That was the conclusion I reached on hearing that the blue oval will likely stop funding V8 Supercars after 2015. Given that Broadmeadows is shutting down in 24 months and the deal with Fox will shrink the TV audience to nothing, it makes a cold sort of sense, if you're myopically focused on the Falcon.
But at this stage - after years of strangling Dick Johnson, the Stone Brothers and FPR - Ford's been quitting for so long I'm starting to think of them as one of those crazy girlfriends who are forever breaking up with you just to get some attention. Do they imagine if they draw the agony out as long as possible, we'll miss them more or something?
 |
| In 2009, this team were doing all Ford's winning; Broadmeadows turned off the money hose, and now they race Commodores. Stick to beat themselves with: made. (source) |
Not that it should come as any surprise. Ford's been pulling this sort of thing as long as they've been in Australia. Like in 1973, after Allan Moffat won them the ATCC and Bathurst in the same year, they shut down Ford Special Vehicles within months because, "We’re
selling every damn car we build and we don’t need racing." Moffat was given a racecar as a parting gift and left to run it all on his own. In 1977, same thing: Moffat gives them that famous 1-2 finish at the Mountain - probably the most photographed moment in Aussie motorsport ever - and the next year, zap, Ford and their money vanish like spit on a hotplate, leaving Moffat out in the cold again. We've got our marketing benefits, thank you very much, no need to keep paying through the nose for it. No wonder Moffat went to Mazda.
I've said it before: Ford doesn't seem to like motorsport, doesn't understand motorsport, and doesn't get why the rest of us like it so much. It's not just a Ford Australia thing either - wade through Jackie Stewart's vast autobiography Winning Is Not Enough and you find a revealing conversation aboard Dearborn's corporate jet, on the flight home from the '96 Canadian GP.
I'm not a businessman, but I remember one lesson from my business classes very clearly: if you have to cut fat from your budget, you slash everything except marketing. I didn't pull that $2 million figure out of the air, it comes from a very good article from James Phelps that's been making the rounds this week. You should totally read the whole thing, but here are the highlights:
...than $2 million for this:
Or look at it from the other side: all the bad publicity from announcing they're thinking of quitting V8s, and it's only going to save them $2 million a year? Couldn't they make one less of those cringeworthy TV ads instead, and keep FPR rolling? TV advertising is the least cost-effective way you could spend your marketing dollars these days anyway; Millennials like me are just too good at tuning it out, especially when I make that Mute button my best friend. Besides, what can you do with $58 million you can't do with 40?
So it seems to me there's only one thing we can do: stop buying Fords. They got into racing in the late 1960s because they were trying to overthrow Holden's massive market share (50% in those days. Yes, really). Desperate times, as they say. So if we stop buying Fords, maybe, just maybe, they'll get desperate enough to be that cool once again. It's gotta be worth a shot.
 |
| 2010: This man is crowned Australian Touring Car Champion in a Ford. 2011: He's driving for HRT. (source) |
I've said it before: Ford doesn't seem to like motorsport, doesn't understand motorsport, and doesn't get why the rest of us like it so much. It's not just a Ford Australia thing either - wade through Jackie Stewart's vast autobiography Winning Is Not Enough and you find a revealing conversation aboard Dearborn's corporate jet, on the flight home from the '96 Canadian GP.
There was four of us sitting together and they asked if I would help them make a decision about what they were going to do. I told them they should get out of Formula 1 because they weren’t fully committed to it. “You’re either in, or you’re out, and the way you’re doing it, at the moment, is not giving you the chance to get the success that you expect or want.” They said, “No. We can’t get out because the market will think it’s wrong and in the rest of the world, lots of countries really want it.”Don't like it, don't want to pay for it; have to do it because the customers force them to, with the result that they come across as sulky and resentful. If that's not proof the accounting trolls are running the company, I don't know what is. Show them a racing team budget and all they'll see is red ink to be minimised. The penalty of such a short-term view is that it's trapped the company in a spiral of ever-diminishing returns, slashing funding to Ford Performance Racing so much that they - the factory team - now have to run a Pepsi livery to make ends meet. So in their attempt to minimise promotion costs, Ford are paying $2 million a year to give Pepsi an edge over Coke. Bang-up job, guys.
I'm not a businessman, but I remember one lesson from my business classes very clearly: if you have to cut fat from your budget, you slash everything except marketing. I didn't pull that $2 million figure out of the air, it comes from a very good article from James Phelps that's been making the rounds this week. You should totally read the whole thing, but here are the highlights:
[FPR] are fast, and right now facing an uncertain future because Ford can’t see the value in taking $2 million a year from a $60 million marketing budget and spending it on … wait for it … cars. No apparently it makes more sense spending it on the Bachelorette and the Voice...That "$2 million a year" was jarring: "Wait, only $2 million? That's it? Why not twenty?" The rule of the thumb right now is that it costs $10 million to run a top-tier V8 Supercar team for a year: $20 million out of Ford's marketing budget there would fully fund FPR, prop up Dick Johnson Racing (useful when they've just lost their Wilson Security deal), and still leave enough to assist the handful of extras who enter Bathurst each year, putting them in Falcons instead of Commodores or Nissans. At the very least, surely there's more benefit in spending $10 million to put this on track...
Since announcing they are shutting down their Australian operation at the end of 2016 and axing the Falcon, people think the company is in decline. Some people even think that Ford will not exist in Australia soon. The company needs to be as visible as possible so what can FPR do? Well how about the 3.775 million people who sat in their homes watching a 300kph an hour advertising board win Bathurst...?
And then there are the thousands of fans who spend $60 to become mobile advertising boards themselves by buying the shirts, hats, and flags. Wait, they pay to advertise your brand? Yep.
 |
| Source |
...than $2 million for this:
 |
| Source |
Or look at it from the other side: all the bad publicity from announcing they're thinking of quitting V8s, and it's only going to save them $2 million a year? Couldn't they make one less of those cringeworthy TV ads instead, and keep FPR rolling? TV advertising is the least cost-effective way you could spend your marketing dollars these days anyway; Millennials like me are just too good at tuning it out, especially when I make that Mute button my best friend. Besides, what can you do with $58 million you can't do with 40?
So it seems to me there's only one thing we can do: stop buying Fords. They got into racing in the late 1960s because they were trying to overthrow Holden's massive market share (50% in those days. Yes, really). Desperate times, as they say. So if we stop buying Fords, maybe, just maybe, they'll get desperate enough to be that cool once again. It's gotta be worth a shot.
No comments:
Post a Comment