Duckfoot Research into Sponsorhips (Secondary Research)

Unkown, (2006) (http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/show/nav.1036) accessed on 25th January 2010.



They have said that TV sponsorship has exceeded over the last couple of years therefore the market is now worth over £190m.

Thinkbox’s innovative research with Duckfoot sought to dig below the surface of sponsorship to deconstruct how and why it works and how it differs from spot advertising.

The Methodology:

They have sued qualitative and quantitative research in order to find out why TV sponsorships are worthwhile.

They put a quantitative survey online, which turned out to have 1,600 respondents’ attitudes to a number of brands and live sponsorships, focusing in particular on their attitudes to brands, their awareness, how the sponsorships related to the advertisers and the programmes.

They also conducted the research, into comparing how much do programmes and sponsors have in common.

A wide range of sponsoring brands and categories were included in the study including Domino’s and The Simpsons, Toyotal Aygo and T4, Loose Women and Maltesers, Wrigleys and Hollyoaks, Bombadier English Bitter and Al Murray’s Happy Hour, Pedigree and Dog Rescue, and Comparethemarket.com and Channel 4 Drama.

They also conducted research about the brain, and how that works while you are watching a sponsor on TV.

‘The technique was featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘Blink’ and helps reveal the strength of automatic association we have between concepts that we are unable to reveal on a conscious, rational level. In this case, it pitched competing brands against one another to assess how they performed against several key measures’.

This was a great way to asses how sponsorships have been better attracted by their audience through the working of the mind.

Their Results



• The qualitative factors are that sponsorships are seen a break in-between programmes, which allows their audience to see the first to seconds of the advert then take a break. So mentally the sponsor has still stayed in their mind.

• Their results have shown that sponsorships can make their brand famous therefore higher profits.

• They have said that programmes can have an effect on the sponsor. For example, Simpsons on Sky1 is associated with dominos, however of channel 4 people did not feel there was a connection with pizza and therefore channel 4 viewers accosted the cartoon programme with donuts.


Overall their in-depth research into how the mind works and how that can have an effect on how people view and take in information has help us think of ways we can engage our audiences into our sponsorship.