Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Identify a group of consumers watching the reality show and a group not watching the reality show. Track their purchases of your product (and their hearts and minds about it, i.e. awareness, liking, preference etc). If your performance increases for the watching group over time, but not for the non-watching group, you have demonstrated an effect.

This is how Gilette ascertains the value of sponsorships eg Nascar: it tracks a group of Nascar watchers and (matched) non - Nascar watchers. That company is the first though to say you should use many methods and triangulate the results: it also asked its employees what the sales effecs are, a branding expert what the effect on brand equity is, and a media company to calculate the 'advertising dollar equivalent', i.e. what the brand impressions would have costed the company in advertising dollars. The latter was found to be vastly overstated: 30 seconds exposure to a well-designed ad campaign is worth much more than 30 seconds exposure to the name of a sponsor.

There's a chapter in Buy•ology (Martin Lindstrom) that describes the ROI of the 3 major sponsors to American Idol. 1 is hugely successful. 1 is not. Lots of explanations as to what worked and didn't.

What was the objective when you initially decided to sponsor the show? How did you expect you'd measure success and evaluate the ROI then?

For example, if the goal was to increase target audience awareness by at least 10 percentage points, then you can conduct consumer research and see if you reached that goal or not. Etc.

It obviously depends on what you wanted from your sponsorship. I'd suggest consulting with a savvy market research professional; they should be able to help you think this through.

If you want some recommendations, let me know.