative of true affinity. When someone is passionate about a property, it doesn’t matter what day of the week or time of year it is, the property will be a big part of who they are. They plan their fantasy teams, they read blogs throughout the off-season, they proudly sport Patriots tattoos.
You can think of passion as a long-term metric: is the property part of this person’s identity?
5. Excitement: The excitement metric tells us just that - how many people are excited by a property. This metric is more short-term than passion. For example, when the season is ramping up we see an uptick in excitement. A month after the Super Bowl, we’d expect to see a decrease.
Excitement is immediate: it’s now, it’s top of mind. Looking at the passion:excitement ratio helps you identify opportunities to drive affinity.
Category #3 - Impact
When you’re thinking about sponsorship opportunities, it’s critical to look at the overall levels of engagement and emotion your target audience has for a property. But successful sponsorships are not just about how people feel towards a property, it’s about whether a sponsorship of that property will drive purchase behaviors and decision making within that target audience. The question is, if you sponsor a property, will it have a tangible impact?
To determine this, we look at:
6. Consideration: This is a behavioral metric that indicates intent to purchase. In other words, of the 153 million Americans who engage with the NFL, how many would likely purchase your products/services if you sponsored the NFL in a way they liked?
7. Favorability: This is the attitudinal side of the impact coin. Favorability measures the number of people who state they would feel more favorable toward a brand if it sponsored a particular property.
To continue with our NFL example: there are 153 million people engaging with the property once or more per year, 98 million who do so on a weekly basis, and momentum is on our side. We know that passion is there: it exceeds passion for all other sports properties. Excitement is also strong.
We can use the Impact data to quantify consideration and favorability: over 24 million people who engage with the NFL say that a sponsor would drive intent to purchase and over 27 million say that a sponsor would drive favorability for that brand.
And that brings us to:
Opportunity Score.
SponsorPulse Opportunity Score is a proprietary algorithm of the seven health metrics we've covered. If you want to simplify your search to one number, we've done the work for you. The Opportunity Score provides you with a quick way to evaluate properties - and opportunities, providing you with both a macro-level view of what’s performing and giving you an at-a-glance understanding of the best possible investments.
Get Lean and Mean To Find Insights That Are Truly Insightful
The way to combat infobesity is cutting out extraneous, misleading, and often empty, data. When you get to the real substance — the insights made possible from these seven health metrics alone — you’ll be feeding your brand or property with consistent, valuable and strategy-fueling information on your next big sponsorship opportunities.
