Formula 1 does a decent job selling itself around the world. The racing is good, even if the tickets are expensive and the sport does provide a really unique platform for global advertisers. Having said that, Formula 1 could do better than does in terms of promotion because there is, in reality, no central marketing at all. The sport is dominated by an engineering mentality and promotion is largely left to sponsors and race promoters. This works very nicely for the Formula One group’s bottom line and no-one seems to care enough about it to make much noise about changing that.
As a result the sport is often accused of not being very touchy-feely and human and it does not bear easy comparison with the way things are done elsewhere, where the philosophy is to be nice to the public and give them the best possible experience. One way that this can be done is with human interest stories, what the F1 types called “lifestyle”, which is designed to show the world the kind of life that the stars of F1 lead. Twitter obviously helps in this respect, if the drivers can be bothered to do it. Thus I do not need to tell you that Jenson Button is doing lots of cycling around Monaco at the moment; that Lewis Hamilton is training in the mountains; and that Fernando Alonso has been karting.
Over in the United States they do things differently. Drivers are much happier to engage, indeed they see it as part of their job.
They never seem to be short of a story line. And this year they have an even better story to tell as all the usual suspects are being taken on fulltime by cute (but fiery) girl-next-door Danica Patrick. This should help the viewing figures considerably. As fate would have it, Danica has now ramped up interest by announcing that she is dating one of her rival racers: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. The pair have been racing in the Nationwide Series for the last couple of years and are now both moving up into the Sprint Cup and will be in competition for the Rookie of the Year title. He is driving for Roush Racing and she is with Stewart Haas Racing, so both are in good cars.
The pair decided to go public with the information to end speculation, but waited until the end of the NASCAR Media Tour last week, to make sure that the focus was on the sport, rather than on the new couple!
I do remember, years ago, reporting on a pair of racing drivers who were (at that time) a couple off the track. I shall refrain from naming names because the relationship is long dead, but it added a lot to the fun, notably when the pair went side-by-side down the straight at Jeramy and neither one would be the first to brake at the corner ahead. The result was that both went off into the catch-fencing!
I think sadly Lewis became one great big human interest story and his driving went off the rails in 2011.
But it is odd that sports with a central PR seem to build ‘characters’ better – which might help F1 in some of the regions that don’t have a history with motor racing.
Over here, we are sick to death about Danica stories. When I saw the “announcement” on SPEED’s website, I almost thought I’d mistakenly logged onto the PEOPLE magazine site. Things got pretty crude in the comments section, as you can imagine. Most race fans are done with Danica. The TV doesn’t help. One example was a year ago, when she crashed into the wall at Daytona durning one of the qualifying races. The onboard camera showed her (correctly) taking her hands off the wheel just before impact. When Jimmy Johnson crashed during the Daytona 500, the onboard footage showed him doing the same thing. Now Darrell Waltrip, one of the commentators, should know better; I almost choked when he attributed Jimmy’s quick thinking to lessons he had learned from Danica (of course the director then cut to Danica’s crash again). This is something they teach in driver’s school. Johnson, a five time champion, really has nothing to learn from Danica, unless it’s how to look good in a swimsuit. I’m not saying she isn’t a racer, but she gets way too much attention given the mediocre achievements she’s accomplished since her one win in IndyCar. Human interest is one thing, but I think she’s the wrong example about how the U.S. media does it right.
I was not talking about the US media. I was talking about the sport as a whole and from where I am sitting Danica still seems to be pretty popular.
Her popularity remains in tact with the American public and especially the casual observer; diehard race fans never warmed to her, both because of her attitude and the hype she embraced. And perhaps because of her lack of tangible, sustained success in view of the resources she had compared to others.
The fact that she is discussed here means that US media has it right. The fact is Danica would be faster than anybody reading this blog ! Danica is
racing, you’re not ! Deal with it!
What are you on?
Quite irrelevant considering Danica is not racing any of us.
