Program Measurement & ROO Evaluation – The SportsMark Approach

At SportsMark, our philosophy is that corporate hospitality at a live sporting event is a key component of the sponsorship marketing mix, and, accordingly, should be held accountable as such.  Corporate sponsor hospitality — including the event experience, branding, product rights on-site, tickets to games, etc. — is a powerful sponsorship element and is ranked by most of our clients as one of their most valuable assets in a sponsorship.  However, we find that broad-based hospitality programming is seldom fully leveraged or measured for how it delivers against business goals. 

SportsMark has deployed hospitality research and measurement systems for many of our client partners across a wide array of sponsorships, from Olympics programs (for Visa and Xerox), to general sports sponsors (with clients such as The Hartford, Chevron, and Macy’s).  The hospitality measurement platform is something I started at SportsMark shortly after joining the company three years ago, and is based upon my experience working with client sponsorship portfolios and assessing their strategic value for the company. 

Hospitality measurement is unique, in that it is truly possible to draw a direct correlation between the impressions that the event had on a particular hosted customer, and how that customer does business with the host brand in the near and long term. This can be measured in terms of both business volume and more positive predisposition or relationship toward or with the brand.

Essentially, we apply the evaluative thinking and analytical rigor to the hospitality program in isolation, so our clients can get a better sense of how their hospitality initiatives are affecting their brand metrics and overall business volume.  Ultimately, we work with the client marketing team, or their internal research group, if appropriate, to help shape the business questions and metrics that would comprise the research survey content.

In terms of research questionnaire methodologies, development, and on-site deployment, SportsMark has established a research partner relationship with MARC Research.  MARC is a sister company that has established itself as a leader in the area of sponsorship and event site research and methodologies.  Together, SportsMark and MARC Research will create the discussion guidelines, recommend research methodologies, oversee the research surveys, including development and on-site or post-event deployment, and develop the post-event research summaries and reports, including implications moving forward.

Our simply stated commitment to our clients is as follows: we want to make your corporate hospitality events more Responsible, Accountable and Measurable, or “RAM” event marketing, for short. This year, we will handle measurement responsibilities and projects for the majority of our client roster, which is a testament to our clients wanting to ensure that their hospitality and event-based sponsorships are delivering against objectives.

With the Beijing Olympics less than six months away, we are already beginning to plan our clients’ hospitality measurement programs for what will be the largest Olympic Games ever. In next month’s “On Top of Your Game”, I will talk about Olympic hospitality program measurement and a proprietary customer invitation management system that SportsMark has developed, which helps our clients more strategically select which of their customers to invite to their key events and why.

We are also really interested in your thoughts - so let us know topics you are interested in, and we will do our best to be insightful, relevant, and valuable.  Send us your topics at solutions@sportsmark.com.

Thanks for reading,

Keith Bruce
CMO