TV sponsorship helps build brand affinity
Updated November 2019.
New evidence suggests that targeting people via their favourite TV shows has a positive and lasting impact on building brand affinity, proving its effectiveness as an advertising medium.
The study found that the personality fit between a viewer of a sponsored TV show and the sponsoring brand is 53% higher than the fit between the sponsoring brand and a non-viewer.
Viewers have strong affinities with their favourite TV shows and sponsoring brands borrow from the show’s personality, encouraging viewers to feel that the sponsoring brand is more for them.
It also increases brand awareness, particularly for brands that are lesser known, where both their brand and advertising awareness scores were substantially higher for viewers of the TV shows they sponsored. (Brand awareness was 17.2% points higher than for non-viewers and 1.1% points higher for well-known brands.)
TV sponsorships are perceived to be costly and therefore signify success, amplifying the brand stature. Viewers of a sponsored TV show are significantly more likely to believe the sponsoring brand is popular than non-viewers (78% vs.68%)
Viewers were twice as fast as non-viewers to agree they would recommend the sponsoring brand.
When the sponsorship creative was a good fit with the TV show, key brand health metrics for viewers of the sponsored show were 5% points higher than for non-viewers. When the fit was less obvious they were 2.4% points higher.
In the long term metrics were maintained; in the six months following the end of a TV sponsorship, whilst ad awareness fell, brand health metrics fell at a far slower rate.
On average, looking at 16 completed sponsorships one month after they ended, the key brand health measures were unchanged. Six months after the sponsorships had ended they had reduced by 19%, meaning that 81% of the advantage gained with viewers of the sponsored TV show was still active.
