you actually read what he said. That wasn’t the case – he said women deserve to be noticed. It’s tricky but at the same time we don't want something like Affirmative Action for women. It begs the question of are people here based on merit or just because of their gender.
BS: I think it’s a bad idea because as Danielle said, it’s an act of tokenism. 37% of F1 Audience is likely to be female and this will alienate them. It would say: “Oh, look you are so special and disabled, you have to have your own race”. It really stuck in my throat because of that.
MA: I couldn't agree with you more, Bridget. I think car racing is one of the sports where men and women could compete on equal terms and I see this idea of a female-only series is so pointless. This is about horsepower and skill not about muscle-mass. This is the area where we should be competing on a like-for-like basis.
BS: Susie Wolff is exponentially stronger than the average woman. She's been training for it. Once she puts her helmet on, she is a racer. It’s not like she wears a pink triangle to denote that she’s female and let other drivers avoid her. They engaged with her when she was racing in DTM.
CJ: Sometimes Ecclestone says these things to provoke. So all your comments are totally correct - it would be a circus to do it (female-only series).
MA: On the general point of Women in Motorsport, as someone who has worked in high value engineering at Williams and is building hubs around this, we need more women to be driven towards engineering and to feel attracted to engineering careers. Role models like Claire or Kirsty are great but they are few and far in between. With the cost of CFD etc., we need more women to get into these roles.
DC: (As an aside) on the subject of “Grid Girls”, I'll speak about my experience because in the last six race events that I've been to, I haven’t been as a spectator - I've been working either as media or to support my own company which sells hospitality. What I find is that especially in MotoGP, it is quite alienating for me because the majority of women in the paddock are grid girls - there are a few PR and Hospitality girls but in general there aren't many professional women walking around by themselves. So I find that I have to explain myself and what exactly what I'm doing here and the worst part is, if I'm talking to a guy either a business contact or just making a friend in the paddock, if we are introduced to someone else, I'm automatically regarded as a girlfriend. It’s never that I’m there on merit or because I have something to do or that I'm interested or knowledgeable about motorsport.
So this is very frustrating and I do feel a little bit disheartened when I'm working and 30 incredibly hot Red Bull girls start walking in skimpy outfits, and my presence is disregarded. That makes you think; “well, there is the role of females in this race!” it is kind of odd.
And I do find that I have to work a little bit harder which isn't a bad thing, but just to make sure that people know that I'm there for a legitimate purpose and I wanted to be. Not just because someone said “she looks like this, so let’s install her there”.
Q4) In your experience, what is the best measure of Return on Investment (ROI) in motorsport?
MA: There’s a long way to go. There are a lot of agencies that count sponsorship logos, exposure etc. but right now what people are looking for is how best to apply the benefits to your business and make sure that it’s done in an acceptable way around the world and that is a tough thing to do.
CJ: When you talk to sponsors as well, there is a lot of “quackery” from various agencies measuring this and that. The basic fact is that the people involved in marketing themselves aren’t satisfied about how things are. The most upfront answer I ever got was from Jordy Cobelens, the CEO of TW Steel who basically said he just looks at turnover.
If turnover increases because of the sponsorship then it’s a good thing. But that’s a simplistic vision of it. There are so many different indicators you can use. Equivalent Media Value (EMV) and Social Media Impressions are probably the two that are used the most. I think it’s more about looking at the the use of the sponsorship as well – that is the most crucial thing but I've learned speaking to these people is that they want to be connected to the right people and in terms of Formula 1 as opposed to other sports platforms.
MA: On Business-to-Business aspect of F1 and motorsport in general – it’s a huge reason for doing deals. When I was at Williams, we were back of the grid and we positioned ourselves as the Business to Business Team. We went out and found a deal for Philips in the 1st year of the Philips sponsorship, they sold 60million euros of TV to Hilton hotels (McLaren sponsor). MTC did some work on this – we asked how many CMOs would say what would happen if they reduced their marketing budget – less than 10% knew what would happen if you reduce your marketing budget. They are in a very tough world and it is really difficult to do. I think there are certain things that you can do as Chris was saying but that’s not even scratching the surface of the corporate accountability.
DR: Most of my experience has been with this working with sponsors. I've done some consulting projects with them it's interesting to hear both Chris and Mark’s views because I worked with the old Lotus CEO Patrick Louis and he kind of said the same thing in terms of they have a B2C focus but the big huge part of their focus is B2B because they always looked at connecting their own sponsors.
(Which is why these 3 days of a Formula 1 weekend and having the paddock club access was perfect for them.)
You are going to throw multiple ideas and a lot of people together and to see what works and that's how to build relationships. On the B2C side from what my experience, whenever a sponsor goes into Motorsports, a lot of them don't have a clear idea what they want to do. They get in mainly because someone to President is the head of a brand who loves F1 or and I want to sponsor “Team XYZ”. they don't go in with clear KPI's of what they want or what they want their investment to achieve and how they're going to calculate that ROI and what are the areas they want to spend in to get that benefits so a lot of problems occur when brands go in and say we want to be in Formula One but we don't know what we want to get out of it. The brands that to do with well and are able to eke out that value from their sponsorship are the ones that go in with clear goals and are able to understand how they do it going to measure them.
MA: Maybe that's true of small family owned businesses but of the 200 businesses that make up the paddock and contribute about 7% of the global GDP, they simply can’t go spending shareholders money without clear rationale.
PC: There is a big distinction to be made between F1 and the rest of motorsports. F1 has its own rules, values etc. but there is a paper from Jensen and Cobbs, 2014 who has developed a model on Return on Investment in Formula 1 – it goes through the mathematics, financing etc. but at the end it says most of the F1 sponsors spend more money than what they have made out of the sponsorship.
What I always say to prospective sponsors is the key word “NETWORKING”. I promise you, you're going to have a stage and have 3 days of undivided attention for your peers or from potential client or supplier and in an emotional environment you are going to be able to talk about business and in the end this was for me the main reasons why people should get into motorsport.
DC: For me quantity is important but also it depends on the value of what I'm selling so it's not a tangible object. It is an experience that I'm selling. I’ve noticed that more people are interested in top of the line items – things that are priced similarly to paddock club in the $4000+ range or just General Admission; there's been a drop off in the middle at least at the Circuit of the Americas for me personally. That's something very interesting and I think it's just difficult to measure ROI on a passion experience which is why you see a lot of people do experiential marketing which is great but you can't always measure every return on people's experiences. In fact, it is something I'm interested in studying a lot more because I’ve been watching it for a while now and clearly there are several businesses set up for the purposes of measuring ROI in these sports so it's very interesting for me.
CJ: There is some really interesting stuff particular to F1 that comes out Repucom and Nigel Geach. One of the interesting things we talked about when I launched Chicane, we talked about attitudes toward the brand. It is fairly likely that in a B2C situation that a F1 fan is more likely to buy a F1 sponsors’ brand than a non-sponsor but more importantly it doesn't happen in other sports. There is an interesting company called YOTA that has a lot of interesting technology but no-one knows about them. Formula 1 is their way of getting everyone to see that they are global, not just Russian. So although it may not lead to more sales, it does a lot to change attitudes and awareness towards their brand.
Qualcomm is another really good case study because they are involved in two series (FormulaE and now Formula1). Why did they feel the need to get involved in F1? Principally because they wanted to activate in key markets and they wanted to globalise what they do so as to not stay too niche.