Inside Story: ONLY Actor to have his face on an F1 Car, #MasterBlaster (re-run)

[00:00:02] Before we begin, I wanted to give a huge shout out to the folks at Amazon Music for partnering with us on this episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast. But more on this later, right then let's get right into today's episode.

[00:00:35] Hey there folks and welcome back to the Inside Line F1 Podcast. Today, we're going to be revisiting an Inside Line F1 Podcast classic. It's time to look back at some inside stories from the Force India Formula One team.

[00:00:49] Now then, if I ask you to name five living, breathing gods on our planet today, you might look at me and go, Mate, what? Are you stupid or something? In India though, ask anyone the same question and they'll actually go ahead and end up naming 20 different gods.

[00:01:05] And by the way, none of them would be related to religion in any way whatsoever. In case you weren't aware, we Indians tend to treat our actors and cricketers just a little bit differently than most people around the world.

[00:01:17] We have thousands of people standing outside their homes every single day to get a brief glimpse of them. We have fans fighting normal people who accidentally happen to berate these celebrities and craziest of them all, some of them are even literally worshipped.

[00:01:32] Two of those mammoth personalities share a very interesting common link, the Force India Formula One team. Were they the owners? No. Were they ever in the car for a show run? No. Or did they even wear the official team jersey at some point?

[00:01:46] The answer to that is also a strong no. So how is it that Force India were able to extract some insane marketing leverage through two modern Indian gods? The greatest cricket player in history, Sachin Dendulkar and the King himself, Shah Rukh Khan

[00:02:02] who has been one of the leading faces of the Indian film industry Bollywood for the last three decades. On this episode of the Inside Line F1 podcast, we have Kunal Shah and Ravi Khan Sabnavis,

[00:02:13] the two men who led the marketing department at Force India, sharing their stories of the time when Force India collaborated with some living gods and how they made it all happen. Let's listen in.

[00:02:23] So in the last one, we were able to discuss a lot about Force India's marketing campaigns, just what happens in a marketing role. But Kunal, continuing on from this one, I have to talk about just a quick question

[00:02:33] about the one from a billion campaign that we touched upon. Why did it just not go forward later on? Well, the true picture was that we ran out of sponsors and of course,

[00:02:44] you know, BGM ran into his own level, you know, his own problems as it's been publicly documented as well. So it was very tough to sort of make it happen again to the scale that it did.

[00:02:57] And it was again, you know, that was literally the reality of things because I still remember and this is in again a personal memory that I used to, I knew that things were going to go wrong with the team. I had enough information.

[00:03:10] So when I was applying for jobs, people would just call me for a job interview just to know about, hey, what's happening with, you know, BGM? And I'm like, but hey, aren't you here to talk to me for my job?

[00:03:19] But yes, on this episode, we still have Ravi Khan Sabnavis who was the who was my boss and the former marketing head of the Force India Formula 1 team. But that was largely why the one from a billion hunt didn't happen the second time. We had grand plans.

[00:03:35] We had plans to incorporate eSports into it and so on in 2012. In 2012, yes, we had, you know, state of art simulators that had come in and again, I'm going to name the individual not not for any reason, but it actually happened.

[00:03:49] This was I think 2012 April 1st or maybe 2013 April 1st. Lotus Formula 1 team actually said we're going to run an eSports championship. We're going to choose a driver from the eSports championship and put him straight in the Formula 1 car. Nice.

[00:04:06] And, you know, Robert Furnley or Bob Furnley as we called it, called him, wrote an email to Ravi and I said, just so you guys know this is what I've been proposing all along, right? And both of us were like, oh, that's impossible.

[00:04:19] And this is again where my experience of working on grassroots of motorsports comes in. And I said that's impossible. And then I looked at the date and it was first of April, right?

[00:04:30] So I wrote back to him and of course I was being polite because it was Bob Furnley, right? And I wrote back saying, Bob, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but this is an April Fool's joke.

[00:04:40] And I should have signed off saying thank you for falling for it, but either way. That's some crazy stuff. But Ravi, I've got to ask you about this one campaign that we discussed early on. Force India 2011, First Indian Grand Prix.

[00:04:56] There's no Indian driver clearly for force India that is. Karun was racing, but he only unfortunately got to do the free practice for Lotus. So there's that. But more on Force India, there's no driver to leverage on, but you still had an amazing campaign.

[00:05:10] The thing was it was a race. The race campaign. Just what was it all about? Because I remember the hype being big at that time, especially at the circuit where there was what? I think 100,000 people who'd gathered in. Yes. So this was our moment of reckoning, actually.

