IntroductionInthisissue, Gijsenberg(2014)examinestheworthytopicofwheth-er advertising around major sport events is effective. Based on an im-pressive database and a solid methodology, it shows that both short-term and long-term advertising elasticities decrease before, duringand to a lesser extent, after the event. His research, however, does notinvestigate sponsorship, which we found to influence positively brandattitude (Mazodier & Quester, 2014). Therefore, some may concludethat sponsorship, as a marketing communication approach, appearsmore effective than traditional advertising around major sport events.Indeed, managers and academics are increasingly looking at ways tocompare the impact of communication strategies related to one event(Olson & Thjomoe, 2009). Unfortunately, Gijsenber's research andours differ substantially and cannot be used to draw direct conclusionsabout the most effective event communication strategy.Similarities and differences between Gijsenberg (2014) andMazodier and Quester (2014)First, Gijsenberg focuses on advertising impact on sales while westudytheeffectsofsponsorshiponbrandattitude.Attitudeismoresen-sitivetobrandmessageovertimethansales.Thus,bothadvertisingandsponsorship may improve brand attitude during major sport events.Furthermore, an improvement of brand attitude may increase the ef-fects of other marketing activities. This may explain why long-termown-advertising elasticities do not decrease so much after the eventand why price promotions' effectiveness improves around major sportevents. Second, Gijsenberg's research objective and ours are different.Heismoreinterestedinthemacrolevel,whereaswearemoreinterest-edinthemicro-level.Thisresultedintwoverydifferentmethodologicalchoices. Gijsenberg uses time-series whereas we use a Latent GrowthModeling (LGM). Both methods have specific advantages. Times-seriesallow data from different sources about 206 brands to be analyzed,enhancing the generalizability of Gijsenberg's results. LGM can empiri-cally examine inter-individual differences in intra-individual changes(Steenkamp & Baumgartner, 2000), which allowed us to investigatethe role of incongruence resolution in sponsorship effects. Finally,Gijsenberg's data is limited to consumer packaged goods whereas westudied one durable product category and a single service provider.Nevertheless,ourfindingssupportpartiallyGijsenberg'sstandpoint.He suggests that “greater increases in advertising spending resulting insignificantgrowthinshareofvoicearound,focused,singlesport-eventsare a successful strategy to overcome” the general negative advertisingeffectiveness around major sport events. The positive impact of Sony'ssponsorship of the FIFA world cup is consistent with these resultssince Sony increased substantially its sponsorship-linked advertisingspending compared to its competitors during the 2010 FIFA world cupin France, where the data was collected. Moreover, brand attitude alsoincreased for EDF, which launched a massive sponsorship activationcampaign in the United Kingdom while its competitors did not under-takeanyspecificadvertisingduringitssponsorshipofthe2012SummerOlympics. According to Gijsenberg, brands increasing their share ofvoicearoundmulti-sportseventalsodobetterinthelongrun.However,their own-advertising elasticities are still lower than normal. But againthe effect of advertising on sales is hard to compare with the effect ofsponsorship on brand attitude.Avenues for further research in sport event communicationTo sum up, Gijsenberg and our findings are not contradictory butcomplementary. In order to improve the understanding of event com-munication efficacy, we suggest several avenues for further research,based on a combination of Gijsenberg's findings and ours:- Gijsenberg's database does not allow comparing advertising effectswith sponsorship since there are too few sponsors in the consumerpackaged goods categories used by Gijsenberg. Both strategies en-able companies to benefit from an event's massive audience. Aca-demics and managers underlined the lack of research assessing thereturn of event communication alternatives. Sponsorship has be-come one major communication strategy to build brand equitywith global sponsorship expenditure valued at more than US$50 billion in 2013. Moreover, the mechanisms of advertising and