Cadillac unveiled its F1 livery with a Times Square countdown and Super Bowl ad, planting the flag as America’s newest Formula 1 team ahead of its debut.
Hundreds of fans braved the frigid cold in Times Square on Sunday night to witness the Cadillac Formula 1 team unveil its first-ever race car livery, just moments after the global reveal via a Super Bowl commercial during the fourth quarter of the Big Game.
Cadillac built a giant box encased in frosted glass in the heart of the Crossroads of the World late last week, with the silhouette of the car seductively teasing the design to the hundreds of thousands who pass through Times Square every day. Friday afternoon, an electronic countdown clock displayed on the glass box began ticking down the days and hours to the Super Bowl commercial and the car design’s grand global introduction. And where better to launch a public countdown than the best-known place for them on the planet?
Around 10 p.m. Sunday night on the East Coast, Cadillac’s expensive minute-long commercial aired around the world, introducing a two-sided livery in a modern, sophisticated black and white paying homage to the car company’s heritage, that will speed in races around the world in the team’s inaugural season as the sport’s first expansion team in a decade.
Unlike most Super Bowl commercials, there were no celebrity cameos or pitchmen, just the car alone as the star attraction. As Cadillac brought the countdown clock to life Friday, Cadillac F1’s chief marketing officer, Ahmed Iqbal, said it wanted to innovate the way in which livery announcements are made altogether.
“This is a way to bring it to fans in a very different way, meet them where they’re at,” he told Boardroom. “Secondly, we wanted to make sure that it was a big moment for us to plant the flag that we’re America’s new team. And what better way to do it than to go to the Super Bowl? We wanted to make sure that this was the truest livery reveal we could make in the most spectacular fashion.”
By putting the car in Times Square, Iqbal continued, fans could feel like they were part of the team and instrumental in writing Cadillac’s initial F1 chapter. Teams across the sport, led by iconic powers Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, and Red Bull, have developed a global fanbase for decades, putting Cadillac at a significant disadvantage as it starts from scratch.
“While it’s a challenge, it’s also actually our unique vantage point,” Iqbal said. “Our value proposition to fans is we’re starting everything day one, so you can build it with us, starting with the livery and our first race coming up in March. And we’re doing it in a new era, a social era, a very digital era. So we’re going to allow core F1 fans and new fans alike to come in and enjoy the journey with us and see the build from step one. That’s our unique point of view.”
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Although U.S.-based Haas made its F1 debut in 2016, Iqbal and Co. are trying to position Cadillac as America’s new Formula 1 team. And the team appears to be sparing little to no expense in trying to drive product and brand awareness, building fandom in a sport not tied to geography like the NFL, NBA, or soccer. One way to do that is through huge, splashy marketing efforts, and another way is by signing drivers fans around the world know and love.
Sergio “Checo” Perez, who earlier this decade finished in the top five in the driver standings in four consecutive seasons and is beloved in Latin America, and Valtteri Bottas, who finished in the top five for five straight years while at Mercedes, make for a really strong driver lineup for any mid-table team, especially an expansion franchise. And veteran Zhou Guanyu makes for a quality reserve driver as well. And while Cadillac boasts experience, it’s positioning itself as starting from scratch while seeking to innovate at every opportunity, as seen in Sunday’s livery reveal both on TV and in Times Square.
“The key is bringing new stories in new ways on new platforms so we have something for everyone,” Iqbal said. “And the key is the diversity of the type of content we create.”
Cadillac will feature a mix of core racing and lifestyle content, with educational material to get newer fans up to speed. The livery reveal provided a combination of catnip for the hardcore F1 fans, a splashy car launch both physically and digitally for more casual audiences, and building buzz that kept fans locked in on a bitterly cold night as Caddy gets ready for its black and white car to hit the track for the very first time in Australia, coming up in March.
And when it’s lights out in Melbourne, Cadillac can point to this past weekend as the start line for F1’s newest team, building its fan base from scratch.
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