Now Slurpee Gives You Wings
As Carlos pointed out during live commenting earlier today, Red Bull Racing have taken on an almost Indycar-esque look this weekend, as they’ve deigned to run 7-Eleven branding on the rear end-plates of both of their cars.
In an uncharacteristic move the green and white logos have bumped the more traditional Red Bull Cola logos, leaving the recently introduced beverage with just the bargeboards as a promotional outlet. F1 Wolf also noted that RBR employed a similar marketing ploy during the race in Fuji last year, although you’d have done well to pick them out through the spray.
What is more unusual however, is seeing Toro Rosso carrying commercial sponsorship. They too are running with convenience store logo’s on their end-plates, this time in the form of Lawson Station.
Lawson Station are in fact the second largest chain of convenience stores in Japan, behind only 7-Eleven. The two companies are competitors, and Red Bull are clearly playing a marketing blinder in this instance. The weather playing ball thus far is no doubt helping them too.
I do wonder if STR’s debut into the grown up world of commercialisation has anything to do with Mateschitz’s renewed interest in the sister team, and correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the first time Berger’s boys have run any such bodywork sponsorship since their inception in ‘06?
October 10th, 2008 at 20:31Scott said:
For anyone wishing to undertake a crash course in V8 Supercar racing ahead of Bathurst, there’s a podcast available:
http://www.v8supercars.com.au/content/panelbeaters_podcast/podcast.xml
‘me’ will no doubt approve of the fact that they have an archive stretching all the way back to 2005.
October 10th, 2008 at 20:33F1Wolf said:
What a spot ! that lawson is unlike 7-11 everywhere in china so we can expect str running the same in shanghai too . But no 7-11 for rbr in shanghai I think
October 10th, 2008 at 20:48r.g (my fuji, i managed to break sidepodcast.com) said:
lawson is possibly the most un-japanese sounding name, ever.
and 7-11 i would expect to see in canada.
strange that sponsers would only want 1/2 races.
October 10th, 2008 at 20:58Scott said:
They could have been given the space for free in return for Red Bull receiving more prominent shelf space.
Similar deals between retailers and product suppliers are quite common. For example, K Mart (Newman/Haas) and Target (Ganassi) would sell associate sponsor rights on cars to companies such as Dirt Devil and Coca-Cola. In return, they would see their products displayed more prominently in-store. So this could be a reverse of that arrangement.
October 10th, 2008 at 21:07me said:
damn their server’s slow. just getting it now.
i most certainly do.
October 10th, 2008 at 21:09me said:
an odd logo too, wouldn’t you say?
7-eleven are owned by a japanese company, so their appearance this weekend makes a lot of sense:
http://tinyurl.com/7elevenholdings
ahh, interesting. hadn’t considered that.
October 10th, 2008 at 21:12Steven Roy said:
Exactly my first thought on hearing this. There is a far bigger deal in the background and this on car advertising is just a minor part of it.
October 10th, 2008 at 21:13r.g (my fuji, i managed to break sidepodcast.com) said:
ah ok, fair enough then
looks like a whiskey bottle
October 10th, 2008 at 21:13me said:
anyone else think that str sticker looks ready to peel off?
it’s almost unintentionally 3-dimensional. whereas the 7-eleven logo looks like it’s baked into the carbon fibre.
October 10th, 2008 at 21:14me said:
i was thinking milk churn.
October 10th, 2008 at 21:16r.g (my fuji, i managed to break sidepodcast.com) said:
yeah
looks like someone said, ‘ehh, smack it on and itll dee’.
October 12th, 2008 at 15:41Journeyer said:
Japanese LOVE un-japanese sounding names. F1 has lots of them: Super Aguri, Leyton House, Footwork, and so on.
October 13th, 2008 at 21:06Red Bull Gives You Japanese Cornershops | mess with da bull said:
[...] Sidepodcast seem to have an interesting take on the Japanese GP only advertising of both 7-Eleven on the Red Bull rear-wing and another Japanese outlet called ‘Lawson Station’ who feature on Toro Rosso’s. [...]