Basically same here. Just over a year ago I needed a new laptop, was looking around and saw a decent looking one from Lenovo. Now I'd never really seen or read anything about Lenovo, but I did know that they sponsored McLaren....so I figured they were probably pretty good... Worked out okay for me!!hollus wrote:Individual example, but...
I have a Medion PC computer. It was suspiciously cheap, it is boxy but it works just fine and I am very happy with it.
And I'd never have bought it if it wasn't for Adrian Sutil's personal sponsorship. I only bought it because I knew the brand thanks to F1, which meant that when one would pop in a Mediamarket catalog I'd check the characteristics of this Medion in particular, out of curiosity. And they looked alright. And when it popped up in the Aldi catalog, which normally would be a blemish in the prestige of a technology company, I had in my mind that it probably made sense for this cheap but yet good brand. And when a family member bought a horribly boxy and bulky Medion laptop, the brand got burnt in my brain.
So when I needed a new PC, I checked HP, Dell and Medion, in that order. And Medion won hands down. They do not have any physical shops and typically are not present in Computer stores, by the way, they do most of their selling online.
It is brand awareness... until it is not.
Assuming they paid 4M$ and a 400$ profit from me, I gave them 0.01% return on investment. I only takes 10000 like me to pay back.
Then last year I wanted a new watch. Saw an Edifice in the sale. It looked nice and I remembered that they sponsor Red Bull (Edifice are a Casio sub-brand), so I figured that it might be nice having a watch from an F1 sponsor again (my last watch was Seiko - used to sponsor BAR & Honda).
I didn't go out looking to buy either of those brands, but they were reinforced in my mind by their F1 presence.
On the other hand, I use Wilkinson Sword razors even though Gillette are in F1...cos I don't like the Gillette blades