Interview with McLaren: The only F1 team investing in Asia?

F1 first arrived in Asia in 1976 – in Tokyo and the Japanese Grand Prix – and since the early noughties, Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula One Management made it obvious that Asia was a region of high commercial priority.

However, for unknown reasons, unlike Ecclestone & Co. no team stepped up to the plate in Asia in a similar fashion… until earlier this year when the veteran team of McLaren created a new senior management position for the region. ASN spoke to Dharpan Randhawa – McLaren’s new Senior Vice President for Partnership Development in Asia – on the insights behind the team’s Asian agenda:

ASN: How is marketing organised with McLaren and what’s the ratio between traditional media spend, NTM and sponsorship?

Dharpan Randhawa: We don’t really exist to promote our own brand – even though we do, and it’s a very powerful brand, but really all our marketing spend is centred around promoting the partner collaborations and content campaigns we create. We provide our partners a blank canvas and work extremely hard to help them leverage our brand to realise their business objectives – and we are very good at it.

We are a vessel filled with so many amazing brands and our quest is to always help our partners showcase their brands first & foremost – or as we like to call it, Powered by McLaren.

ASN: How crucial is data in McLaren’s marketing strategy and could you give us a rundown of how it is used?

DR: As an organization, we are incredibly data driven, and as a marketing team – even more so. We have recently commissioned a massive fan survey & study with Nielsen to better understand the data around our fans and how they interact with our brand. Using big data, we have managed to unlock the power of our audience and are getting better at understanding the behaviour, passion points, media consumption preferences and overall sentiments of our 170m global fans (55m in APAC).

That said, people are passionate and so is the sport of Formula 1…We are also very good at listening to small data insights, like tweets from fans or comments on Facebook and Weibo in China. Responding to our fans on a personal level helps drive deeper engagement and greater affinity with our brand.

ASN: What are your next steps to develop the McLaren brand in Asia?

DR: We have big plans to develop the McLaren brand in Asia – starting with my appointment as the regional commercial head. We now operate under one shareholder which means that we can now tap into our different businesses to drive growth and awareness. For example, our Auto business produces some of the best supercars in the world, and enjoys fantastic brand equity in Asia, with dealerships in so many major cities. We intend to work closely with them to create more content & activations to promote the overall McLaren brand regionally.

We also have a big office here in Singapore and our McLaren Applied Technology business is expanding rapidly, doing some truly remarkable work – further building our brand in the B2B world across so many different industries and geographies.

You are going to see a lot more of us in Asia.

ASN: Do you think Asia needs more races and if so, where?

DR: It’s a timely question seeing that my boss Zak Brown (Executive Director) wrote a LinkedIn article recently discussing his idea for an “Asian Tour” – grouping the key races in the region: Japan, Singapore, China and other venues to be determined such as Thailand. He also suggested that the Grand Prix in Shanghai is already well established, and that possibility of a race in another major city, such as Beijing, or a street race in a city like Wuxi should be explored.

It’s a very exciting time in Formula 1 right now, and under the great leadership of new owners Liberty Media – who are so determined to grow the sport and put the fans first, I have no doubt that we could see more races in Asia in the near future.

ASN: What are some specific challenges in Asia which you don’t face in other regions of the world?

DR: We think the most obvious challenge is understanding our Asian fans better and creating programs to communicate with them better. We understand the cultural complexities of each Asian country and our marketing team are doing a great job to create bespoke programs that resonate. We are also investing heavily into local language content on geo-specific social platforms like Weibo, so we can better engage with our Chinese fans. This will set the precedent for other key markets like Thailand, India and Japan.

The other challenge (or reality we should say) is that Formula 1 is still rather nascent in most parts of Asia. Couple that with those who do resonate with the sport feeling that it’s too elitist – creates a clear-cut challenge. McLaren under the leadership of Zak (Brown) is absolutely at the vanguard to help new owners Liberty Media to break down these barriers and do all we can to put the sport first. Lots of work to do here but we’re confident we will see a shift in perception and appeal very soon.

ASN: What are some cool things we can expect for fan engagement in the near future?

DR: From a McLaren perspective – we will be investing in video more and more. We have over 170 million fans globally and know that they all consume our content differently. Our videos are very popular and we will be doing lots more around live streaming, branded content with our partners and of course around our drivers too. One great example of this is our collaboration with Amazon Prime Video to create a multi-part documentary series – featuring unparalleled behind-the-scenes access to our 2017 Formula 1 season.

You should also keep an eye out for our World’s Fastest Gamer activation, which brings together eGaming race fans competing in qualifying events around the world on simulator races. The winner stands a chance to become a McLaren Honda simulator driver. As you can image, it’s been very well received.

From an overall sports perspective, we recently witnessed the largest F1 event in London. This was unprecedented in being the first event, away from an F1 race, where every team came together to celebrate the sport they love with their fans. The event was announced 24 hours prior (security reasons) and still managed to pull together over 100,000 fans onto the streets of London – clearly demonstrating a new era of fan engagement!

The world of F1 has changed overnight with new owners Liberty at the forefront, and it’s very exciting.

ASN: Obviously, McLaren has a long-storied history in F1, but what are some new developments in the sport and how has the team and sponsors leveraged on it?

DR: McLaren continues to hold a leading role in the Formula 1 strategy group helmed by Zak Brown and Eric Boullier (McLaren Honda Race Director), and are across all major developments and improvement mandates for the sport – like the recently introduced Halo cockpit protection device for 2018. We have a fantastic relationship with F1’s new owners Liberty Media and are aligned in their mission to better market the sport and provide the millions of fans around the world with new ways to consume new media. They have brought in a great leadership team who bring much-needed investment and innovative thinking – which is already very evident in the impact it has created.

Secondly, our very own Matt Bishop (Group Media, Content & Communications Director) also heads the Promotional Working Group that acts as the conduit that pools interests and resources of all the teams to cooperate around marketing & communications. The teams are still competitive with one another – both in sport and in commercially – but as a unified promotional force we can achieve more together.

ASN: Tell us a bit about one partnership that you’re particularly proud of; how was it activated to bring a win-win for you and the brand?

DR: We have so many great partners and great stories, but one I will tell you about is our collaboration with Johnnie Walker.

In 2015 McLaren and Johnnie Walker started a campaign called THINK! – a program designed to create awareness and action around drink driving.

The campaign (at the time) showcased signatures from Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and Racing Director Eric Boullier feature alongside the #JOINTHEPACT and ‘THINK!’ logos on the side of the McLaren Honda car to remind people not to drink and drive. The campaign was the perfect storm of social media promotion, on-car branding, and live activation. The mission was to collect 5m commitments by 2018 from people around the world to never drink and drive.

We are not far off the mark, as we saw a staggering level of commitments from our fans during this year’s British Grand Prix – making this a truly special activation that has a direct impact in promoting positive change, for us, our partner & the greater community – a win-win-win!

Dharpan Randhawa, McLaren F1