Sidepodcast

Now Slurpee Gives You Wings

As Carlos pointed out during live commenting earlier today, Red Bull Racing have taken on an almost Indycar-esque look this weekend, as they've deigned to run 7-Eleven branding on the rear end-plates of both of their cars.

In an uncharacteristic move the green and white logos have bumped the more traditional Red Bull Cola logos, leaving the recently introduced beverage with just the bargeboards as a promotional outlet. F1 Wolf also noted that RBR employed a similar marketing ploy during the race in Fuji last year, although you'd have done well to pick them out through the spray.

What is more unusual however, is seeing Toro Rosso carrying commercial sponsorship. They too are running with convenience store logo's on their end-plates, this time in the form of Lawson Station.

Lawson Station are in fact the second largest chain of convenience stores in Japan, behind only 7-Eleven. The two companies are competitors, and Red Bull are clearly playing a marketing blinder in this instance. The weather playing ball thus far is no doubt helping them too.

I do wonder if STR's debut into the grown up world of commercialisation has anything to do with Mateschitz's renewed interest in the sister team, and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the first time Berger's boys have run any such bodywork sponsorship since their inception in '06?

Brand Awareness

Margaux Matrix is a new name to me, but apparently they are a leading “brand exposure agency”. I'm not entirely sure what one does at an agency like that, but if it involves getting paid to watch F1, I'm exceedingly jealous. They have released a report going into details about F1 sponsorship and there are a few snippets I’d like to share with you.

Firstly, we have the top ten list of brands with the most TV exposure through the 2007 season. There’s a total of just under 20 hours available and Vodafone has topped the list with almost 4 of those hours. This is a vast improvement from when they were lost in the midst of a red Ferrari. Considering every team uses them, Bridgestone are a middle of the range 5^th, with just under 2 hours exposure. I find this surprising, but then again, the name is pretty small across the tyre. Maybe they need to put those white marker pens to better use.

Aside from Bridgestone, there are only two names that do not belong to either Ferrari or McLaren, and that’s Red Bull and ING.

This is fascinating to me. If I sit back, close my eyes so I don’t look at any pictures, and try to think of an F1 sponsor – the first names that spring to mind are Lenovo, Kingfisher and Kenwood. Kenwood is always up there, because I think it’s amusing how small their name is on the car.

This may just be me, but names like Vodafone-McLaren-Mercedes are so ingrained in my brain, that I actually forget Vodafone are anything but part of the team’s name. I have a Vodafone mobile, but I don’t associate that with those cars I read about every day. How’s that for brand awareness?

The report also looks at which part of the car is the most prominent and gets the most exposure. I was rooting for sidepods, obviously, but it turns out the very top of the tub, right in front of the driver, gets 43% of the TV coverage share. All the other bits hover around the 5% mark.

Again, I can’t understand this. When I’m watching F1 on TV, the majority of time I’m either looking at the very front of the nose (usually to see if there’s a BMW badge, and therefore know it’s not a Williams!), or I’m checking out the rear wing as it comes racing towards me. Those are the two most obvious bits I can think of.

Clearly I’m not watching Formula 1 the way I should be.

You can read more about the report here (pdf link).