Sponsorship’s value lies in mix

Referring to your article on measuring sponsorship impact on brands (“Octagon launches tool to measure sponsorship”, MW November 18), Alasdair Ritchie and Ian Thompson have every right to be proud of developing a system that assesses the efficiency of sponsorship investment. It will be welcomed by investors.

Yet sponsorship, especially sports sponsorship, can achieve very little in isolation. Its main value resides in leveraging and being leveraged through other elements of the communications mix.

In the light of this, the “isolated” measurement of sponsorship’s impact falls short. The ideal measurement systems would assess the impact of sponsorship on the brand across all marketing elements (above and below the line).

This is not to say that Octagon will not rise to the challenge and take their model a step further.

Alexandra Uhlmann

Programme director

Ashridge

Hertfordshire