Abstract
D.Comm.
A sponsorship is seen as the marketing communication activity whereby an IOrganization contractually makes a financial or material investment to an individual, activity or broadcast in order to achieve pre-determined objectives for the organization amongst the members of the organization's target market.
Sponsorship of events, sport and broadcasts has increased in prominence in the past ten years, largely due to the increasing amounts of money which are being invested in this aspect of marketing communication. The growth in sponsorship investment reflects growth of between 25%-30% per annum, which is larger than that found in other marketing disciplines., Approximately the same amount of money is spent on radio advertising in this country annually as invested in sponsorships, indicating the relative importance and widespread use of sponsorship by organizations in South Africa.
Various sponsorship objectives have been identified in the literature such as corporate objectives, product obje~tives, sales objectives as well as the objectives of media exposure, publicity and communication:
A sponsorship is a form of investment, it needs to be evaluated like any other financial investment. The sponsorship investment must be evaluated in terms of its required performance. The sponsorship is required to yield a commercial benefit for the sponsoring organization, and evaluating the benefit is important to its continued use by the organization. Methods which can be used to evaluate
a sponsorship can be divided into four broad categories, namely advertising-based methods, sales-based methods, sponsorship-specific methods and other methods. Which of the above methods ought to be used to evaluate a sponsorship depends on the objectives which the organization sets for the specific sponsorship. Regular sponsorship evaluation is necessary to ensure that the sponsorship attains the specific objectives.