Formula One has consistently been among the richest sports, where from sponsorships alone, they’ve raked in over $30 billion in under twenty years. Despite claiming they will become carbon neutral by 2030 and supposedly banning tobacco advertisements, Formula One continues to allow deceptive practises by teams in order to subvert advertising regulations. Liberty Media itself has also allowed the world’s largest polluter (Saudi Aramco Oil) to become the title sponsor of the sport for 2020 onwards. There’s a long list of unethical companies sponsoring F1 teams, who hide behind ‘better tomorrow’ type campaigns such as; Mission Winnow, British American Tobacco, BP, Shell, Pirelli and Heineken to name a few. In this essay I’m going to focus on tobacco advertising and how despite the F1 ban on it, companies continue to use subliminal and deceptive strategies to sell harmful products.
Tobacco companies were considered pretty late to the F1 marketing game. Brands like Bull Durham were advertising at baseball parks way back in the 19th century. These companies have always latched onto sport, athletes and medical practitioners in order to create a healthy, positive brand identity.
During 2003, in the USA, big tobacco was spending over $45 per citizen on nicotine advertising. Tens of billions of dollars have been and are still spent on making sure as much of the world is addicted to nicotine as possible. Big tobacco began advertising with F1 in the late 1960s when fuel companies dropped the sport and tyre brands started charging the teams. Tobacco branding and logos were seen at every race and on nearly every car that had ever raced in the sport up until 2005, when those companies were banned in sports by EU regulations. A recent report has now found that over the past seventy years, Formula One have accepted over $4.4 billion in tobacco advertisement.
Through sports, smoking was greatly marketed towards young men, where campaigns from firms like American Tobacco used provocative slogans such as “May cause the urge to act like a man,” to trap teens into a life of nicotine addiction through their adolescent urge to grow up fast, especially during a time where sadly ‘being a man’ was the aspirational goal for all young men. This also worked so well because they saw their heroes such as Babe Ruth etc, all smoking and advocating for it over the decades, it’s no wonder they wanted to do anything they could to be like them.
Throughout advertising history, tobacco has consistently been portrayed as healthy and even thought by many, through sports partnerships, to enhance athletic performance. Of course for many years there was little evidence to the contrary as it was either discouraged or the athletes who were sponsored and smoked a lot, retired long before the awful effects of smoking could be seen in the public spotlight. This advertising was so successful even doctors recommended smoking for minor ailments, my own great grandmother was prescribed cigarettes back in the early 1960s for headaches.
“Making lung cancer and addiction cool is a tall order; F1 sponsorship hits the spot perfectly” - Professor Gerard Hastings
Starting in 1973, Marlboro began using Formula 1 to advertise its cigarettes to millions around the world. It wasn’t until the 80s and early 90s that Ferrari took them on as title sponsor, meaning they were spending the most on the team while getting the most back through their prominence in advertising, mainly on the car liveries throughout the years. Advertising cigarettes in Formula One was relatively simple back then, Marlboro simply slapped their logo onto a few
team’s cars and all they had to do was sit back and wait for new customers while F1 teams made the addiction “cool.” After (PMI owned) Marlboro left McLaren in 1997, the Ferrari team was earning so much from the cigarette sponsor that they even changed their name to ‘Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro’ although this ended a few years later with the EU banning tobacco advertising on the continent.
You would think the ban on tobacco ads would have stopped Marlboro in its tracks back in 2006. However you’d probably be shocked to hear that one of the worlds largest tobacco brands, Philip Morris International, (formerly known on Ferrari cars as Marlboro) are still title sponsor to this day in 2021. It was only 2011 when Ferrari removed Marlboro from their name, but not before trying to creatively circumvent the advertising regulations by creating subliminal PMI logos such as the famous barcode scandal in 2010, which used an optical illusion to resemble the Marlboro logo on top of the car.
