Jenson Button had a dream last Friday night that he would have a bad qualifying session in Brazil but do enough in the race to win the F1 World Championship.
And so he did.

Button added his name to the history books over the weekend. The first ever English back-to-back world championship win the sport has witnessed. All of this happening in just the first season of Brawn’s existence, a fairytale for the team. The charismatic and handsome Button is now in an enviable position. With a wealth of experience, the support of a strong team around him, a model girlfriend on his arm, this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year a shoe-in and the likelihood of tens of millions of pounds to follow through sponsorship and endorsements, it all rounds off the year rather nicely for him.

And the best thing? He seems like a really nice guy to boot.

Jenson is a PR dream and a hark back to the old days of work hard, play hard F1 drivers. His earning potential is certainly set to rocket so long as he continues to perform on the track. As well as his success in the car, Jenson’s personality, charisma and good looks will help to make him a global bankable star. If he wins next year’s World Championship, he will almost certainly become the highest paid British sportsman.

Interestingly, he is not currently contracted to a team for next year. His negotiating powers right now are surely at a premium, especially having taken a severe pay cut to race for Brawn this season. For brands and future sponsors, Jenson is a very attractive investment. He is a popular figure, a leader amongst his team, speaks well, is well educated and glamorous and is also close to his family (his father attends every race). He is perceived to be more modest than Lewis Hamilton, more approachable and has a real sense of fun. Couldn’t have imagined writing this a year ago but Jenson could very well end up as the more successful of the two British drivers. It may have taken Jenson ten seasons to arrive at this stage (compared to Hamilton’s two) but Button is viewed by many as the more consistent and even tempered driver.

Certainly it will be interesting to watch what he does next from a sponsorship perspective. In F1, most brands are sponsors of the team, not the individual drivers. There are occasions of drivers having individual sponsors – Jenson himself has a personal deal with the (number 1 by volume-sales energy drink in the US) Monster Energy. However, what his manager may well be doing at the moment is looking at long-term opportunities for Jenson to take an ambassadorial role with existing team sponsors – something Lewis Hamilton has done very successfully with brands like Hugo Boss and Tag Heuer. We shall see.

For the time being, Jenson is back in the UK to fulfil sponsor activities (Virgin Media’s SpeedWeek50 campaign, as you asked) before the end of season finale in Abu Dhabi next month which will finish off one hell of a dream season.

By Stephanie Branston on October 20th, 2009

Tags: BBC, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Public relations, Sponsorship

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It’s been an interesting few months for Lewis Hamilton. Not only has he struggled to get the pace he has been hoping for in the new design McLaren, but he suddenly has serious competition from another Brit in the Paddock.

This time last year Hamilton fever was in full swing and the rising star could hardly put a foot wrong as far as the media and general public were concerned. At the same time non-F1 fans would have been forgiven for asking ‘Jenson who?’  Twelve months later and how the tables have turned. Jenson Button’s feel good story – from a driver who at one point looked unlikely to have an F1 drive this season to winner in Melbourne – has captured the hearts and minds of the public, and you can’t open a newspaper at the moment without seeing an article about Jenson.

Such interest and support for Button must surely be hard to swallow for Lewis who had previously held the position of the media’s F1 darling.  And to make matters worse, while Jenson’s column inches focus on his rise to success, his loyalty to the team through the recent difficult times and his aspirations for the future, Lewis’s recent mistake of misleading the race stewards in Melbourne is splashed all over the papers, and the reigning World Champion is having to call a press conference to publicly apologise for his actions following the Australian GP.

Watch the Lewis Hamilton press conference here.

Gripping stuff.  It seems the off-track dramas are just as interesting as the racing itself. I for one will be tuning in to the Malaysian GP this weekend to see how the next episode of the battle of the Brits unfolds….

By Amy Mansell on April 6th, 2009

Tags: Default, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton

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Regular readers will know my views on the state of Formula One, commercially speaking, and that it currently represents a potentially very sound investment.

I am not quite as bullish as Kevin Eason of The Times who sees “Sponsors rushing to join Branson on board the Brawn express” but I am certainly more optimistic than Mark Kleinman, City Editor of The Sunday Telegraph, who claims “The F1 formula is failing”.

Kevin Eason’s arguments are easy to follow:  a new British team wins (and takes second place too) in its first ever race, becoming a magnet for sponsors in the process. The story is given added spice by the fact that the car is essentially devoid of sponsor logos with the exception of one, that of the ever-prescient Richard Branson and his Virgin Group, who made what now appears to be a visionary investment in sponsoring the team before its first race when, presumably, the price of doing so was cheaper than it is today.