Jeramy circuit ? Do you mean Jarama ?
Or Mathy Culler at Jeramy
I can only speak for myself but all I want to see is good close racing, I could not care one bit who is shagging who or who goes to what after party, F1 is not X Factor and I don’t want to see it dumbed down with OK Magazine style tittle tattle.
Marketing F1 so that it appears in gossip columns would attract the wrong type of people to the sport, the type who’s empty lives revolve around TOWIE and Big Brother, F1 doesn’t need that type so no cheap gimmicks please, just good close racing
Unfortunately the more TOWIE and Big Brother watchers you get involved may actually help the sport survive.
I’d like to talk F1 at work but only a few guys about twice my age are interested. Briefly during the BBC coverage years I got people my own age and younger asking about it and people chatting about whether button or Hamilton was doing well. They might not be ardent fans but sadly if the sport is watched only by hardcore fans over 45 it will eventually die. At least in Europe.
I suppose it doesn’t have to be totally dumbed down to succeed though. It’s more an avenue for people who might not care less about tyre compounds to get into the ‘world’ of Motorsport. Much like the Olympics had human interest stories that helped promote minority sports which people are still following months later.
Much like hardcore fans of a rising band, you can complain about later-fair-weather fans or accept some people might just like a few songs and it keeps your band making music and not at the job centre…
Couldn’t agree with you more, also as to Lewis, above. Most of my friends are married with young children, and so the telly is as much as anything mental bubblegum, light distraction, and I find myself cursing the fact that Sky somehow bundle every “entertainment” channel imaginable if you want US ESPN. (adding Eurosport for my mother’s love of tennis added another unwanted 50 channels of I just don’t dare to look what they are) So the uphill battle is trying to engage young families with a sport that requires attention span, right slap bang prime family time, and not a little background understanding, versus the inevitable Nickleodeon or whatever the youngsters would prefer. Busy families just don’t have three solid hours when they’ve little ones to tend to. Possibly the only way daddy can get to watch the races is if he becomes a lifetime dedicated journalist, and I’ll not say what I think of long travels and my relationships. (In theory I think I can use the parental controls to remove the offending “entertainment” channels from the menu, but I just see that ending up with tears, or me getting RSI and screaming “yes, I want to delete that one too!”.) Now I think the only way to actually market F1 to the kiddies is if you target single mums: plenty of race fans out there who by definition are well to do and single
I presume that the slightly blurry line between “human interest” and “gossip”, as some of your other commenters point out, might be why techie types of F1 have avoided that sort of marketing.
Your final paragraph does remind me that I have wondered in the past if drivers in the past (or present) have been in same-gender relationships, and whether it might get covered up like in so many other sports. Of course, I told myself off for being so gossipy, but now you mention it, is this a marketing opportunity waiting to happen? So much interest in F1 recently has been opened up by the nationality and race of drivers, but that use of diversity as marketing hasn’t continued into gender and orientation.
Highly unlikely. It would be a career ending announcement. Motor sports are the definition of masculinity and it’s even still resistant to female drivers, homosexuality is a no go area. A seismic change in attitudes would have to happen and how often does that happen? There have been rumours about gay drivers before, Senna even.
Their ‘value’ is in attracting a virtual host of people who’re more into ‘personalities’ than the underlying sport.
As a reply by someone else on another popular F1-Blog put it so aptly recently, readers’ comments (thus their focus and interests) tend to descend into a game of ‘fan-boy insult tennis’. The moderators of that blog acknowledge the problem and admit they are not able (do not wish?) to deal with it.
Bland media churn is symptomatic of this digital age but I guess the global advertisers welcome it and thus it must be ‘good’ for the sport.
We have often seen it said (mainly by me) that it’s about time Bernie put his hand in his pocket and spent some money on corporate F1 advertising. Indeed the FIA might do the same, but I suspect most of their recently increased budget goes on big dinners, it is certainly not spent in promoting the FIA to it’s good works in any “above the line” way.
