How Continental AG tracked the impact of Tour de France sponsorship using YouGov BrandIndex
Business challenge
To determine return on investment of Tour de France sponsorship.
Solution
YouGov BrandIndex was used to deliver daily updates on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and to monitor brand performance across sector, audience, and historical benchmarks.
Business outcomes
Successful tracking of KPIs and a positive increase in awareness for their target audience identified, resulting in sponsorship renewal for another three years.
Business challenge
Continental AG (CAG) is a German multinational manufacturer and supplier of automotive parts. In 2019, CAG became one of the five main partners of the Tour de France (TdF), the world-famous famous cycling event. CAG was looking to capitalize on the TdF’s global TV broadcast network and audience to sustain brand awareness, visibility, image, and consideration across global markets – particularly in France, where a competitor was viewed as the leading brand in the market.
Additionally, CAG wanted to increase brand awareness and purchase consideration amongst their core target consumer audience of male drivers
Solution
Using YouGovBrandIndex – an industry-leading daily brand tracking tool that measures public perception of brands across 16 key metrics – CAG was able to constantly monitor their brand KPIs and receive daily updates on brand performance changes.
CAG was also able to specifically measure the impact of their advertising amongst their selected target audience during the TdF event and how this compared to other demographic segments. The continuous tracking data from YouGov BrandIndex allowed CAG to compare their own performance with that of their main competitors in the French market with unrivalled granularity.
Combining fresh data with over a decade of historical intelligence using YouGov BrandIndex, CAG had the means to obtain a clear and accurate vision of how their sponsorship investment delivered against business targets, confidently assessing the exact impact and return it had delivered on increasing brand awareness.
Business outcomes
CAG could see exactly how key brand metrics had progressed over their three years as a main TdF sponsor using YouGov BrandIndex’s depth of data.
While the first two years of their sponsorship proved to be helpful in building strong brand awareness among both their target male audiences and the national population, CAG’s sponsorship of the 2021 TdF was identified as a key factor in improving their overall brand image: by the end of the event, YouGov BrandIndex showed that CAG had achieved a record-breaking increase of 20 points in the brand Impression metric – a measurement of an audience’s sentiment towards a brand - among their target male audience.
Furthermore, the ability to continuously monitor their competitors led CAG to discover that their overall brand awareness had risen throughout the 2021 TdF event to become closer to that of its largest competitor.
Client testimonial
"Through both its collection of new data and its historical detail, YouGov BrandIndex has enabled us to actively track our brand KPIs and confirm our strategic choices in real time, especially with sponsoring the Tour de France. In addition, the Client Service team provides us with pro-active support needed to enable a meaningful interpretation of the data as we require it."
- Christophe Bellier, Data Analytics & Strategic Planning France