Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Turnkey 'team brand study' explained; Wings drop to 8th

While all teams do research, it isn't often used to answer core brand questions -- who do fans think we are, as opposed to what do fans like or dislike -- and it's rarely maintained consistently enough to sort out the ebbs and flows of a good or bad week, month or season. Most often, it's seen as a tool to sell ticket packages or sponsorships.

With that perceived gap in mind, market research firm Turnkey Sports and Entertainment began work 18 months ago on an extensive brand study. In late May and early June, Turnkey polled about 12,000 adult sports fans in the 47 North American markets that are home to a team in the NFL, NBA, NHL or Major League Baseball, surveying at least 200 and as many as 500 fans in each market, depending on the number of teams in each town.

They asked 20 questions relevant to each team's brand: 14 meant to measure popularity and six meant to measure loyalty. They also asked fans to assign a letter grade, A through F, to each team's owners. They blended those results to create the top-line number that they're calling the Turnkey Team Brand Index, which endeavors to rank the strength of each of 122 team brands in its respective market.

Turnkey also set out to identify the attributes of each team, presenting fans with 36 words that could describe a franchise -- professional, family-oriented, passionate, blue-collar, etc. -- and asking them the degree to which each word described each team in their city. Identifying attributes is a cornerstone of traditional branding. Coca-Cola tests 20 attributes with about 4,000 consumers each month.
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The study has its shortcomings. Because Turnkey was surveying in so many markets, its sample size in most was 200 to 300 fans. As a result, the margin of error in most markets ranged from 5.8 percent to 7.1 percent. While Turnkey called that an acceptable range based on general polling practices, it means that teams that are within 10 spots of each other often should be thought of similarly when scores are close.

"This is not a substitute for a full, comprehensive brand study," said Len Perna, president and CEO of Turnkey, who stressed that any team that wanted to explore its brand should study it in greater depth. "But what this does give you is a view of all the brands, each gauged by its strength in its own market, in a way that you can look at them and compare."

Turnkey will continue to research teams' "brand strengths" over the next few months, and will develop an over-the-season profile of what indicators suggest will become the next big thing in sports marketing, "brand management."

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