I am pretty sure that I remember (ok my memory is a bit dodgy nowadays) from my days of abject poverty, ads on tv for the forthcoming British GP, this must be twenty to thirty years ago.
It would be nice to see Todt on tv in the news being interviewed, justifying why the FIA felt it ok to race in Bahrain, (or anything!) but he remains invisible. His partner has obviously made her influence felt, as he is now irredeemably “hidden”. (Oh Max whom we loved to hate, please come back, throw open the shutters, wake up some of the members with a sharp stick and bring a little colour and life back to the FIA and let us hate you on tv again!)
I keep thinking of cheap ways to get F1 tons of attention. Launch the cars at schools. Bung The Prince’s Trust a whack of wedge and run a comp for the aspiring entrepreneurial youngsters to get a internship. Put Bernie on a celebrity The Apprentice . . . okay last one unlikely because it would be simply too much fun for us, so we shall be denied. But the one thing I keep screaming, or rather muttering under my breath is “fer chriss’ sakes *lighten up*, F1!” Would James Hunt have been cool if he’s grown up as Lewis did?
And to apportion blame where it is fairly due, when you or I go off on our grumpy old git rants about F1, surely that doesn’t exactly make the whole thing cooler? . . .
Random thing I’d, in Bernie’s shoes, throw my money at: buying out a toy manufacturer, so little boys could have inexpensive high quality F1 replica cars to play with. Those scale models the likes of Amalgam produce, for considerable money I could live a fair while on, disgust me, and I imagine I’d be equally unimpressed if I saw up close the mentality of their customers.
Oh, and I’d buy out whoever owns what’s left of the Top Trumps franchise, whilst at it. / Nostalgia, sorry.
People are way more interesting than cars. Too often, I am a hardcore cynic. But the Shane Hmiel story, if anyone is familiar with it, erases all of my negativity. Here is an update.
Hmiel Returns Behind the Wheel
http://www.motorracingnetwork.com/Race-Series/NASCAR-Sprint-Cup/News/Articles/2013/01/Hmiel-Returns-Behind-the-Wheel.aspx
(Here is more, from 2011:
http://nascar.speedtv.com/article/nns-shane-hmiel-says-hes-lucky-to-be-alive-hopes-to-walk-again/
There is also a great interview with him on the SpeedTV program NASCAR Race Hub, but I didn’t look too hard for a link.)
I just got about to reading those articles. Hmiel’s story I think would be of interest and inspiration to anyone. But allowing it is not a affordance of sensitivity to Robert himself, why is F1 not (as far as I can see, if they are, it feels to me begrudging, or only the most dedicated who have told the stories) celebrating Kubica’s near miraculous recovery? By comparison it makes F1 seem remote, as if objecting “but he didn’t make the grade [for us to continue to pay attention]“, when obviously he not only made the grade, but I imagine the medical science that F1 may legitimately claim to have promoted concerning racing injuries of all kinds may have contributed to his recovery. Oh, there are updates and occasional pieces, and I think any F1 fan considers the man notable. But even then, I sense there’s a kind of official sniffiness, “But he was only injured because he was stupid enough to not stick with us.”, a kind of “told you so” attitude. Not the cultural embrace one might hope respect alone would engender, it’s as if there is a consensus saying with Schadenfreude “but he was not really one of us.” I think I’m aiming at the idea he feels disowned. And, true, many fierce competitions and competitors cannot afford to look back, but to do so, just once in a while, to show an affection, would be a vitally human signal of appreciation. Maybe I am a bit too sensitive this morning, or maybe I was to partisan to RK’s rise – though I was not a fan, he was exciting, and as spectator I can demand no more. I simply feel he’s of more importance than is reflected. Anyhow, thank you for those links, they’re exactly the story the kind of which gives faith in the strength of will and personality in life.
