Justifying sponsorship returns: How media equivalency undervalues your sponsorship and exploring alternative measurement approaches

Show me the money! The pressure on Marketing Directors to justify sponsorship investments is unrelenting. Summoned to the boardroom, clinging to the familiar crutch of media value equivalency (MVE) calculations, hoping to prove the worth of multimillion-dollar endeavours. Yet, beneath the surface of these seemingly concrete figures lies a gaping chasm of inadequacy.

MVE, the go-to metric for measuring sponsorship, offers a simplistic view of success: Did we get a good price? But the truth is far more complex. MVE fails to capture the intangible yet invaluable shifts in brand perception and consumer behaviour that truly drive revenue growth. As Marketing Directors are forced to defend their sponsorship decisions, they must continue to grapple with the fundamental question posed by Finance Directors that MVE fails to answer: How does this sponsorship actually generate revenue for the company?