Despite delivering some of the most gripping Grand Prix events in recent years, the 2014 Formula One Championship is being overshadowed by negative chatter surrounding changes to regulation and management of the sport.
Engine noise, slower lap times and standing restarts have crept in to mainstream coverage and taken over the conversation. Every time a terrible new idea like success ballast is introduced, the fans groan and the resulting coverage harms the image of the sport. People pine for the days when cars like the F2004 screamed around the track unimpeded by bureaucratic interference, even though 2014 has given us some of the best racing in recent times.
F1 Social Media
It is precisely at times like this that F1 could benefit most from a well-managed, overarching social media presence, that goes above the token strategy the sport has today. A smart social media strategy bringing fans closer to the sport and provides a level of two-way engagement will do more to fix image problems that than anything Flavio Briatore could do.
While teams are doing an amazing job embracing social media, Formula One Management is displaying an old-fashioned mindset that threatens to lock out a generation of potential fans unless drastic improvements are made.
Yes, the official F1 Twitter account has more than 850,000 followers, yes FOM make video available after jumping through certain hoops on the website, but that isn’t the issue. Just ‘being there’ isn’t enough. The current social media efforts are one-way, boring, and lack imagination, below the standard needed for what ought to serve as an entry portal to the sport.
For FOM, the template is already there. Lotus, for example, have shown tremendous social media nous, with their 424,000 Twitter followers enjoying innovations such as the pre-race track walks. Armed with nothing more than a smartphone, a sense of humour and the #TrackWalk hashtag, Lotus make fans feel like part of the team by taking them behind the scenes of a race weekend.
Away from Lotus, Mercedes and Ferrari manage an excellent social media presence for not just their English speaking users, but for German and Italian speaking fans. Hamilton and Alonso have more than 4,000,000 followers between them. We get a bit of everything, from additional race weekend action to joining Lewis inside a Mercedes wind tunnel.
McLaren stand as another shining example, with the content they provide making them the second most popular F1 team Twitter account with an audience of 627,000.
There are plenty of extras that FOM could provide this level of connection. Regularly live tweeting additional team radio highlights for example stands out as an obvious example.
Social media could also be a valuable means of supporting FOM’s road safety message and help soothe the Road Safety Lobby, sparing us the cringe-worthy “Bernie Says” campaign. That’s a meme waiting to happen if ever there was one.
Social media does not competing for television audiences, rather it augments and enhances that experience. More people engage in ‘multi-screen viewing’, using social media as a global lounge room to watch the broadcast on TV while simultaneously using their tablet or smartphone to discuss the race with people from all over the world.
This is where the conversation is taking place, and where FOM needs to place itself to successfully engage with current and future audiences. Think of it like a party, in which the teams and fans are having a great conversation in the living room, while FOM is on the balcony talking to itself.
Between race weekends services like YouTube are great at fuelling the flames of an F1 fan’s enthusiasm, and teams manage to do this by creating their own original content without using footage from Grand Prix events. From the official face of the sport though, we have nothing.
The Infiniti Red Bull Racing video ‘F1 Comes to America’ for example, is currently closing in on 3,670,000 views. Ricciardo and Vettel’s CGI preview of the Austrian Grand Prix was a massive boon for Red Bull and the Austrian Grand Prix in general, lighting up YouTube, Twitter, and bringing in clicks for redbull.com, infinitnews.com, and other affiliated websites.
As we enter the summer break, this is an opportunity gone begging for FOM to maintain an enthusiastic fan base.
Toto Wolff is right in taking the push for improved social media up to FOM, but he is wrong saying that the model won’t help generate revenue yet. Speaking to the Guardian from Silverstone, Toto stated that “We have lost 30 per cent of TV audience in Italy and we have lost some of the audience in Germany, although interestingly the UK is growing. Sure the (social media) model does not work yet as you cannot monetise it, but it is just a matter of time.”
As seen with the teams, the ability to give fans a virtual Paddock Pass and bring them in to pit lane shows that the model is, to some extent, inherently monetised. We become invested in the team, part of the team, and it follows that we want to buy tickets to a race weekend
Viewers want more than just a superficial observation of proceedings. Viewers want stunning pictures, real-time data, and we want to be taken behind the scenes. Viewers want the chance to connect directly and contribute to the conversation, like they can with SkyF1’s #askcrofty sessions.
The British broadcasters enjoying a rise in viewer numbers are the ones really nailing social media engagement.
This is how much of the world watches sport now. F1 is data rich, glamorous, and photogenic. The on-track action has been thrilling and the sport has an existing follower base. It is the perfect mix for any social media manager to bring new fans in to the fold, deepen the connection with existing fans, and keep fan momentum going between race weekends.
For the latest sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert.
Thank you for reading. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
Main Photo by Rainer W. Schlegelmilch/Getty Images
