Even though Mercedes won the 2014 Formula One season, the Stuttgart-based company was also the center of attention in the social media network, according to report by industry monitors Repucom.
“Full season social media snapshot” is the name of the document and it reveals that @MercedesAMGF1 was the subject of 30% of all social media activity around teams, way ahead of @ScuderiaFerrari on 19%, @McLarenF1 on 12% and @LotusTeamF1 on 10%.
According to Max Barnett, head of Digital at Repucom, sponsors are paying more attention to the value that comes from social media engagement. ”TV is a one-way conversation, social-media is two way; that quality of engagement is unique and increasingly what sponsors are looking for”, he said.
Let’s take an example: Lewis Hamilton’s Facebook page was “Liked” by more than 2.9 million users, while his photo showing himself as the 2014 World Champion was appreciated by 201k people and 10,427 shares. The media value was more than $55,000 to Mercedes.
What’s more interesting is that other brands such as Blackberry and IWC Watches used social media platforms, especially Twitter to congratulate Lewis Hamilton for winning the F1 Championship. Thus, Mercedes became the most talked about team on twitter as well, as you can see from the chart below.
What’s more interesting is that 84% of social media posts were by users over the age of 35, that reflects basically F1’s ageing demographic, and, in addition to this, 65% of them were men and 35% women.
The UK leads the way with nearly 20% of all F1 social media activity, while Spain had 8% and Germany just 1.33%. The average number of posts featuring race name drivers and teams over a Grand Prix weekend was about 1.35 million, but Abu Dhabi saw a new high of 2.5 million.
Comparing the 2013 season to the 2014 season, the social media “buzz” for the F1 teams increased by 54%, while the attention around F1 drivers increased by 36,5%. On the other hand, the official keywords, hashtags (#F1) increased by 11.5%. These trends mean that more fans are using the social media networks in order to support and discuss teams/drivers in detail.