[00:05:26] When Mr. Malia bought the team, it was about being an Indian F1 team. And therefore, the livery was in the Indian tricolor as you know. But finally, notwithstanding the fact that we didn't have Indian F1 drivers, but we were still an Indian team with the Indian tricolor livery.

[00:05:46] So therefore, the Indian first inaugural Indian GP was our moment of reckoning to really put ourselves there as a truly Indian team and get people to cheer for this team.

[00:06:01] And all these years off, as I mentioned in the previous episode of trying to build the category of India would hopefully come to fruition at this moment.

[00:06:11] And then we decided that let's put together a campaign and what better than telling people raise the flag at the Indian GP for the Force India F1 team. And you guys distributed all the flags? There were only your flags at the race, I remember.

[00:06:27] We actually did much more than that. You know, we actually did multiple things. We had hoardings across Delhi leading up to the circuit. Yes, I remember. That was one of them.

[00:06:40] The second one that lasted for the next, I think three or four years was we branded all the luggage trolleys at the Delhi airport. And as luck would have it, they never got pulled off.

[00:06:51] So you had luggage trolleys which said raise the flag for the Force India F1 team, which remained for I think at least four years. Wow.

[00:07:01] And something which we did very interesting since we had show cars, we said let's create a ground event where we will get people to come cheer. We had I think a board where people came and put their signatures and wrote things for Force India. Right.

[00:07:17] And then we had people, celebrities from these different places. We said we need to have one from Kashmir, we need to have one from the east. So we invited Mr. Omar Abdullah, we invited Saurav Ganguly, Navjot Siddhu and Punjab.

[00:07:32] So we had a lot of people whom we called and said come cheer and write what you want, wish your team the best. And all that culminated in October 11. You know what? It's kind of funny because the Mender Racing Formula E team is doing something very similar today.

[00:07:48] They stole our idea. You would do that, right? Being the countries, I mean at this stage, unfortunately the sole big racing team of course, that that would happen.

[00:08:00] And that's such a crazy idea and that also involved tying up with say the mega celebrity of all celebrities in India, Shah Rukh Khan for a picture of his movies poster on your front wing for the Indian Grand Prix, the Ravan movie. Okay.

[00:08:15] We'll not talk about how good or bad that one was because it's a bit of a guilty pleasure in that movie. Not the movie. The movie but the campaign. That was memorable.

[00:08:22] I remember watching it on your NDTVs, your CNBCs, your Archdux of this world, which is a more sensational Hindi news channel. But everyone was covering it because here was Shah Rukh Khan on the most beautiful Formula One cover, this whole poster on the movie.

[00:08:37] Why would you not cover it? Absolutely and so the key objective behind Raise the Flag was to bring out the emotion of feeling for an Indian Formula One. It's like how when India plays cricket against any other team, you want to bring out that emotion.

[00:08:53] And we said the way to do that is to let people be a part of it. Come raise the flag, see your celebrities are doing it, people in day-to-day walk of life are doing it and so on.

[00:09:03] These were mega multi-million dollar campaigns that we were running at that time. And Shah Rukh Khan was of course the cherry on the cake. And I remember we actually recorded an advertisement with him at TVC as well where he recites a poem and then he actually says,

[00:09:20] come I raise the flag, join me raise the flag. Oh my God. I just remembered. Yes and then of course, Shah Rukh of course had two TVCs with us. First was via Kingfisher Alliance when the team had just been launched and so on.

[00:09:34] And those were the days where the team was building itself up. And Ravan was during the Indian Grand Prix days I would say. And some phenomenal memories working with a superstar like Shah Rukh so down to earth, so talented,

[00:09:50] sitting in front of a camera doing one take shots and moving on to the next. And you're just like, wow, there's a reason why that guy charges like million dollars for every day he's engaged or whatever. So that was Shah Rukh.

[00:10:02] And yes, he still has the distinction of being the only movie star in the world who had his face on the nose of a Formula One car.

[00:10:12] And I'm going to reference to Star Wars and Superman and all the other movie promotions which largely Red Bull have done in time specifically around the Monaco Grand Prix. But at no time was there a face of a celebrity planted on the nose of a Formula One car.

[00:10:28] And I remember I still was on the grid event. He stood next to his photo, took a picture and I didn't find anything wrong with it because he is still the mega star as we call it. So that was the whole deal with Shah Rukh.

[00:10:43] And he attended the race. He interacted with fans and the likes. And I think it was a fantastic promotion not just because we did it.

[00:10:51] But that's what like you said made Formula One and Force India be known to the masses because we wanted to break through that clutter. We wanted to even break through the English speaking audiences.

[00:11:03] We wanted to go vernacular, which is why we went to the different towns of India where people didn't really English was in the primary language like it's not in several parts of the world.

