LG’s F1™ PASSION

Issued: 1 July 2009 - By Tom Clarkson

In the first of a series of articles comparing the world of F1 to LG products and design, renowned F1 journalist Tom Clarkson looks at how the F1™ Global Partnership is proving to be a huge success.

Timing is everything in Formula One™, and LG have timed their arrival at the top echelon of world motorsport to perfection. Their first season as both A Global Partner of Formula 1™ and A Technology Partner of Formula 1™ has coincided with the sport enjoying its biggest ever television audiences in the opening races.

Twice as many people watched the opening two races of 2009 live compared to last year. While the viewing figures in Australia and Malaysia were undoubtedly bolstered by delayed start times (1700 local), making the races better-suited to European audiences, the increase also reflected the unbelievable year-on-year growth enjoyed by Formula One™.

At a time of global economic uncertainty, Formula One™ continues to go from strength to strength. For the sport – and for LG – life’s good.

LG aren’t affiliated to an individual team; they are A Global Partner of Formula 1™ itself so TV airtime brand exposure isn’t dependent on car performance. The company logo, which, until now has been more readily associated with sports such as soccer and cricket, is beamed around the world whenever timing data is displayed on-screen during the F1™ television broadcast. The result is that LG have been consistently among the top two brands during qualifying and one of the top five brands during the race broadcast itself.

“LG are a great addition to the sport,” says CEO of the Formula One Group Bernie Ecclestone. “They share a lot of the same brand values as F1, so I’m sure the sport is helping them achieve their objectives. We’re very pleased to have them on board.”

But LG’s success in Formula One™ hasn’t only been about brand recognition; it’s been about brand association. Premium consumer brands such as the world’s leading car manufacturers all share LG’s core values of style, innovation, technology and passion, and the congregation of those brands in F1™ creates a great marketing platform.

For the hundreds of millions of people that watch Formula One™, it isn’t just a sport; it’s a lifestyle. It gets discussed over the dinner table, in the office and on the train, and no other annual sport offers such a global reach to what LG terms uncompromising ‘premium seekers’. That’s why LG have activated their sponsorship with such enthusiasm and passion: in the opening 18 weeks of the programme, the company produced more than 600 activation proposals from 65 countries.

“It’s been a pretty hectic opening to the programme,” says Andrew Barrett, LG’s vice-president of global Sponsorships. “When we signed the multi-year deal with Formula One Management (FOM) at the end of November, all we had was a signed contract; there was no activation programme in place. Since that time we’ve been working flat-out, while remaining laser-focused because it’s imperative that everything we do is done brilliantly well. I’d say we’ve already done more in 16 weeks than many companies do in 16 years.”

The relationship between LG and the Formula One Group (FOM) has developed in unforeseen areas, as well as those agreed on paper. From HD TVs to mobile phones LG are world leaders in the consumer technologies that are at the heart of the Formula One™ fans’ experience at home and on the move. Even after such a short time LG and Formula One™ are already working together to discover ways to optimise the F1™ experience across the world.

“Our Home Electronics department is trying to use F1™ in every way that it can,” says Kwan Sup Lee, vice president of LG’s HE marketing strategy team. “At this year’s Chinese Grand Prix, we introduced F1 footage in our retail outlets around China and we plan to do this in more than 65 countries around the world before the end of the year.”

Look out for F1™ footage on other LG products as well, such as mobile phones. These will come to the market soon, but there’s a chance they won’t merely be F1™-branded handsets; they might even provide access to much of the data generated in the FOM TV compound at races. They will be a manifestation of the company TV division motto, Advanced Technology Beautifully Hidden.

“We’re looking to use F1™ as much as possible,” says Dermot Boden, global CMO of LG. “It’s a unique sport and we’re in a unique position within that sport, which we want to share with our customers.”

The parallels between F1™ and LG run deep because there are even similarities between the logistical challenges facing both businesses. The guts of the Formula One™ TV Compound, for example, has to be shipped to numerous countries across five different continents every year, and that requires the same military-style organisation as LG’s supply chains.

“We never thought there would be logistical parallels between F1™ and LG,” says Andrew Barrett. “It’s a huge challenge to broadcast the sport in so many countries around the world, and it’s the same with the management of our supply chains around the world. LG is shipping product to well over 500,000 retail outlets and the ways in which we do that can be improved by what we’ve learnt in F1™.”

Another unexpected benefit of LG’s involvement in Formula One™ is the business-to-business potential. Many a sponsorship guru has said that no blue chip company can afford not to be in F1™, and LG has first-hand experience of why that’s the case.

“Aside from being a great global platform in which to advertise your product, the F1™ paddock is a community,” says Andrew Barrett. “When you become a member of that community other people within it want to talk business with you, and these opportunities might not have been open to us had we not been here.

“What you have to remember is that there are many many product ranges within LG and the car audio and mobile phone divisions, for example, are perfectly suited to the car manufacturers. We’ll need a bit more time to finalise some deals, but this is another exciting side of the business for us.”

Timing, you see? It’s everything in Formula One™ and LG has a knack of getting its timing spot-on.