Formula fun: how McLaren is engaging the next crop of F1 fans

If you know your Ascari from your Andret­ti and your Zand­voort from your Zeltweg, you’re prob­a­bly an avid For­mu­la One fan, but you don’t have to be an afi­ciona­do to enjoy its twists and turns. Arguably, F1 reach­es a wider audi­ence than that of any oth­er sport through the exten­sive glob­al cov­er­age of grand prix week­ends, pop­u­lar TV shows such as Netflix’s Dri­ve to Sur­vive and a whole host of social media cam­paigns and mar­ket­ing part­ner­ships. 

The con­tro­ver­sial Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in Decem­ber 2021, in which Max Ver­stap­pen pipped Sir Lewis Hamil­ton to the driver’s world cham­pi­onship on the final lap of the sea­son, “pulled in a big­ger glob­al audi­ence than the Super Bowl man­aged – and there were 22 grands prix last year”, notes Claire Cronin, CMO at McLaren Rac­ing. 

Found­ed in 1963 by New Zealand dri­ver Bruce McLaren, the team is one of the most suc­cess­ful and wide­ly recog­nised names in motor sport, hav­ing won 183 grands prix and eight con­struc­tors’ cham­pi­onships since mak­ing its F1 debut in 1966. It also runs two oth­er rac­ing teams – in the Indy­Car and Extreme E series – and McLaren Shad­ow, its esports équipe of vir­tu­al dri­vers.

“There are 17 races this year in Indy­Car, five in Extreme E and anoth­er half-dozen in esports. We’re on TV a huge amount,” Cronin says. “The cars are effec­tive­ly mobile bill­boards, both for McLaren and for all the brands that choose to part­ner with us.”

But how a brand such as McLaren reach­es its audi­ence is about so much more than a 200mph logo. When it comes to com­mu­ni­ca­tions, it’s all about plat­forms, con­tent and part­ner­ships. 

“You’ll nev­er see a McLaren Rac­ing advert on tele­vi­sion, but you will see our part­ners, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the tech­nol­o­gy space, fea­tur­ing us in their TV adver­tis­ing to help tell their sto­ry,” Cronin says. 

She cites the exam­ple of Cis­co Webex, which entered a part­ner­ship with McLaren to pro­vide its com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech, ini­tial­ly at track­side and then at the team’s base near Wok­ing in Sur­rey as hybrid work­ing became the norm. Cis­co Webex made a film about McLaren’s set-up and used it as the basis of a TV com­mer­cial that was broad­cast inter­na­tion­al­ly, show­cas­ing the work of both com­pa­nies.

“Increas­ing­ly, our brand part­ners are say­ing: ‘If we want to stand out in our cat­e­go­ry and bring our prod­ucts’ unique sell­ing points to life, fea­tur­ing McLaren in our adver­tis­ing is a real­ly smart way to do it.’ We know our strat­e­gy of part­ner­ing with brands ear­ly in con­sumer life­cy­cles is mak­ing a dif­fer­ence,” Cronin says. “We’re turn­ing 60 next year and we’re very focused on how we can bring more fans into our world. A sur­vey last year found that McLaren was the over­all fan favourite, among not only avid fol­low­ers of the sport but also women and gen­er­a­tion Z.”

She points to the range of brand acti­va­tions that McLaren has used to reach as wide an audi­ence as pos­si­ble. “If we want to get more women, chil­dren and peo­ple from diverse back­grounds inter­est­ed in the sport and to come and work for us so that we win the fan engage­ment bat­tle and the war for tal­ent, we need to use many touch­points to reach them. For instance, we did a big launch event for our new car, like every­one does, but we were the only team that unveiled ours as a Lego Tech­nic mod­el too.”

And then there’s its ambi­tion to extend its reach into oth­er forms of motor sport. McLaren is the only F1 team so far to have entered the world of Extreme E off-road rac­ing for elec­tric SUVs, she says, adding: “We see that the future is new plat­forms – and bring­ing fans of all ages into all those dif­fer­ent plat­forms.”