Ferrari and Tobacco After investigation and a lot of negative attention, Ferrari removed the barcode in favour of a red square with white border, still a nod to Marlboro, without giving in and admitting that their previous ad attempt was against the law. Today the Marlboro logo does not adorn any Ferrari racing car, however Philip Morris International have continued to be title sponsor of the team. They have done this by creating ‘Mission Winnow’ which many call a financial ploy for big tobacco to fund the team and stir up conversation around Marlboro. Their mission statement is as follows; “Philip Morris International Inc. and Scuderia Ferrari today rounded a new turn in their 45-year partnership with the unveiling of Mission Winnow, a new global
initiative to create engagement around the role of science, technology and innovation as a powerful force for good in any industry.” but as Jalopnik writer Michael Ballaban says; “I don’t think anyone doubted the role of science, technology, or innovation as a force for anything, really. So what the hell is going on here?”
“Creatively circumvent the advertising regulations by creating subliminal logos”
Mar duri cen its h
rlboro were spending over £50,000,000 on F1 marketing ing Ayrton and Alain’s time at McLaren, giving the brand ntre stage around the world and ultimately contributing to huge success. McLaren was working alongside Marlboro concurrently with Ferrari. It wasn’t uncommon back in the first few decades of F1 to have teams share sponsors, although this did come to an end in the 90s after over twenty years of sponsorship, when Marlboro and Ferrari decided to create a closer partnership with a title sponsorship. However, to this day the McLaren Marlboro livery is one of the most recognisable in the history of F1, for many years it was driven by racing legends; Ayrton Senna who took home three world championship wins in the MP4/4 and Alain Prost, who brought the total race wins for the car up to fifteen out of sixteen events. Marlboro were spending over £50,000,000 on F1 marketing during Ayrton and Alain’s time at McLaren, giving the brand centre stage around the world and ultimately contributing to its huge success.
We continue to see tobacco sponsorship within Formula One teams today. At the beginning of 2019, McLaren announced British American Tobacco as their new title sponsor. This deal is under the guise of the campaign slogan “A Better Tomorrow,” where BAT are pushing what the tobacco marketing industry call “potentially reduced risk products” such as vaping and Snus For the first time ever in 2019, McLaren along with BAT, launched the ‘vype’ logo onto their cars. This was seen in Bahrain where advertising standards for tobacco are non-existent and companies can have no shame in creating a buzz around an e-cig device on track. These “potentially reduced risk products” come with the caveat of “potentially” because the companies who make them aren’t even sure how bad they are for you yet. It’s entirely irresponsible for a sport with a reach of around 2 billion people to market devices with unknown potential. BAT and McLaren haven’t seemed to have solidified their campaign stance yet though, as when the partnership was launched, they focused on talking about their technological research into batteries and other fields, not mentioning the “reduced risk products.” However, on the run up to the Australian Grand Prix, McLaren made a statement announcing they would be removing all BAT branding from the livery and team for the race, saying how they’re “mindful of the stance that the Australian government currently takes towards potentially reduced risk products.” Confirming the BAT deal is about more than battery technology.
Formula One continues to allow deceptive practises by teams, in collaboration with tobacco companies, in order to subvert advertising regulations around the world. Formula One as a whole, along with Ferrari, McLaren and big tobacco will go down in history as near masters of subliminal marketing and as deceptive advertisers. This practise is bad for global health as nicotine addiction is still being glorified by McLaren and Ferrari. There’s no hard data on how many people have continued to or began to smoke, but it’s no secret that via Formula One, companies including British American Tobacco and Phillip Morris Int have always tried to portray smoking as glamorous and cool. While advertising on F1 cars, the reach of these companies is in the billions and while the majority of viewers are over 25, more than one in ten aren’t. As we have seen with school vaping epidemics in recent years, heated tobacco devices should not continue to be endorsed by young people’s idols, whether that be directly such as at the Bahrain Grand Prix (Vype) or subliminally, such as on Ferrari cars and crew with Mission Winnow. That will not create “a better tomorrow,” it will help create a new generation who put their lives on the line for a nicotine addiction.