Amazon Music launched a partnership with BWT Alpine F1 team in July of 2023, becoming the first and only music DSP in Formula 1 (F1). F1 presented a unique sports opportunity as a global league with events in most of Amazon Music territories and an increasingly young and diverse fan demographic (62% of F1 fans are under 35, with 35% between 16-24 years old), driven by the success of Netflix “Drive To Survive” and updated social policy that opened opportunity for sponsorship access. Accordingly, the objective of our partnership with Alpine was to connect music and sports in an authentic way to access primed audiences to drive brand awareness and maximize fandom. To achieve this, we focused on scalable, engaging content featuring artists and drivers for social channels and audience development marketing (growth marketing.)
As a brand, we planned to reach our desired audiences through unexpected + authentic content and consistent logo presence throughout relevant races. We identifed races in markets that were key to our brand and customer base and activated at those events with artists that had close ties to the respective cities.
For each race campaign, we worked closely with the BWT Alpine team and the artist teams to create bespoke content that spotlighted the artists' newly discovered fandom for the sport of Formula 1. Conversly, we also were conscious to highlight how music powers the athletes and teams in the sport - highlighting the ultimate collide of Music x Sport fandom - with Amazon Music anchored in the center of that cultural collide.
At the beginning of each race campaign beat, the Amazon Music team identified an artist who was going to be relevant to our audiences and we also wanted to work with artists who were genuinely interested in Formula 1 and wanted to uncover more of their fandom by getting up close and personal at the track. Once we selected an artist to partner with, we then traveled to each race location and set up production throughout the grand prix track and BWT Alpine garage. There, we caputed social content with the artist interacting with the team - changing tires, learning drivers skills, or participating in a hot lap - overall downloading on the sport's specificity, as well as the massive global fandom that surrounds F1.
In all of our content - we prioritized highlighting the complimentary nature of sport and music, both components that fuel the other, and made that the heart of our creative concepting. Each campaign also served as an opportunity for our artists to promote their projects in a native and authentic way to both our audiences and their fans.
There were a handful of challenges that we encountered throughout our campaign efforts, one of the biggest hurdles was navigating the intricasies of setting up production within the confines of a Formula 1 facility as there are many rules that limit sponsor content. We could only capture with a small production crew (2-3x people), and we had to film around BWT Alpine's incredibly tight scheduling - including getting all of the driver content within a 20-30 minute window each race, due to the demand for the drivers. These filming limitations were always a hurdle that provided us with an opportunity to get even more creative in our concepting and filming methods and resulted in more authentic and engaging content that leaned into ongoing social trends.
Below is an overview of all of the Amazon Music x BWT Alpine campaigns.
2023-2024 Amazon Musix x BWT Alpine Artist Campaigns
Mexico City Grand Prix - Benson Boone
Las Vegas Grand Prix - Prince Royce
Miami Grand Prix - Shenseea
Montreal Grand Prix - NAV
Silverstone Grand Prix - Headie One and podcasting team - P1 with Matt and Tommy
Austin Grand Prix - Lainey Wilson
Over the past 18 months, Amazon Music produced content with 7x different artists and 2 podcasters over 6 Grands Prix (GP) races, ran 2x CRM, 3x growth marketing campaigns and secured brand placements at 9x races. We have garnered close to $6M in Earned Media Value (EMV), met and sometimes exceeded social benchmarks with our content, and are currently the 3rd most recognized partner for Alpine, while paying a fraction of the sponsorship fee of their other 20 partners.
Goals + Results