A week ahead of the start of the Melbourne GP, UK broadcaster Sky Sports celebrates the racing series with a multi-platform campaign – including TV spots, digital and social content and garage stunts – showcasing its fresh look for its exclusive UK coverage of the 2019 Formula 1 season.
Sky Sports worked in partnership with its in-house agency Sky Creative Agency (SCA) to develop a fresh look marking the channel’s new status as the exclusive home of live F1 and promote it via an integrated campaign
To showcase its exclusive coverage and position it as the next chapter of F1, the Sky Sports ad opens at the very beginning of its F1 coverage history and then the narrative arc aims to show just how far it has come.
Thus the film starts with a scene from the early days of F1 when the sport was pretty manual (with Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ bassline in the background), a single mechanic fixes a Ferrari wheel with an old school hammer.
The camera then tracks towards the future: speeding up into a more high tech future until we reach the age of technology as audiences get ever closer to the action and concludes in the present day with Sky Sports is at the helm and the camera pans to a viewer perspective of how the TV channel covers all aspects of the championships.
The spot is running across UK national television, on Sky’s own channels and across its digital and social channels.
The sports broadcaster also set up an outdoor garage stunt to give UK drivers a chance to experience the perfect F1 style pit stop – with a tank of petrol filled by a former F1 driver, plus a windscreen wash (not not a tyre change) – all for free.
The stunt saw Sky Sports takeover a High Wycombe petrol station and people/drivers passing saw a team of Sky’s F1 experts and pundits – including Martin Brundle, Natalie Pinkham and David Croft – at work on their cars filling up petrol tanks and washing windscreenss.
As well as this start-of-season campaign, SCA has also overseen all the design elements around its coverage, including a brand-new title sequence, interactive touch screen broadcast podiums, a new F1 zone and interview platform.
The campaign was created for Sky Sports marketing director Jo Fox, head of brand marketing Robbie Balfour and senior marketing manager Laura Pinnell by a Sky Creative Agency team that included creative directors Simon Corkin and Nicole Poppi, producers Ella Littlewood and Al Mcgee, head of production Paul Mortimore, strategist Anthony Edwards, account lead Nick Waddell and senior account manager Alex Rodger.
The production company was Knucklehead, the director Lieven Van Baelen, the head of production Francis Mildmay-White, the production manager Cat Irving, the director of photography Glynn Speeckaert and production designer Chris Oddy.
The costume designer was Bratsk, makeup and hair was by Natasha Lawes, the casting director was Hammond Cox Casting, the studio was Warner Bros Studio Leavesden, the offline editor was Emmanuel Van Hove, post production was by Framestore, post producer was by Victoria Lovejoy, the colourist was Simon Bourne, VFX was by Paul O’Brien, audio was by Envy and the sound designer was Arge.
Comment:
The 2019/20 season is the first time that Sky Sports has exclusive coverage of an F1 season – owning the broadcast rights to 20 out of 21 races.
The channels has also driven awareness of and excitement around the start of the new season by promoting several new car team launches
and a series of exclusive interviews
and first drives.
The Sky Sports campaign rolled out simultaneously with F1’s own new campaign with The Chemical Brothers introducing its new sonic logo and season soundscape (see case study).
Links:
Sky Sports
https://www.facebook.com/SkySports
https://www.instagram.com/skysports
Sky Creative Agency
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