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Growing personalities, brands, and the sport...
by Stefan Bartholomaeus
pic: Scott Yorston/ssMEDIA/321Ignition
Considering the current economic situation, it comes as no surprise to hear race teams talking about how difficult it is to find sponsorship dollars right now. Sourcing the funds to go racing is hard enough at the best of times, and in a world where advertising is down significantly across the board, it’s nigh on impossible.
In these times of reduced spending, everyone looking for money has to work harder for it. Sports teams in particular have to get more creative when developing their programmes, in order to make sure the dollars that are available are spent with them.
The growth of V8 Supercar racing over the past ten years has been well documented, with the category now enjoying a TV package and event portfolio few would have thought possible a decade ago. Clearly, the current financial slowdown will be a big test for the sport, as its growth has taken it to the very edge of the specialist/main stream sporting divide.
Like any proposition, V8 Supercar sponsorships have their own strengths and weaknesses in the marketplace. For example, the nationwide exposure the category can provide sets it clearly above any of the football codes, whilst the corporate experience that some of the rural tracks offer is considerably below that of a lavish box atop the MCG grandstands.
The ‘white collar’ corporate sector has been a clear focus of VESA over the last ten years, and will no doubt continue to be so in the future. No matter what the sponsor, there’s no such thing as simply exchanging money for a sticker on the car anymore. And long gone too are the days of the effective blank cheques from the cigarette and oil companies...
Not surprisingly, as the sport has made inroads towards the main stream sports market, the sponsors have become more ‘main stream’ too. The last three years have seen heavy investment by a number of consumer brands such as Vodafone, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, and now Bundaberg Rum.
Looking at the way the sponsors choose to leverage their involvement in the marketplace is a clear indicator of what attracts them to the sport.
Take Vodafone for example. In-store displays include studio shots of 888 race cars, as well as related ‘race’ imagery such as tyres and chequered flags. The stills of Craig Lowndes that are used are those with his helmet on, seemingly portraying him as ‘a race car driver’ rather than as ‘Craig Lowndes’.
Similarly, Jim Beam promotions, such as the ‘special edition’ replica car tins, have seemingly been aimed at making a connection between the race cars and their product, without the driver being used as what marketers call a ‘touch point’.
Even when Fujitsu have used Jason Bright for television commercials, they appear to be more comfortable having an ex-cricketer do most of the talking, and the ‘driver’ playing a secondary role.
Contrasting this with how motorsport sponsorships are leveraged in the American market is quite astounding. The US is, not surprisingly, considered as the world wide leaders in sports marketing, and the growth of NASCAR has seen the star drivers become brand ambassadors for a whole range of products. You can barely turn the TV on over there without having Jeff Gordon trying to sell you a Pepsi, Dale Earnhardt Jnr trying to sell you a pair of jeans, or some ‘Ossie’ trying to sell you a box of snack cakes...
In its day, IndyCar was much the same, with the likes of Gil de Ferran, Alex Zanardi, and Michael Andretti telling you all about FedEx, Target, and K-Mart respectively.
So why isn’t this happening in V8 Supercar land? Are the sponsors making a big mistake by ignoring the drivers?
Of course they’re not. The reality is, our drivers simply don’t have enough ‘brand’ behind them to be attractive assets to sponsors in their own right.
Intrinsically, drivers are at a disadvantage to other sports stars because they play their sport cocooned inside a car and helmet. Their every expression and emotion in the heat of battle can’t be broadcast to the world in the way it can for the bat and ball sports.
On the other hand, race car drivers have a certain heroic persona attached to them that’s second to none, are accessible to fans, and have a much cleaner reputation for off-track conduct than the football codes. There are some major boxes ticked for sponsors right there...
It’s unreasonable however to expect a sponsor to be willing to spend their time and money building a ‘brand’ for a driver from scratch. It appears to be up to VESA to assist in building each driver as a marketable commodity. The sport has grown largely on the back of the Ford vs Holden rivalry, and with the manufacturers scaling back, now really is the time to increase the profiles of the drivers. TV is the obvious medium for this, and whilst race days are for showing races, ancillary programs like ‘V8Xtra’ need to be better utilised.
The current format of sitting drivers down in a team workshop, and proceeding to ask them obvious questions, to which every driver gives the same and obvious answer, doesn’t work. Of course ‘the boys’ are working hard, and you’re trying to find more car speed for the following races... we know that already.
They need to show these guys away from their jobs, when they’re relaxing and having a good time. That’s when you’ll see their personalties, and that’s when the public will be able to ‘connect’ with them on a stronger level.
How about a story with James Courtney and Steven Johnson mucking around on their jet skis? Or perhaps a laugh-filled X-Box challenge between Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes? If you want to go even further, why not conduct an interview with Mark Winterbottom, Steven Richards, Phil Keed, and Dan Khroen (their respective engineers) over a friendly game of cards? One could give a million examples, but you get the idea...
In mid-2007, VESA tried to encourage the drivers to show more ‘personality’ by relaxing the rules about commenting on other drivers in interviews. Whilst it was a commendable step, all it really did was make aggrieved drivers sound like petty children. Driver Y saying that ‘driver X couldn’t drive out of sight in a dark night’ might be more interesting than the usual politically correct response, but it isn’t really connecting the drivers to the fans any better.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see what VESA does to address this issue during the upcoming season. Too often we talk about what the sport can do to contain costs and ignore the opportunities to expand revenue. Top drivers are expensive commodities for teams, and we need to make sure they’re proving their value off track, as well as on it.
- Stefan Bartholomaeus
© 321 IGNITION Pty Ltd 2009
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