2022 Gold Customer Retention or Loyalty Programme

Agency: Ogilvy UK

Client: Formula 1

Campaign Name: F1 Fantasy: My F1 Fantasy

Campaign Overview

F1 Fantasy is played weekly across the season, but fans always want more. F1 saw a way to address challenges around low engagement and player retention.

Strategy

As the season progresses, engagement rates drop off. When the season ends, they drop away fully, leading to lower retention levels for the following season's game and extra effort to re-acquire more players.

In F1, the knowledge is driven by data when only those who can understand the track nuances, car set-up, team dynamics and a plethora of factors stand a chance of winning.

Knowing that this competitive group would enjoy reflecting on their own knowledge and achievements against others, the team wanted to create a memorable, unique experience that celebrated each player's personal story throughout their season.

F1 Fantasy is a free-to-play game that helps build a direct relationship between fans and the sport. They are nurtured and the relationship are monetised, driving incremental product and services sales.

Creativity

A tongue-in-cheek, data-led and individualised email campaign told each player about their F1 Fantasy season. This generated bragging rights and comparisons across the player community as people demonstrated how well they knew F1 compared to others.

Social sharing was an element, driven by fans’ desire to show off how they scored, to help acquire new and lapsed players for the subsequent season.

Lapsed players within the database also received communications. Fantasy players hate losing, so their non-participation was framed as a defeat to rectify.

Throughout the season, F1 Fantasy players were updated on their scores and how to get the most out of the game, with information and stats unique to them. They were rewarded with exclusive information they couldn't get anywhere else, such as: “If you were a driver, who would you be?”

Results

My F1 Fantasy created a reason to talk to fans, sending more than four million of them unique comms throughout the period. This resulted in:

• 10% year-on-year uplift in player retention
• 250% uplift in lapsed player win-back in the same period
• 47% uplift in log-ins until the end of the season compared to the control

Contributors

TwoCircles