Why Formula E’s CMO is chasing casual motorsports fans over F1 diehards

Henry Chilcott is chief marketing officer at Formula E and an ex-Formula One marketer for McLaren. He tells The Drum: “If I think about my marketing dollars, I’m going to have to spend a lot more to convert a die-hard Formula One fan than I am a more casual motorsports fan.”

Like Formula One, the Netflix hit series Drive to Survive has been a “magnet” for Formula E. So much so that the marketing team has created a Drive to Survive audience segment to target and bring into the Formula E world.

“The huge jump in fans that come into motorsport in Formula One in the last five years, the vast majority of them come through Drive to Survive. Those people are more casual motorsport fans. They’re not hardcore racing fans who, if it doesn’t have a V8 engine in there, aren’t going to be interested.”

According to viewership data from Kantar Sport, Formula E saw its TV audience grow from 62 million in 2023 to 86 million in 2024 – a 40% increase year-over-year. In the same season, Formula E reported its live audiences have increased by 37% (YoY) from 45 million to 61 million.

Chilcott is mulling over ideas in the vein of Drive to Survive. Although keen to stress it wouldn’t be a Drive to Survive take two, he wants to find an unscripted format that would grow the personalities of the sport’s drivers. “What people are interested in is the humans with all their frailties and the stage is the sport.”

At Formula E, it is Chilcott’s job to feed the narrative that high performance and sustainability can coexist.

“We have to dissolve the prejudice that sustainable versions of things aren’t quite as exciting as the unsustainable. That’s a message that most boardrooms around the world are talking about today. Brands want to make amazing products and services but deliver them in a more sustainable way.”

Chilcott’s current marketing strategy is to play on the fact Formula E can create more competitive moments than Formula One. For example, Formula E can have more overtakes in a race than Formula One can have in a season. “The way we’ve activated this year has been all around showing the world how competitive we are and, in some cases, not taking ourselves too seriously.”

Examples of stunts from the past year include getting Usain Bolt to break his sprint record in a Formula E car and getting a female to break the 0-60mps record, beating any male Formula One driver.

Chilcott says this strategy is also present in its ads with creative agency Uncommon. A recent campaign for the Tokyo Race was a humorous film that nods to the Fast & Furious movies by celebrating street racing culture. “In our behaviors and in our advertising, but also in our PR and the way we speak, it is about continuing to hit that beat of this is a dramatic and exciting sport.”

Motorsport is rare in that it is technically ungendered, meaning men and women can compete against each other, although Formula One and Formula E currently have no female drivers. “The old world of motorsport is male,” Chilcott says. “Motorsport is an open championship, it’s just dominated by men because they’ve been invested in for decades.”

In February, makeup brand Charlotte Tilbury became the official sponsor of the Formula One Academy, the organization that is dedicated to training female drivers. “Five years ago, for a brand like that to come into motorsport just wouldn’t have happened,” Chilcott says. Currently, 40% of Formula One fans are female, contributing to a total 2022 season viewership of over 1.5 billion, so the sport doesn’t have a female engagement issue, there is just zero visibility from a driver and low visibility of women in the pits.

Of the Charlotte Tilbury deal, Chilcott says: “It will start to create a vision and create visibility for women in this sport and allows it to appear to the world in a way that just hasn’t appeared before.”