F1 - the marketing and advertising of

[andartop]

So was MS just returning the favor to Bridgestone when he was moaning about the Pirrelis?

Where is Don when you need him???

[FrukostScones]

Here's an interesting thought - would you buy Pirelli tyres for your personal car or race car?

Bridgestone's primary reason for its F1 entry was to enhance its brand awareness, and for this to be effective, Bridgestone's Formula 1 tyres had to demonstrate strong performance........."We concentrated on our quality control to ensure that the tyres supplied to all teams were the same, allowing these close championship battles, which provided a fantastic spectacle for Formula 1 fans around the world." (http://www.bridgestone.com.au/media/art ... st_f1.aspx)

Bridgestone supplied a tyre that ran all day long. There was no mystery. As a consumer I was so impressed by that, the decision to put them on my car is a no brainer. Get performance, get miles, I don't have to 'nurse' them.

I seriously will never put Pirelli tyres on my personal car - let alone a race car. They may be the best in the world but it doesn't come across like that and it's divided people like never before. Bridgestone never had to worry about brand damage.

Than the June 13, 2010 was a very very short day I assume.
Pirelli are normal purpose medium2upmarket tyres in my country, in tests mostly on par with Continental (inmho the best tyres, especially wintertyres), Bridgestone, Michelin, Dunlop.
F1 is about brand awareness and imagetransfer. But no normal person is aware of the tyre "problems" some hardcore fans have.
Pirelli has build a tyre that serves its purpose. There was a plan behind it. It is not random. They can build the tyres they want to build (with certain attributes), for me that is a sign of quality.
The F1 tyres are all the same (inside their spec/batch). There is no tyre-lottery. It is just perceived as lottery because the teams are so close to each other. The tinyest nuance can make a difference now, the top teams are not always on top, fanboys are in crisis, their world turned upside down, they need a culprit.

[strad]

I think it depends on the car but on my Mustang Cobra NOTHING works as well in the real wet/dry, warm/cold real world as my Pirelli P-Zeros. Not the Goodyear Eagle F1, not Dunlops or Michelins.
My Olds I traded for the Caddy LOVED Yokohama Avids and so did I. The Caddy seems to like the Michelins but I may try something else when they wear out. Point being I don't think you can blanketly say one brand is across the board best no matter what their advertising trys to tell us, and that advertising or being the series sole supplier doesn't enter into it. Oh,,,And by God if you can't tell the difference and feel tires are tires,,You don't belong here.
I am not one bit influenced by the fact they supply F1 or that they degrade rapidly in races..I see a real distinction between racing and real world tires and I think so do they.
The F1 tire is what was requested, conversely if they asked for bricks that would last three races that's what they would produce.

[Jersey Tom]

I think it depends on the car but on my Mustang Cobra NOTHING works as well in the real wet/dry, warm/cold real world as my Pirelli P-Zeros. Not the Goodyear Eagle F1, not Dunlops or Michelins.

O/T but I'd give the Dunlop Z1 Star Specs a go. They are the real deal. Goodyear GS-D3's were as well.

Actually.. now that you mention it.. a Cobra? I wonder if the Goodyear Supercar G2's fit. Those are, completely unbiased, some of the most ridiculous street tires I've ever worked with (including P-Zeros). As in, worth 120 hp in one case. Could PM me for more info.

But we digress...

[raymondu999]

Sorry, olds? Caddy = Cadillac, I presume?

[Cam]

It is interesting that some think designing a product which is contentious won't hurt the brand. I guess it's probably easier when it's not you writing the cheques and responsible to the board.

Any business owners out here - would you put yourself in Pirellis situation? The success of your business, to a reasonable extent, relies on the public perception and investment made with a supplier deal to F1?

[Jersey Tom]

The success of your business, to a reasonable extent, relies on the public perception and investment made with a supplier deal to F1?

The question is, what IS the public perception? How IS it influencing consumer purchasing? Very difficult questions to answer concretely, which is why such motorsport contracts can be a challenge to justify. "How do we prove our return on investment?"

Of however many million people watching F1.. how many pay attention at all to the tires? How many, whether they don't think about it, are subconciously swayed just by virtue of hearing "Pirelli" repeated over and over again? How many are swayed the other way by hearing about so much tire degradation and fall off? How many are smart enough to know its all meaningless?

[Cam]

F1, from my understanding, was about prototype cars. They are obviously trying to shift that. It's not as good as it could be.

NASCAR do a great job I think at joining the dots from racing to consumer. I think Pirelli and others could do a better job, is what I'm trying to say.





If Pirelli did this, or similar, I wouldn't be saying anything right now.

[raymondu999]

It is interesting that some think designing a product which is contentious won't hurt the brand. I guess it's probably easier when it's not you writing the cheques and responsible to the board.

