Brand awareness in complex communication ecosystems: rethinking research methods in sponsorship

Abstract

Brand collaboration with sports, arts, and events is a mainstay in marketing communications. The strategic management of sponsorship is, however, hampered by common practices of measuring sponsor indentification. Sponsor recall and recognition testing typically includes non-sponsor foils to capture how sponsor brands fared against competitors. This practice is central to our analysis. In two field studies of mega event sponsorship, we find that interference from competitors presented at test is detrimental to identification of long-held sponsors, but counterintuitively, not of new sponsors. Improved understanding of sponsorship evaluation will help sponsors assess their performance more accurately and prevent brands from investing or divesting in sponsorship contracts based on alleged good or poor performance. For those working in marketing communications, the findings suggest rethinking the research instrument to obtain the most accurate identification rates in sponsoring.