How Chicane made motorsport part of a marketing mix
Continuing with the series, Chicane featured in PMF’s report into the excitement of motorsport and its integration with the automotive aftermarket – how do brands leverage motorsport’s influence to enhance awareness and achieve business success?
Automotive marketing agency Chicane celebrates 25 years of serving the aftermarket in 2024. With a name like Chicane, it might come as no surprise that motorsport is never far away. Its founders, Gary Barak and Simon Maurice, reveal how Chicane has been able to make motorsport part of a marketing mix.
So why Chicane?
Gary: “Well both Simon and I have direct links to motorsport: both of our fathers raced – my dad still does, aged almost 90! – and we worked together on Autosport as our first job – as did Steve Coombes, our fellow Chicane director. We have competed ourselves so, one alcohol-fuelled night, I thought of the name, and it seemed both memorable and apt.”
Simon: “Ironic really; when we first started, we looked at working in motorsport and the aftermarket but thought the motorsport space was too crowded, so I famously said: “Motorsport? Never. If I suggest it, drag me away, even if I’m kicking and screaming.””
Gary: “Even more ironically, our first client – Pennzoil – came to us and said: “Pennzoil is entering a two-car Porsche team in the FIA GT Championship next year. You’ll handle the media side of that for us… won’t you?”
“It was not a question, but a statement – so our good resolve lasted all of four weeks! But it didn’t take us long to work out that the links between the aftermarket and motorsport run pretty tight and, knowing all of the ways that motorsport can work brilliantly for aftermarket companies, we have always considered if and how motorsport might work for our clients.”
Give us some ideas of how you can make motorsport an effective business tool.
Simon: “A great many of our clients have used motorsport, successfully, to help boost their business because it has so many different aspects and possibilities. But we work on the basis that it is vital to look at it objectively, because motorsport is never cheap – and in some cases it can be extremely expensive – so there may be other avenues offering a better potential return.”
Gary: “Indeed. The classic motorsport mistake is to pay for your branding on something without the funding or resource to exploit it. So, you get to the end of the season, you’ve had a great time, but you look at the return and you can’t justify it.”
Simon: “It’s crucial to see motorsport as the central factor around which an integrated marketing effort is hung. The formula we work on is that you need at least one and a half times as much money for marketing the involvement as you have spent making it happen. You need to know what you want out of it before you start.
“Before diving into it, be clear about your goals. Motorsport offers brand exposure, client entertainment, staff incentives, sales promotions, experiential opportunities, customer engagement, media and social media content, event showcases, merchandising, product testing, networking, and a unique ‘wow factor.’ But participation shouldn’t be solely driven by personal interest in the sport.”
Over your 25 years, you must have some great examples of things that Chicane has done that have really produced memorable results…
Simon: “The one that springs to mind instantly to me was celebrating the 50th anniversary of Gulf Oil’s first Le Mans 24 Hours win, by in essence, taking over a small town in France, where the team stayed 50 years earlier.
“We brought the team back together as guests of honour at a Gulf enclosure built around a Gulf Ford GT40 team car. We entertained media for lunch and VIP guests in the evening. At the same time, we branded the town centre in Gulf colours, had a Gulf car park, and TAG Heuer staged a run, with Patrick Dempsey from Monaco to the event. The highlight of it all was, with the Mayor and the Gendarmerie’s permission, running race cars on the streets and sending them down the main road towards Le Mans, flagged off by the team manager from 1969. It was absolutely wild, but all the elements worked seamlessly. It was awesome.
“I also love our Motul foam hands, which we’ve produced for the Silverstone Festival. It’s brilliant seeing people walking round over the weekend pointing at things with their Motul foam fingers. We also give some out at the nightly concerts there, and we are mobbed by people who want them – then when the bands appear there is a sea of Motul hands in the air. So simple, but brilliant!”
Gary: “One of my favourites is our sportscar programme with TRICO wipers. We had full livery cars and transporter which were used at shows and events. They starred in a pan-European sales promotion ‘TRICO’s Road to Spain’, which was where we took the best performing distributors, and they were rewarded by driving all sorts of things including race cars at the gorgeous Guadix circuit in Spain.
“Great for sales and great for the brand, through the media exposure it got; in fact, it ultimately led to TRICO being involved in one of the top Le Mans entries a few years ago – and by creating the partnerships, we even got Chicane branding on the car – something of which we are definitely proud.”