Irrespective of the detailed facts of the story (other sponsors are present, though less visibly; the actual amount of money paid, if any, by Branson) it’s a feel-good piece, a story of British success in a highly competitive field. I like it.

Mark Kleinman’s comments are harder to understand, though I presage criticism with the caveat that his piece was written before the Australian Grand Prix won by Brawn GP. He sees a mass exodus of sponsors in the sport, led by ING and RBS whose forthcoming departures were recently announced. There is a clear implication that other sponsors will follow. I do not agree.

F1 commercial managers understand that it can appear irresponsible for publicly-owned financial institutions to engage in high profile sponsorships just now, maybe for ever.  This is exactly the same situation that the industry faced when it realised it would be irresponsible to continue to court tobacco sponsorship. Formula One will reinvent itself in the seasons to come, as it reinvented itself seasons ago, in order to remain relevant to the environmental conditions that prevail at the time.

Mark Kleinman would be quick to point out of course, that the environmental and financial conditions that prevail today are more challenging than those of yesteryear, and he would be right. But he underestimates the resilience of the industry and the moves afoot to change it from within.

Regulations are radically different this year and if Australia is indicative, it will be an exciting season on the track (how can you say, Mr Kleinman, that “…the 20 cars gathering on the starting grid in Melbourne for the first race of the 2009 season will look much like those that finished the last campaign…”? The cars are clearly different and the racing will be more exciting.

Away from the track, we are starting to see F1 teams talk with one voice via FOTA, begin to take environmental concerns seriously with KERS, and recast their operating cost models to comply with the FIA’s proposed £30m limit.

This may not be enough to keep motor manufacturers in the game, but no matter. Under the new cost models, the price of entry into the sport will be radically reduced, opening the field to private individuals or automotive companies beyond the household name brands.

In this way, the recession will be good for Formula One, driving the sport to be different, vibrant, more accessible, more relevant to a cost-conscious, environmentally sensitive society. 

By Scott Garrett on April 2nd, 2009

Tags: Formula 1, Jenson Button, Media, Sponsorship

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I saw this story about Jenson Button ‘de-briefing’ his girlfriend on the Sun website, and I thought it was really refreshing to see a sportsperson reveal something of their true personality. Are we not bored of hearing the same old cliched statements and ’sit on the fence’ sentiments?  I actually think sponsors and more importantly the consumers that they want to talk to would welcome a bit of personality, and that sportspeople, rights owners and brands should embrace this rather than shying away from it.

I must add that I have never been a big fan of Button, I thought of him as over hyped and lacking in talent but not only am I being made to eat my words, stories like this actually make me warm to him slightly.

By Adam Raincock on March 31st, 2009

Tags: Brand marketing, Default, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Public relations, Sponsorship

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The new Formula 1 season has also heralded a new design for the BBC Sport Online’s Formula 1 page.

It’s clear that British interest in Formula 1 has increased in recent years thanks to a number of factors not least the ‘Lewis effect’ and all the talk of Jenson Button as a possible new British World Champion, Jenson’s girlfriend certainly believes he can do it.
 
The BBC is hoping this interest will continue to grow and has invested a reported £200m into bringing the sport back to the BBC including bringing back Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain as the theme tune for their programming.

Everybody loves a good theme tune, but what really caught my eye was the new design of BBC Sport Online’s Formula 1 page with its  black skin and abundant blue, yellow and red go-faster stripes.  There are lots of other differences such as a much larger selection of external links to other websites (more so than on other BBC Sport Online pages), insider gossip from their ‘mole’ and more which you can all explore on your own time.

The page has a similar look and feel to BBC iplayer with the same black skin as opposed to the white background that is used across the rest of the BBC Sport Online pages.  This may well be a subconscious reminder to the viewer that the highlights are available on iplayer through some sort of visual empathy…or it may simply be that one of the designers at the Beeb thinks the black skin is cooler.

What I did find a bit strange is that as soon as you click onto a Formula 1 story the next page you see is back to a white background. I wonder whether all the sports covered by the BBC online team will begin to have their own identity with different skin colours, each one allowed to stray a little further from the general BBC Sport Online look and feel or whether Formula 1 is a one off…I am also starting to wonder if any of you noticed any of this too or if you care?!?

By Alex Coulson on March 31st, 2009

Tags: BBC, Default, Digital marketing, Formula 1, Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Media

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