How Today’s Brands Are Maximizing Sponsorship ROI With Their Own Analytics

Historically, brands have relied on their rights holder partners or an agency to understand the success of their sponsorship investments. Today, more brands are investing in their own sponsorship analytics data in order to have direct visibility and influence over the performance of their activations.

In this webinar, representatives from Dell Technologies (Anne Ristau), Stanley Black & Decker (Tony Merritt), GumGum Sports (Tori Stevens) and FOS CEO Adam White discuss how Dell and Stanley Black & Decker are approaching sponsorship analysis today, examples of how they are using their own data to drive business decisions and partnership discussions, and best practices for how brands can utilize data to optimize sponsorship performance.

On the ideal partnership approach (7:01)

Ristau: “It very much is a balanced scorecard for us. There’s one thing our COO has used as a mantra. We first start with objectives and business outcomes. We then want creative breakthrough. … We’re very much on a path of wanting to do fewer partnerships really well to get that breakthrough. I want to have clear objectives and then we want to measure those.”

On using GumGum to track analytics of activations (28:30)

Merritt: “We started really tracking with them about two years ago. It was really important to us because we were getting data from our partners and sometimes you just didn’t know if you should trust that data. Now some of our partners use GumGum. Now we send them to GumGum. So we know that what we’re getting back is good. We just ran our 14th year campaign with the Racing for a Miracle program. … With the metrics that we got back from GumGum, we were able to track going into that Charlotte market and seeing if there was a list. It really showed that engagement was up. Visibility was up. Impressions were up. … We took it completely virtual and it paid off because of the data that we got from GumGum tracking that promotion.”

On why partners switch to GumGum (47:55)

Stevens: “Some of the things that come to mind for me are our clients who, once they had the data in front of them and they had it across their portfolio, could really see what was driving value for them versus properties that perhaps weren’t. And so we have seen clients make decisions to actually drop investments from their portfolio based on the data. I think it was probably that they knew they were going to drop it and had a gut that it might be underperforming. But once they had it, it helped sort of fuel the decision. We’ve also seen clients make shifts in the portfolio, and potentially increase investments in other areas based on that data.”

On the importance of branded content in a sponsorship plan (49:24)

Ristau: “I think the more you have really enrich engagement, that’s always better. Again, being highly targeted and B2B focused, we probably care about the quality over the quantity, much more. … We often use our partners in our thought leadership initiatives. We’ve seen a lot this year of other brands that are doing more in that space. So definitely I’d say branded content, thought leadership, influencer engagement, all really powerful ways to reach our audiences, that aren’t just a logo in an arena or on a car that help you to actually communicate your message and your capabilities and help drive that engagement.”