Pirelli IMO is not marketing the product - they're marketing the brand. Most sensible people understand that the tyres are entirely different to what you'll get on your road car. The advertised product doesn't have to match the sold product. Ever seen LEGO or toy ads where the action figure punches their way out of a box or some such? People understand that the ad does not entirely reflect reality. The ad just gets the juices going, and THEN people buy. A LOT - and I mean a LOT - of marketing campaigns are not product-driven or feature-driven (as in advertising a specific feature). Show me where Pirelli says the exact same technology of their F1 tyre is on their road tyre?

Any business owners out here - would you put yourself in Pirellis situation? The success of your business, to a reasonable extent, relies on the public perception and investment made with a supplier deal to F1?

It's not their only marketing. I don't in any way think Pirelli's success is at all dependent on it being in F1. Public perception of Pirelli in itself is already very strong - especially in the upmarket segments it tries to reach.

[Cam]

Show me where Pirelli says the exact same technology of their F1 tyre is on their road tyre?.

They don't. No company every draws a direct line. That's the magic of marketing, otherwise we'd all know the dirty little bits in every product, the child workers putting it together etc. The line is 1 + 1, where the consumer forms the 2. See my pic from their website above, it clearly tyres to link the F1 tyres to consumer products.

I do hear what your saying though. Compare this to say, McDonalds. They do product and branding. They also do self promotion through charities etc and tie themselves to events. Everything they do is to sell burgers etc. Now look at how the public perception of the fat content of their food has fundamentally changed, not only the menu, but the way the stores look and operate. People were still watching the ads 'happy Ronald with the kids playing while mum and dad smile away', and going to sponsored golf days, but the greater public took on board the greater message (through news, reports, forums etc) - their food is crap, it's making you fat and it's killing you.

McDonalds didn't have to link the ingredients - everyone else did. So why does this situation not apply to Pirelli?

[raymondu999]

Whilst I don't necessarily agree with your assessment of McDonald's declining in popularity, let's assume your post is fact for the sake of discussion (it could be a regional thing)

McDonald's advertises Utopia. Product is crap for consumers - consumer reporting and awareness breaks out. Consumer gets wind of bad products.
Pirelli advertises dystopia (by 100km life tyres in F1). Product for consumers, however, is still VERY VERY good. Consumer reporting and awareness generally only gives warnings and bad reviews to bad products, and only from experience. Consumer experience of using the Pirellis is actually very good - and also, no one has had any experience of driving the Pirelli F1 tyres other than the drivers. Hence, no word of bad products. Yes, drivers do go out and say these Pirellis are "rubbish," "can't push," "raw eggs" and so on. The people who read these comments, however, are F1 fans that are into F1 deep enough to understand that these tyres were apparently made "rubbish on purpose," and that they bear no family lineage to the road tyres.

The two case studies are very different. For one thing, the bad news about McDonald's is directly about their consumer end product. The shortlived Pirellis are NOT a direct consumer product. One is a genuinely bad product, shown through various exposés and documentaries (I'm a big fan of Supersize Me btw). The other is actually a good product (Pirelli road tyres).

[Fil]

This needs to be simplified.

Pirelli is in F1 for brand association, not for proof that it can make tyres or that its tyres are amazing.

The vast majority of its customers/potential customers (eg. mums & dads etc) WILL NOT even watch F1. Ever.

But they WILL be vaguely aware of F1, which has an almost universal association as a world-class international racing series, ie: "best of the best/pinnacle", "glamorous", "prestigious" etc etc - something that Bernie has methodically established over the past 30+yrs through forced exclusivity (beginning with the F1 Paddock Club).


Now, any brand that buys the right to lay claim to be associated with F1 (be it a supplier, technical partner or a sponsor), automatically achieves association of its brand image (potentially on an international scale) with those same brand values as F1 holds (as above). We don't even need to know what they do in F1, they're just a part of that 'club'.
(hence rebadged "Petronas engines", Ilmore "Mercedes" engines, Petronas sponsoring but not supplying Sauber initially, Lotus/Infiniti sponsoring Renault-powered teams, BMW allowing their name on a Ferrari-powered car etc....)


The average consumer doesn't feel the need to know what the situation is in F1, to be aware of the broad values it possesses.


And if the above isn't the basic truth of the matter, we wouldn't have had 3 major tyre manufacturers publicly (and who knows how many privately) be tendering for the right to supply tyres in 2011 onwards; willing to pay for the risk of having their tyres be complained about (Bridgestone left because they'd already achieved lasting recognition - their ROI was diminished).


Sure, on-track events & results matter, but they're only a bonus for further marketing collateral. They're not a necessity for these brands. And for many, being associated with results isn't even worth the extra money (or they'd all have been clamouring over Brawn GP).


