How Virgin Uses Social To Revitalize Formula 1?
Last time I talked about Formula 1 racing teams and their lack of smart social media marketing attempts within their marketing strategies. But we need to show you the bright side as well and show you how Virgin Racing is using digital and social marketing to revitalize its racing team and brand…
We all know that not too many brands do their utmost to activate their sport sponsorships with smart digital and social media marketing strategies and programs. We seem to think that our brand name on a shirt, billboard along the pitch and some airtime accompanied by VIP tickets will do the job?
Well with digital and social media Virgin Racing seams to make serious attempts to revitalize its brand. For the first time a Formula 1 racing team has found the spirit to develop a smart social media marketing strategy that will more effectively engage with fans.
Virgin Racing has just launched their new website, which will be the hub for the brand. It features a magazine section and ways to get involved with the team.
The site will also create a community around the brand and will be integrated to social media sites. Virgin aims to entertain and involve Formula 1 fans as well as more casual viewers and non racing freaks.
The fans will be able to create content for the site and take part in (photography) competitions. Brett Volker, head of brand at Virgin Racing said Formula 1 had fallen behind other sports in engaging with fans effectively. And Brett is very right. An innovation and technology driven sport like Formula 1 racing, must be ahead of other sports, not fall behind.
Virgin activated its Facebook (4 different fan pages?!) and Twitter (7,813 followers now) presence recently (February 2010), in order to encourage participation and teasing of fans with information. The team also launched a YouTube channel (516 subs) which feature exclusive content from the teams and drivers.
Other racing teams like Mercedes GP spoke via its marketing director Bastien Hibon: our team will be using digital more.
It seems clear that the frontier in Formula 1 will be social media in 2010. Unfortunately too many brands and sports teams use social channels without any serious strategy, and just link to broadcasted content, and forget the conversational power of social media.
Also see the Mercedes GP site and the Red Bull Racing site. If you have any great Formula 1 racing strategies, concepts or campaigns, feel free to share them below.
Source: newmediaage
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In such a niche where videos and photos are of such importance. Personally, I think it would be wise to use and abuse from the fans/users of F1 to provide their material in order for example to build up a sort of ‘training lap’ using the videos provided by the users and their comments. I guess that would engage people even more.
I think one of the racing team’s marketing manegers will hear your idea here.. I even happen to know one did
well, this is the age of being stupid (..diesel)
How Virgin Uses Social To Revitalize Formula 1? http://bit.ly/9iYiGY
RT @ViralBlog http://tinyurl.com/yc5qgq5: How Virgin uses social and digital marketing to promote their Formula 1 team and engage with fans
RT @MarcosViladomiu: RT @ViralBlog http://tinyurl.com/yc5qgq5: How Virgin uses social and digital marketing to promote their Formula 1 team and engage with fans
[...] How Virgin Uses Social To Revitalize Formula 1? (viralblog.com) [...]
“Unfortunately too many brands and sports teams use social channels without any serious strategy, and just link to broadcasted content, and forget the conversational power of social media.”
You nailed it with that comment! I am seeing this as well. Brands, teams, organisations, take your pick seem to think they can use the social channels for broadcasting and linking up their Facebook andf Twitter accounts to take a feed from the website is ‘doing social media’. If they see these channels as fan enagagement and relationship opportunities then they will be much better off. Anyone can create an account, integrating it into the business and managing its development is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Good post!
Ed
Thanks Ed!
You are so true: for whatever reason so many brands keep behaving like broadcasters or advertizers: pushing content or sticking banners on social channels.
Next most brands do not use the most powerful options of social media: listen to audiences in order to improve products and services in order to become a better brand.
A social media marketing strategy should start with listening to gain insights, not with running behind twitter, facebook or youtube- and all other new social channels that will be live soon.
But how can we convince brands to take another approach?
Cheers
Igor
It will take time! Plus they need to see how it integrates into the whole organisation and not just be assigned to a junior intern who ‘gets social media’.
There are some case studies coming to the surface which show what can be done. Man City are doing some good stuff, as are Real Madrid (but they obviously have a few quid to play with!). I think the NBA, MLB and some of the athletes in the US (Lance Armstrong and Shaq) are acting on well thought out social strategies which are yielding both increased interaction and commercial value.
We’ll get there…
@Ed
You’re right: strong examples and cases will help eventually.
Having just opened up our sports & sponsoring channel, I will definately take a deeper dive into Man City, Real (nice iPhone app) and some US sports programs that have embraced social in a balanced way.
Enjoyed talking to you!
Cheers
I am the community manager for Force India F1′s social initiatives. I think we do a pretty good job too. We have a social network – http://www.clubforce.gp which we have already started redesigning. The clear focus for Club Force is aggregation of fan views across and integration of real time.
We also have a reasonably well managed Twitter feed which is very interactive. We have live race updates, updates from off the track, and also share fan stories often.Follow us here – http://twitter.com/clubforce
On Facebook we engage in rich conversations with our fans, undertake a lot of feedback and are taking great efforts to make a sticky community there – http://www.facebook.com/forceindiaf1
Apart from that we have a weekly Forcecast for our fans. They are podcasts that include driver interviews (http://bit.ly/OTZgv). Our drivers are also active on ClubForce. They often arrive for live chats and blog atleast once between races.
Our corporate site also offers a wide range of digital material for fans to download. We’ve just redesigned that as well – http://www.forceindiaf1.com
Apart from that we’re working on a programme to create a Fan Ambassador Programme, our online Pit Crew and strengthening merchandising on the site. We also regularly host contests on the sites. Right now we’ve just finished a contest that will send 2 fans to Malaysia.
Hope you can feature us at some point in time as well (maybe post the relaunch of http://clubforce.gp). This blog is pretty fantastic!
[...] – first a look at where F1 teams are falling short in Social Media. This one highlights the strong F1 Social Media efforts by Virgin. F1 is doing a better job as well, with a cool new iPhone [...]
[...] launch came after other Formula 1 teams such as Virgin Racing and Mercedes GP said digital channels, in particular social media, were central to their marketing plans for the [...]
[...] – first a look at where F1 teams are falling short in Social Media. This one highlights the strong F1 Social Media efforts by Virgin. F1 is doing a better job as well, with a cool new iPhone [...]
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