Brand exten­sions and par­tic­u­lar­ly mer­chan­dise, such as the line of appar­el made in part­ner­ship with Cas­tore, a pre­mi­um sports­wear brand, are cen­tral to Cronin’s strat­e­gy. Mer­chan­dise not only gives fans a chance to ‘own’ the brand beyond race day; it also plays its own part in sub­tly increas­ing brand aware­ness.

“Par­tic­u­lar­ly in our 60th birth­day year, you’ll see lots of new prod­ucts com­ing to mar­ket that are an authen­tic exten­sion of who we are,” she says. 

Cronin notes that prod­ucts fea­tur­ing McLaren’s papaya orange rac­ing liv­ery and its dis­tinc­tive “speed­mark” logo are top sell­ers on its ecom­merce site. But she stress­es that the team will not be paint­ing the world papaya at any cost, adding: “You won’t see an explo­sion of tat at air­ports, where you can pick up cheap key fobs, whis­tles and plas­tic pens that aren’t sus­tain­able.”  

Although McLaren is clear­ly aim­ing at the pre­mi­um end of the mar­ket with its mer­chan­dis­ing strat­e­gy, as befits the high-octane glitz of F1, Cronin feels that the far more inclu­sive nature of the team’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions has made it a favourite among fans. There is con­tent for every­one, from the “avid fan who soaks up all the details” to the “trends fan” who came to the sport through TV cov­er­age or the Dri­ve to Sur­vive docuseries, she says. 

YouTube videos, behind-the-scenes footage, fan events and com­pe­ti­tions all bring what could oth­er­wise be seen as an exclu­sive and elit­ist sport clos­er to the con­sumer, who­ev­er they might be.

Even when the con­tent being served up is overt­ly com­mer­cial in nature – for instance, the social media skit in which dri­ver Lan­do Nor­ris and his then team­mate, Car­los Sainz, deliv­ered Ama­zon pack­ages and bot­tles of Coca-Cola round Austin, Texas, just before the US Grand Prix there in 2019 – fans of all types still love it. The video, enti­tled Dri­ven to Deliv­er, was the most watched piece of con­tent that Ama­zon pro­duced that year. 

She acknowl­edges that, when it comes to such con­tent, McLaren isn’t just com­pet­ing with Mer­cedes or Red Bull for fans and spon­sors; it’s com­pet­ing with oth­er sports. 

“If we want to attract brands to work with us, we must do the most inno­v­a­tive things that ampli­fy their mes­sages and speak to the fans because, ulti­mate­ly, that’s who they’re try­ing to reach. We view every­thing we do through the lens of how that will excite the fans.”

Despite the glob­al audi­ence that F1 com­mands, Cronin is still work­ing hard to bring more peo­ple over to the fast side. One such ini­tia­tive was a bid to con­vert a pair of dyed-in-the-wool Amer­i­can foot­ball sup­port­ers dur­ing the week of the US Grand Prix in Novem­ber 2021. McLaren Fan Heist, the 25-minute YouTube video of the action-packed event, fea­tur­ing Nor­ris and his cur­rent team­mate Daniel Ric­cia­r­do, has attract­ed near­ly 1.2 mil­lion views. 

Anoth­er video, with near­ly dou­ble the num­ber of views, was pro­duced in part­ner­ship with glob­al hotels group Hilton, which had run a com­pe­ti­tion for mem­bers of its loy­al­ty pro­gramme. In it, Nor­ris chauf­feured the winner’s son to school in a McLaren 720 super­car. The cre­ative con­cept was orig­i­nal­ly a fan’s idea. 

“We want to do some­thing that no oth­er team would do – and we want to bring fans right into our envi­ron­ment,” Cronin says. “You’re not a logo on the car. You’re in the team.”