Welcome to the F1 Fan Engagement Tracking Project

It’s been a year since I submitted my PhD, and it’s basically taken me that long to recover from the research burnout that comes along with such a milestone. But recovery has come with the return of a desire to conduct more fandom research, so I’ve decided to finally do something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years: An F1 Fan Engagement Tracking Project.

For those of you who have ever wondered what fan engagement looks like in Formula 1, I’ll be spending this season doing the hard work to develop an overview of the landscape.

Focusing on digital fan engagement (and activations at the Melbourne Grand Prix) I’ll be tracking newsletters, fan clubs, driver engagement, video content, social voice, and more, all to see who actually centres their fans and who sees them as a simple source of profit.

What is fan engagement?

Depending on who you ask, fan engagement can mean a lot of different things. However, for the purpose of this research, I’m broadly separating fan engagement from fan experience. I’m not looking at — for example — the amenities on the ground at a Grand Prix such as food and drink, merchandise, and activations*, but rather the ways in which the teams interact with their audiences. My research background is in fan-celebrity interactions and how the development of connections between audiences and fan centric brands create long-term loyalty. I want to use this lens to explore how the ten F1 teams are giving their fans an opportunity to build relationships and receive value.

Formula 1 drivers are celebrities, and yet many teams neglect to structure their marketing activities around this fact. Loyalty develops through connection, and connection happens between people, not corporations. Through this project, I want to see who understands this, and who thinks their name, history, or star driver is enough to pull them through.

*Exceptions to this include official team fan zones

What am I looking for?

Good fan engagement is first and foremost separate to sales. Let me repeat that for the marketers in the back: good fan engagement is first and foremost separate to sales.

What do I mean by that? Your communication with your fans needs to do more than just remind them of your online store. You need to build a relationship with them, and that relationship needs to at least offer an illusion of reciprocity.

This is not to say that fan engagement doesn’t result in spending money: it’s quite the opposite. But it’s all about building a connection that makes fans want to spend money rather than just asking them to spend off the bat.

Similarly, fan engagement needs to look at a wider range of fans than just those you see spending money. One of the biggest points I preach through my work is the myth of the biggest fan. This is something I’ve previously discussed in more depth, but the basic premise is that any perceived ranking of fans based solely on the amount of money spent or labour performed is inherently flawed. If you only engage with your VIP customers and call it a day? Well, you’ve got some work to do.

As mentioned at the top of this post, I’ll be tracking newsletters, fan clubs, driver engagement, video content, social voice, and more, all to see who actually centres their fans and who sees them as a simple source of profit.

What you can expect

I’ll be sharing regular updates on what teams are up to as a whole through categories such as “newsletters”, “driver engagement”, and “post-race communications”.

I’ll also be doing team-specific case-study discussions to demonstrate what’s working and the lessons that can be learned from specific types of engagement.

In the mix, I’ll also be discussing F1 fandom as a wider phenomenon.

Why am I doing this?

I have a pretty unique area of expertise, and sometimes it physically pains me to see what others are doing under the banner of fan engagement. Any good researcher knows you need data to support your arguments, so I want to get a lay of the land to show what’s being done and where the giant holes remain.

I came into F1 through the Drive To Survive craze, and ever since I became a fan, I’ve wondered how the teams are going to manage their new audiences in both the short and long term. There’s a lot to learn in this space, and if my hypotheses prove correct, there’s a lot that I can offer to some of the teams to improve their fan engagement practices.

I regularly present on fan engagement, showcasing to brands how they can better connect with their audiences, and this data will also serve as case studies in some of those presentations.

Of course, I don’t have the back-end data of any team, but neither does anyone else in their audiences. And if your work is missing the mark with that group, does it really matter what your stats say? (this is an argument for me to have with certain sub-groups of marketers on another day!)

So! Stay tuned, and let me know if there’s anything you’re curious about!