How Barclays evaluates its sponsorships to make better investment decisions

Sam Peña-Taylor

British financial services firm Barclays has built a framework for evaluating sponsorships capable of evolving over time that uses clear inputs to understand each investment’s business impact.

Short-termism is a common disease with multiple causes. In the marketing sphere, says Barclays' Aled Richards, an insight manager, it’s not necessarily of a lack of money so much as the short-term nature of the top marketing role. Among the top 100 top spenders in the US, the average tenure of a CMO is now 43 months according to the executive search firm Spencer Stuart: three and a half years.

This is a problem when put in the context of a piece of work like Barclays long-term sponsorship of the English Premier League, of which it was...

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