What does success look like?

Having been involved in media, sponsorship and marketing for nearly 20 years now, I've come across all sorts of different methodologies for proving return on investment and measuring success of different campaigns and sponsorship programmes. Some hit the nail on the head, but most are fairly wide of the mark.

The reason is normally that objectives haven't been clearly set at the outset (or set at all), and as a result the measurement is often of the wrong criteria as there are no KPI's.

Now I know there's a load of marketing jargon and claptrap here - the message though is simple - if you don't know what success looks like, how do you know if you've achieved it?

In cycling particularly, I do wonder how sponsors are defining success. I still find it unbelievable that HTC had to pull out of the sport because they couldn't make their sponsorship work. But then what were they hoping to achieve? They certainly got a lot of 'brand' and 'logo' exposure - but did cycling fans actually know what HTC was? This was probably a case of setting the wrong success measures - and as most of us know, sponsorship is no longer all to do with logo exposure. If you want to change consumer behaviour in the modern day, just showing someone a logo a hundred times isn't going to make any difference. 

So back to measurement - this would be my blueprint. Sponsorship objectives must be allied to the overall marketing objectives, so for example in this case success will take the form of shifting consumers perception of the brand, and their likelihood to purchase. Other parts of the marketing programme will ensure that we turn these shifts into sales. But for me, the crucial element is that through the research we undertake we will be able to compare attitude shifts between audiences - so for example between hardcore cycling fans, Mamils and the general population. That way we can see if our specific cycling activity is resonating, and with which audiences.

It certainly isn't rocket science - in fact, it's incredibly simple. Know what it is you want your sponsorship to achieve, ensure that it's going to make a difference to the bottom line and then make sure you're measuring it (so put some budget into research).