Some deals are done direct by F1 commercial director Brandon Snow or the teams’ commercial departments, but many come in through agencies that then help the sponsoring brand to activate its sponsorship through hospitality or PR and content programmes. One of the largest agencies in motorsport is CSM, headed by David Webb.
Webb’s route to F1 was unconventional. He was in the British Army for 10 years, leaving with the rank of Captain. His first civilian job was as assistant to Sir Jackie Stewart for two years, during the Stewart Grand Prix years. Webb moved into the account management side of the team, which was acquired by Jaguar Racing. The team was subsequently bought by Red Bull and is the Red Bull Racing team we know today. David was headhunted to manage Royal Bank of Scotland’s F1 sponsorship with Williams and all their other sports sponsorships. Zak Brown brought Webb in to run the international side of his JMI Business and when that business was taken over by Seb Coe’s CSM sports marketing business and Brown left to run McLaren, Webb took over management of CSM’s motorsport business.
They are active in Formula 1, Formula E, MotoGP, NASCAR, IndyCar, WEC, Extreme E and Dakar and have been responsible for bringing in many of the familiar brands that fans see on the F1 cars.
“To be successful as an agency, you need to have the point of the arrow, which is very much the sales side, finding the brands that we can marry up with a sporting property,” says Webb. “For example if we find a brand we think is interested in F1. We try and match their brand attributes and other KPIs and show them across a number of different teams. We're not retained by a team, we actively push back on being retained. This means we can walk brands into McLaren, Alpine or Ferrari, depending on which one has the best commercial ‘fit’ or offers the greatest value. We've got to be very careful knowing what the brand attributes are of the teams, that we're taking them the right brands. So we've done a huge amount of due diligence before we bring a brand to a team.”
F1 teams today are not only looking for brands that fit with their image and will pay a high sponsorship fee. It’s important that any partner brand is active in different markets. Ideally they will spend money advertising their F1 partnership and activities. That in turn promotes the team and all its other sponsors. The more they activate, the more it brings the team and its ecosystem to life. Advertising alone is of limited value.
Source: Autosport