How Envision Racing’s marketing boss creates campaigns that grab attention
Following his appointment as a judge for The Drum Awards for Marketing EMEA, we caught up with Daniel Matson, Envision Racing’s head of marketing and communications, to hear more about the Formula E brand’s higher purpose in sustainability.
Envision Racing’s head of marketing and communications, Daniel Matson
Daniel Matson didn’t intend to work in advertising. He had dreams of becoming a professional sportsman, but injury ended his career early. In his time competing, however, he had been fascinated with the impact that sport, culture and music have in inspiring people’s lives. He then found himself working for brands including Red Bull and the Premier League, before joining Envision Racing in 2019.
In his time leading the marketing at the Formula E brand, he has pushed its sustainability efforts through collaborations with Kids Against Plastic, which saw it create a replica Formula E race car from single-use plastic waste at Cop26. He has also driven initiatives with the brand such as Race Against Climate Change and Climate Action Program.
When you started in your role, this sport was much newer. As it has matured, how has your marketing strategy changed and developed along with the audience?
Everything we do is rooted in our purpose. That hasn’t changed as we’ve scaled, but with it being a new sport and there being many sports out there that have been around for decades, we must continue to be bold and leverage our higher purpose to cut through. We launched a new brand identity a few years ago and now our branding and car livery is bright green, in-fact we are the only green car on the grid which aligns with our mission to accelerate the race against climate change. We have focused on establishing our leadership for sustainability in elite sports and building a unique Digital fan experience that has resulted in our first-party fan data increasing by 9,000% in just 18 months.
What have been some of your favorite campaigns at Envision Racing?
In 2021, we teamed up with Cop26. As the only team in world sport to be an official partner with the summit, the collaboration helped us elevate our messaging to drive wider impact. We worked in tandem with COP26 to engage global audiences, creating a series of content, events, and campaigns including 1:1 scale replica Formula E car from 100kg of plastic litter collected by Kids Against Plastic, a campaign group aiming to help young people learn about environmental issues. The vehicle, Recover E, engaged schools across the UK to raise awareness of single-use plastic on a global stage. And to build on the success of this campaign, we are about to embark on another version of the car, this time with electronic consumer waste.
At the end of last year, we challenged English footballer Trent Alexander-Arnold to see if he could make the ultimate assist. Could he score a goal with the help of one of Envision Racing’s Formula E race cars? Simply put, yes, he could.
We are constantly innovating on content and exploring new creative collaborations to elevate our purpose. These creative collaborations bring us to new audiences and new worlds.
What social platforms are you finding the most success with audiences?
Instagram and TikTok are the best-performing platforms currently! However, we have seen strong growth across channels with 400% increase in just a few years. TikTok has really come to the table in the last 12 months – it’s very popular, especially among younger fans. And on top of that, Snapchat is still very effective for reaching gen Alpha.
What has been your proudest career moment?
At Redbull, we were constantly challenged to create new brand properties to reach new audiences across sports, music, culture, and gaming. At that time, our focus was on building relevancy with gen Z consumers. 2016, Grime music was at its peak and very popular among young people. We created a new culture property called Red Bull Grime-A-Side fusing football and music to give emerging artists a credible platform, but it also enabled us to drive affinity and relevance with gen Z.
The format was based on five-a-side football, we selected grime artists as captains in key cities and they had to pick four other artists in that city to join them and then the cities battled at Red Bull studios. It was put to a public vote and they went through rounds, like in the FA Cup, to the final.
The platform supported AJ Tracy, who’s now a huge international artist, but there were many emerging artists at that time who were not known. To see the impact and how many hundreds of thousands of people voted, was gratifying.
Why is it so important to celebrate success?
Brands and industries can learn from one another. The Drum Awards is an excellent source of inspiration for brand and marketing teams. It showcases innovative ways of engaging consumers that challenge perspective and inspires you to create even better work. I always encourage my teams to look at best practices and winners and to take the learnings.
Where do you go for inspiration?
Inspiration is all around you, it’s up to you if you decide to use it or not! Keep your senses open. Moreover, brands are in such a fortunate position to leverage their own unique power of inspiration for the benefit of people and the planet, and through this build a deeper connection with their audience.
Daniel Matson is a judge on The Drum Awards for Marketing EMEA jury. The deadline for entries is March 23.