[00:11:12] Went to the southern parts of India where there were superstars and their own rights doing the same thing promoting Force India. And you know, again an offshoot we had Paris Hilton posing with a force India car at one point.

[00:11:24] She was in India and we so we said we have to hit the elites as well as the masses because there is a large spectrum of people who can be mobilized towards the team. Did she ask why the car wasn't in pink?

[00:11:38] Maybe she might have been happy to find out that six years down the line it did become pink but hey, that's beyond the point. What I really want to know is and I'll club this in with the next question because Sachin Dendulkar was one guy.

[00:11:50] And for those of you who don't know about Sachin, don't worry you're in the same boat as Maria Sharapova but he is the God of cricket. Most runs ever, most centuries ever. He's basically been about the highest honor in India for a civilian for playing crickets.

[00:12:06] You kind of get what kind of emotion that guy brings up but Sachin was a part of one of the campaigns that you guys did.

[00:12:11] And I want to know more about that campaign and also the effectiveness of both having the guys like Shah Rukh and Sachin on because as Kunal mentioned, breaking through the barriers was one thing. But did it really work out so well for you guys?

[00:12:23] You know, I'm going to make this campaign the master blaster campaign about Kunal. Okay, and I'm going to link this back to your question in the earlier episode on what kind of people do F1 teams look for, right?

[00:12:39] So this was Kunal's idea saying, look, let's pay tribute to Sachin. It's coinciding with the Indian Grand Prix. What better occasion? And remember we were trying to solve a problem for Force India and not for cricket.

[00:12:54] And the problem being that you want maximum PR for your team and especially when you're not among the top three or four teams. So that was the idea he came with and said, let's just put master blaster on the car and of course leverage it everywhere else.

[00:13:08] And I said no way. Because when you come to think of it on the surface, what good would it do for Force India is what I think you must be thinking, right? Yes, so I spontaneously said no way. What does it do for us?

[00:13:24] And we need to try and do things which we've been doing all this while including perhaps a Ravan promotion where we focus on F1 and who Force India is. This would needlessly take away attention and bring it all about cricket.

[00:13:37] But well Kunal being the passionate one doggedly persisted and made a complete nuisance of himself. So finally I said, alright, he wore me down and I said, okay, why don't you do one thing?

[00:13:49] You've been making a verbal argument all this while why don't you just put it down on a mail? Right. And as it happened, the mail that he put together was even more articulate than all the arguments which he had verbally been putting in front of me.

[00:14:08] So I said, hey, this is making sense. I don't think truth be told. I don't think I was 100% convinced as yet. But I said, I'm doing this because there's Kunal who's extremely passionate about this and believes in it.

[00:14:23] So let me send this mail to Mr. Malia and see if he agrees. Right. And I think VGM replied within an hour or two saying go ahead. You nailed the accent. How could you do it? Absolutely. And then I think the rest is history.

[00:14:41] This game was, just before I came here, I was looking at some of the PR that we gathered around this. And I think there were so many articles, reams and reams of media on how the Force India F1 team pays tribute to Sachin Tendulkar. Interesting stuff.

[00:15:00] I'm going to add to that. And you started saying there was this tie up with Sachin Tendulkar. That's what we wanted people to believe. But that was not the truth. It was just us commemorating Sachin for fantastic innings that he had in the world of cricket for India.

[00:15:18] It was coinciding with the fact that he was playing his last competitive cricket match. And we said, we can't put his words Sachin Tendulkar because we didn't want to pay for it.

[00:15:28] And obviously, we are marketers. We have to try and find the easiest way to get the biggest bang for our buck. And of course, given the links and the relationship I now have with Sachin, I'm sure he could still send the bill my way.

[00:15:42] But on a more serious note, that's what we wanted people to believe. So when we put Master Blaster on the car, media covered it and they turned around and they said, is Sachin Tendulkar attending Indian Grand Prix as a guest of the Force India Formula One team?

[00:15:58] And we kept shut. We said, why should we confirm or deny the rumor? We weren't the ones who spread it. The media made it up and that gave us fantastic PR value

[00:16:10] at a time when the team was only being spoken about in negative light because it was the 2013 Indian Grand Prix. That was also coincidentally when I met Mithila, right? And 2012 was when the Kingfisher Airlines, you know, the entire operations came to a halt.

[00:16:26] So it was fighting a major, it was an uphill battle at each time to say anything good about the team. And that's what Master Blaster brought to us. And in general, given the links with IPL, given the links with the Sahara Group,

[00:16:42] Cricket was one of our second sports to sort of bank on each time we wanted some great content. And I know you mentioned in the last episode or maybe just right now that there was an F1 car in a Cricket Stadium.

