Wednesday, September 07, 2011

New Sponsorship Model for Carbon Neutral Motorsports

“Peak oil (?), carbon neutral racing, and the sprint for 21st Century Sponsorships”

Pace Notes by Bill Vartorella ©2011

Executive Summary: Steve McQueen—“Racing is life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.” In terms of waiting for a return to the glory years of racing as we knew it, we may be “Waiting for Godot.” The short-term good news, according to IEG, which monitors sponsorships worldwide, is that North American-based corporations expect to spend an estimated $3.5 billion this year primarily to sponsor teams and tracks--up more than 4% over last year. Looks great on paper, but the devil is in the details. J.D. Powers has just released a report indicating that by 2015, some 55% of the global hybrid market will be the U.S.—10% of the entire U.S. automotive market. Like it or not, the future of motorsports is the rise of “carbon neutral racing.” METRICS is a transitional strategy for sponsorship. We'll be lecturing on this soon at a meeting in NYC, then in our forthcoming book. Essentially, we're advocating think fast, dare to be green, and target the pool of rising hybrid sponsors.

6 comments:

Steve Cooper said...

I am really thankful to you for this great read!! You did a very great job, keep it up. free funding

Bill Vartorella said...

See my TEDxYouth talk,"The Elysium Challenge: The Future of the Automobile--Evolutionary or Revolutionary?",pitting student car designs against conventional wisdom. Students, whose designs were selected were told to "come on down" (game show style to explain and pitch their designs to their peers and to answer questions. Schools were challenged to combine student cell phone power to create the coachwork of the winning design.

Bill Vartorella said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bill Vartorella said...

For those of you in pursuing next-gen motorsports sponsorships, see our Craig and Vartorella International, Inc. listing on EPARTRADE.com. Also, see www.linkedin.com/in/billvartorella/

Bill Vartorella said...

Here is what many racers don't understand. Most sponsors don't look for easy-to-measure ROI. The "tangibles" are at best difficult to measure and, speaking as someone who has sponsored an experimental open-wheel racecar, done pace notes in a rally car, and been a lead speaker at an international conference on motorsports sponsorships, I want to be clear:
the "intangibles" have roughly 3-4 times the values of the tangibles. What this means is how do you leverage your brand based on things that aren't quantifiable? Moreover, racers seemed preoccupied to attract one or more of the 500 global brands that support motorsports or one of the 100,000 "endemic" automotive
brands that support all levels of racing in the U.S. That's nuts. The opportunity is with the "non-endemic" brands that need to be introduced to racing, along with their supply chains. Hell, a lot of smart teams pay the bills just by focusing on B2B networking opportunities in their hospitality tents. Something else: a lot of racers need to take a long view and skim some of the motorsports analytics research coming out of places like MIT. And at least glance at Swarm Intelligence, Game Theory, and Chaos Theory. Have engineers read the latest regression analysis as applied to tires/pit stops. Like it or not racing at the highest levels is aerospace driven by arcane economics and competition on track, in the pits, and in board rooms of next-gen companies who understand the intangibles as the gold standard.

Bill Vartorella said...

Time for everyone to become conversant with AI and impact on the automotive sector. Plenty of free courses out there, especially in conjunction with LinkedIn.