You’re welcome. Thanks for reading them. It’s a story worth sharing. Shane’s life is about redemption. He has overcome so much. He truly scaled the mountain of his own biology and psychology. And he was on the cusp of doing great things racing on dirt. To possess so much inner peace after all he’s been through is awe inspiring, to me at least.
I can’t disagree with your assessment of F1′s attitude to Kubica. I think that they don’t/can’t see how he might fit into the F1 TV entertainment package. Kubica himself seems pretty resilient. I don’t know that he feels discarded by F1, but I think that he is entitled to feel that way. You are right that the official F1 spotlight is quite efficient at abandoning the stricken.
For sure, the attitude is cultural. But which specific culture to blame? I’m not sure if it’s cold business pragmatism; discomfort with the disabled (though Kubica is only barely so); the military mission delusion/macho frame of mind (no stopping to help those who can’t keep up); or the superiority complex that would label him failed or damaged and, therefore, doesn’t belong in F1? Is it more than sheer pragmatism and unsentimentality? Is there fear there, too, equating sentimentality with weakness?
Is the requirement for the injured that they must come back to the same function as previously? Frank Williams is the only person I can name that was crippled but still managed to return to a place in the narrative of F1. Every other person I can think of gets no time from the sport. F1 is more than a little heartless in this regard.
I think the fact that nobody markets F1 is down to returns. If a driver wants to promote himself and that ups the interest in F1, who profits? Probably Bernie, first and foremost. Money has to be the motive for marketing, and if it’s difficult to see a personal return, what’s the point?
Jo, I think the operative word in your argument is “personal”. When any group who have common interests allow they think too often in sole terms of personal gain, the greater interest suffers. Often, it is not until a shock affecting all occurs, until action is taken, and as we’ve seen, the impetus to carry on as everyone were, is a great leveller of the effects of external shocks. The most naïf student of history would see parallels in nations and their security. I prefer not to singularly concentrate on what is a sad truism of the human condition, but rather to think what might bind more cohesively, even if by artifice, the common goals, and maybe the not so common goals which may be attained by organisation. Despite I have lately a pessimistic streak, I’m a believer in for example the post war western european ideals, and believe they’ve done a great service, dispelled more than the long settling dust of destruction, but also assaulted many a human vice and poverty not only of practicality, but also of charity. These matters are of course, forever arguable. I cannot prove causation between the political movement of reactions to a worldwide war, and maybe at best I can point to the initial determination of those people who were entrusted to lead us away from the horrors we may deal unto each other, and at least from my heart argue that the reaction of those who survived, those I have known who were of maturity at the time, was of lasting benefit, even if only through determination to peddle betterment as a social currency. But maybe the fact that the ideas survive despite corruption and vast cost of political inefficiencies is a signal that the ideas are of intrinsic value, and we need not dissect too much the chain of intent, aspiration, hopes, dreams and consequence. I do hope F1 does not enter this year, as white heat of metal approaches the crucible, but I fear it may be so, that fierce energies are required to change any man, let alone a sporting body of parts as sophisticated and resilient as F1.
The teams and drivers were a lot more approachable several years ago. I remember chatting with Lauda, Andretti and the likes at Long Beach and Brands Hatch for example. Pit crew members were more fully available to press and fans then too. It made ordinary fans feel part of the sport. Now every utterance is super controlled, secrecy is priorty one and the annual selling of drivers seats leads to so much turnover that it is difficult to develop lasting fan bases.
Of course TV rules today and those approachable days are gome but F1 is not tapping into its strengths. Interview the pit crew, show how parts work, explain new parts and build excitement. F1 today is the ultimate “one night stand”. Every venue is love ‘em and leave ‘em”.
I wonder if a part of the problem with loosening up personal access is not a function of the money: drivers are insured for tremendous sums, and insurance actuaries love to counter imagined risk with proscriptions often absurd. I’d not put it past any big insurer to require physical security.