In F1 brand association is king. And that's what Pirelli are paying for; exclusive F1 brand association within their industry.

[strad]

J.T...Tire Rack says The Dunlop Z1 Star isn't available in a 275x40x17. I could probably find a better dry tire and maybe a better wet but the Pirelli seems to do best all round. It's a daily driver ...well sorta daily...well it's not a garage queen and the weather where I live is wet a lot of the time. But thanks for the input it looks interesting...maybe for the Cadillac. Originally I wandered,,,My point was that I look for what works best, imo, for me. Not what F1 uses or even the ads that run during a race.
I'm not saying I'm immune from advertisers ploys but when it come to things like tires for example while I'm not a Ricky Street Racer I do test them a bit more than the average driver and thus form my own opinions. As I do a lot of things...I really try to resist advertising and it's psychological traps.
I really dislike the way advertising has affected F1. Bernie and advertising changed F1 from one thing, into something entire different with only the name and open wheels connecting the two.

[Richard]

Let's take another example. Last year when Hamilton was seemingly crashing in every race, every UK branch of Santander had huge posters of him to advertise their unbeatable offers.

I don't think anyone thought that association inferred that Santander would destroy your savings against a barrier in Spa. The general public simply see highly successful celebrity.

Its the same with Alonso and those Clio adverts. The negative connotations of Alonso breaking his contract with McLaren and the allegations of his threatened blackmail against Ron Dennis didn't hamper that. Not to mention the fact that Renault cars deliberately crash.

So with regard to Pirelli, it's a case of someone in their local tyre centre having to choose between Goodyear, Michelin, Bridgestone, Pirelli that are near identical price. They ask the assistant which one is best. He shrugs and says they're all the same, he just wants to get on with the job because there is a long queue. There's a Pirelli poster on the wall with a smiling Hamilton, and that subliminal association will be enough to swing a handful of people. In a market of this size even a tiny % swing is enough to cover the cost of F1.

Incidentally, most mid to upmarket car owners who get the car from new simply stick to the brand that was on the car when they bought it. The logic is that BMW or Range Rover etc carefully selected that tyre as a perfect match for that car. What they don't realise is that the tyre that comes with your car will often vary depending which assembly line produced that car.

Our tyre choices are based on illusion, allusion, and aspiration, not fact. If you want to make a fact based assessment then try to find the stopping distance of comparable tyres. It's impossible, even the most objective magazine test struggle to show any real difference between comparable tyres. They're also testing brand new tyres rather that the ones on your car that have run 15,000 miles and been subject to weathering and batttering of daily road use.

My point is that nearly all of us know very little about tyres, so have to rely on subliminal cues in choosing between apparently identical products at the same price point.

Talking of subliminal, can anyone really tell the performance difference in tyres in day to day road use on a conventional car, its not as if you can drive on the limit of adhesion. Can you honestly remember what the last set felt like when new 2 years ago? The other thing is that new tyres will always feel nicer because they are new (assuming most users judge this on comfort and noise). That's why the consumer reviews are so silly.

Then there is confirmation bias. You know the tyres are new, you also invested a lot of money in them, so your emotional need to feel justified persuades you that they must better. That's the whole premise of branded luxury goods.

So you have a scenario of a smiling celebrity nudging consumers into selection between near identical products. That consumer suffers confirmation bias. The marketing team have done their job, the production team just need to make it profitable.

Ps with regard to subliminal thing about knowing something is new, have a read of the Hawthorne effect. This showed that when you give a production team a process and tell them it is new then productivity goes up compared to the team who were not told it was new. It's the same as the placebo effect in medical trials, the people with the sugar pill demonstrate improved recovery. We're fundamentally irrational and highly open to suggestion.

[raymondu999]

What they don't realise is that the tyre that comes with your car will often vary depending which assembly line produced that car.

It does?

I always thought it was done by a mass order from the factory to a single tyre manufacturer - which then sort of gets awarded the contract for that single make.

Mind you I've never actually bought two cars of identical make - except that one time when I bought my dad and myself identical cars - and they came (maybe coincidentally?) with the same tyres.

Talking of subliminal, can anyone really tell the performance difference in tyres in day to day road use on a conventional car, its not as if you can drive on the limit of adhesion.

There was one time I remember three or four years ago - I was buying new tyres, and coincidentally a different brand too. My older tyres (Bridgestones) I felt a bit of understeer, though I didn't mind that much - it wasn't a sports car anyways, nor even a sporty car. When I first drove the car with the new tyres on (coincidentally, Pirellis) and there was less understeer in the car - a bit more balanced. Of course it could also be due to the older Bridgestones having less front bite in them.