How do Formula One teams score on social media?
Formula One (F1) is waiting for the starting gun to kick off the new season. In recent months, the sport has been in the news a lot. Which new drivers are joining which teams. Which teams have remained relevant on social media over the winter break and which ones haven't? A lot has happened this offseason. As the new season gets underway, NXTLI is looking at who is No. 1 on social media using its digital reputation index.
Many changes in December 2020
December is traditionally a month when teams say goodbye to their drivers and make way for new ones, so too in 2020. Furthermore, teams get new sponsors, and two teams even get a complete rebranding:
Racing Point becomes Aston Martin F1 and Renault F1 becomes Alpine F1. A lot is changing in this month. That presents opportunities for increasing visibility and engagement through exciting content.
Perez and Haas provide involvement
Aston Martin, with the rebranding and announcement of Sebastian Vettel, is making particularly good use of the opportunities December offers for engagement on socials. Furthermore, the retirement of Sergio Pérez is generating a lot of engagement on Instagram and Facebook.
Haas F1 is doing best this month (December). Haas F1 - like Aston Martin F1 - owes this mainly to frequent posts about their two new drivers, Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin and the farewells of both existing drivers. In addition, their win campaign creates a lot of engagement with the posts.
Lawrence Stroll has big ambitions
Lawrence Stroll, the new CEO of Aston Martin, indicated on the site Racefans that the team has "serious ambitions to get fans more engaged with the team," for "both the next generation of fans and the hardcore fans." He wants to ensure "a new look for Aston Martin F1 where fans are more involved with the team." Social media plays a crucial role in this, according to the CEO (Collantine, 2021).
Our colleague Denis Doeland comments: "Digital content is seen by many sports company executives as an opportunity to increase revenue. Not only is it a way to respond to changing content consumption (from linear to online), but it also offers another benefit. Thanks to digital content, sports companies, such as Aston Martin F1, become less dependent on live events. Indeed, more revenue streams are emerging, unhampered by (the measures against) the corona virus, for example. Lawrence Stroll is pursuing such a course. That's cool to see!"
Aston Martin gets socials in order
January is usually a quiet month in F1. The cars are not yet presented and the season has not yet started, which makes it difficult for teams to create and keep posting content.
Yet Aston Martin F1 has once again managed to keep their socials in order despite this challenge. NXTLI's analysis shows that posts about the new team contributed to this. Furthermore, they shared highlights and throwbacks from their races, which resonated well with fans.
Mercedes misses opportunities
Mercedes post noticeably less in January, resulting in decline in engagement. This may be due to stability in the team and lack of newsworthy changes: no new car or new drivers. The team is missing opportunities by not sharing highlights, throwbacks, and beautiful or funny moments to keep fans warm.
"Did you know that millennials now watch highlights of sports events for almost as long as they watch live sports? The underlying pattern is clear: there is much more demand for shorter content, because that suits the shorter attention span of younger viewers better. By the way, sports fans who are not millennials are also watching many more highlights of sports events. One of the benefits of shorter, on-demand content, is that sports companies become less dependent on live games (which can't go on because of corona). Mercedes completely misses that open-ended opportunity." said Doeland.
McLaren and Red Bull successful
February is the month when teams announce their cars and start driving. This is reflected in the data: a slight increase occurs. More posts leads to more engagement. Fans want to know how the cars of the different teams are doing.
Mclaren is doing well and Red Bull is also successfully introducing their new car. Mercedes keeps their car secret for a long time and posts less. Williams Racing keeps a low posting rate, which automatically makes for less engagement with the posts. The latter is also true of Ferrari.
Conclusion
All in all, it can be seen that off-season opportunities abound to keep fans engaged with teams through the various socials. Content that does well across all teams during the winter break is about new names, farewell drivers and new cars.
In doing so, it is notable that the less prominent teams score high in the off-season and the larger teams, such as Mercedes and Ferrari, do better within the season. The question is whether this will continue as the season approaches. These answers will follow in our F1 update next month. Also keep an eye on our channels next week for the F1 drivers' social media performances!
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NXTLI analyzes and publishes on various other social media achievements including the top 100 DJs on social media.
