Mastering Fan Engagement with Williams Racing

When it comes to fan engagement, I often focus on where things are lacking. However, there’s one organisation that I bring up time and time again when people ask me if there’s anyone managing to nail it: Williams Racing.

Despite having a long and prestigious history, Williams has been a back-marker team in recent years. While new fans drawn into F1 via its recent Drive To Survive led popularity gravitate towards Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari, teams like Williams have had to work harder to grow their fan base. As we know, however, just because an organisation should be building their fan engagement strategy doesn’t mean they actually do, and so the commitment from Williams to a consistent fan-centric strategy is a breath of fresh air.

Here are six parts of their fan engagement efforts that place them P1 in the loyalty race:

Regular lottery-based opportunities to interact with their drivers.

One of my main research interests is face-to-face fan-celebrity interactions. When opportunities to meet celebrities exist, in 99% of cases, they are restricted to those who can either pay, have connections, or are somehow noticed for a particular type of (usually time and labour-intensive) form of participation.

But Williams breaks the mould and hosts regular opportunities for virtual meet-and-greets throughout the season with their drivers. All fans have to do is enter a lottery, and then anyone — regardless of where they live in the world — has the chance to win.

I won a 90-second video meet-and-greet with Logan Sargeant in March this year, and even though he was a fresh rookie driver rather than someone I was already a fan of, it helped me build a connection to him. Logan gave up probably half an hour of his time that day, but it’s half an hour that led to a dozen or so fans with a much more significant bond to both him and the team. While drivers’ time — especially on race weekends — is sacred, small pockets of time dedicated to “meeting” fans can make all of the difference.

Easy-to-understand recaps of each race weekend from team principal James Vowles to engage fans of all knowledge levels.

Even when you understand F1 in general, there are often things that happen in individual races that require further explanation. While most teams do some kind of recap, James is amazing at explaining each race in a straightforward way so that you understand what happened with their drivers and strategy, regardless of whether you’ve been a fan for twenty years or twenty days.

Badge-based weekend check-ins, encouraging regular use to collect the whole season.

I’m not great at remembering to check in (even when they email reminders!), but having a low-effort collectible is a perfect way to encourage regular use of their app and membership zone

Frequent, easy to enter competitions

Who doesn’t love the chance to win free things without having to jump through hoops?! While all teams run competitions at various points throughout the season, Williams are the most consistent in terms of scale and ease of entry. Yes, Red Bull may give you the chance to road trip with Danny Ric, but more chances to win smaller prizes means more happy fans.

Fan zones in most Grand Prix cities with chances to meet the drivers.

While these have become increasingly hectic as F1 has grown in popularity, the consistency of the opportunity for fans in town for the Grand Prix to have an extra touch-point is so important to celebrate fans who want the “in real life” experience but can’t afford the kinds of VIP access otherwise required.

Fan appreciation week

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, but it was seeing an email announcing their Fan Appreciation Week that really kicked my butt into gear. Few organisations have proper fan appreciation initiatives in place, and even fewer go to the effort of spotlighting fifty fans they noticed throughout the season. Fans love feeling special, and like their fandom means something to the team, and something like this is the perfect way to show your fans they’re valued and cement life-long commitment.

While it’s easy to say “but Georgie, you said yourself they need to grow their fan base! Why should Red Bull or Mercedes or Ferrari go to this much effort when their fans are just there?!”, the answer is because you should never, ever take your fans for granted.

Your fans may be there today, but what about tomorrow? What are you doing to encourage them to stick around? To make them feel special? If you’re just asking them to keep coming along and spending their time and money on you while getting nothing in return, you’re not thinking about the long game. Red Bull may be dominating right now, but what happens with their inevitable downturn? Mercedes has Lewis Hamilton, but what happens when he’s gone, potentially taking his fans with him? Fan engagement is giving fans a reason to stick around regardless of whatever moment of success, failure, or celebrity you’re currently experiencing.

When I first started watching F1, I couldn’t have cared less about Williams. But — as you do when you’re studying fan engagement — I signed up for the membership programs of every team, and it was through witnessing their fan engagement strategy (…and a little bit of how much I love Alex Albon) that I became a fan. Attention and Engagement are two of the biggest drivers of fandom (…no pun intended), and more organisations need to realise just how much value can come from a dedicated focus built on more than just email clicks and merchandise purchases.