[00:16:57] There was also an F1 car at the Metallica show, which was headlining the Indian Grand Prix, I think 2012 or 2013 at some point. 2011. 2011. There you go. Yes. So we did all we could to breakthrough and reach out to more than just the Formula One fan.

[00:17:13] But I think we should dig deeper into the whole IPL activation. You know, we did because I still remember and Cricket buffs listening in Chris Gale when he when he hit 175, it was at the Chinnasami Stadium in Bangalore for Ravi and me.

[00:17:31] It was like it was a game between Royal Challengers Bangalore and whatever the Pune team Sahara Pune Warriors India. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, some some random name. So it was both our bosses, you know, competing against each other on a field of cricket.

[00:17:45] Chris Gale batting for, you know, RCB was doing his magic. I know that the guys at Sahara were enjoying it because hey, when you're seeing an epic innings like it, you just end up becoming a fan of the sport rather than a particular team.

[00:17:59] But the more interesting part is we had a tie up with IPL where Alan Donald, you know, one of the most legendary fast bowlers. He trained Paul de Resta and Adrian Sutil on how to bowl on a cricket pitch. What?

[00:18:13] And there was a post match activation we did, which was of course beamed live across across the IPL markets. And Adrian Sutil being Adrian Sutil and fantastically talented, right? He ended up hitting the stumps I think in his second or third go bowling overarm cricket. Wow.

[00:18:31] That guy is something else. I just learned today that he can play the piano very well. Yes, indeed. And he can bowl very well and he can drive pretty fast and he can take a punch or hit a punch.

[00:18:42] We don't want to go down that route, but it's ridiculous. But this is the fun part, right? Because the 175 innings, if you don't know much about cricket, it's the highest score in the 20 over format ever.

[00:18:55] Chris Gale just went wild and it's ridiculous that both your bosses were there at the same time and one boss's team got absolutely hammered. There was no chance. I can imagine that conversation being very hectic in that room,

[00:19:06] but putting a Formula 1 car in a stadium, who does that? Ten year old me was going bonkers. Like what is this? Wow, this is like both of my worlds colliding. What is that all about? It's outstanding.

[00:19:19] You know, when we set out with this mission of engaging with audiences in unique ways, I think the disruption started actually with Adrian Seutel playing the piano. Right? And that was many years before putting it, putting the car in a stadium.

[00:19:34] And when we said, listen, how does Kingfisher Airlines truly leverage its sponsorship? Not with a logo. That's there in any case. And we said, we learned that Seutel plays the piano and he comes from a family of musicians

[00:19:48] and we got him to play at Blue Frog in Mumbai. And then he does that pretty awesomely. And this was another such disruption where we said, if you have to really engage with audiences at a mass level and you have several thousand spectators in a cricket stadium,

[00:20:04] what better than putting a Formula 1 car out there and getting these two guys to actually bowl and bat? And it was a hit, I can tell you because the drivers loved it absolutely and there was banter between Virat Kohli and Chris Gale.

[00:20:20] And I think when super athletes meet, they just have some natural bond which is what of course the cameras did not capture as much. But I remember Chris Gale saying at some point he wanted to have a go at a Formula 1 car and so on.

[00:20:35] This is what Red Bull has done. They've put a Tom Cruise in a Formula 1 car. So hey, why not some cricketing celebrity and the like? So of course, various conversations that always kept happening of how can we do the unconventional to break through all the barriers

[00:20:51] and clutters that naturally exist. And we were in a time when Bernie didn't really want to market the sport. It was very, very complicated, complex, not all that interesting in terms of on track entertainment and battles.

[00:21:04] So what is it that we could do to make it more fun? And fun you did make it because I remember the headlines being captured so well but it's such a shame that you can't find many HD pictures of the car in the stadium anymore

[00:21:18] because I wanted it framed on my wall. Like this is the kind of stuff I grew up watching. But speaking of that, I just learned today that you guys also had potential campaigns in the making with the likes of McDonald's, with the likes of KidZania,

[00:21:31] KidZania being of course the global phenomenon that is for kids where they can experience future career options and so on and so forth. Imagica, one of the biggest theme parks in India. And Wrigley's, Wrigley's, Wrigley's in Formula One. What's that whole deal about?

[00:21:46] Actually it started with Wrigley's and McDonald's and KidZania happened much later. So when we started off marketing for the team, we said what kind of interesting partnerships can we look at? And again how do we build value for our sponsors? And we worked with Wrigley.

[00:22:04] This was in 2008-2009. Right. That was during the earlier days. And what they did was to create special packs with a promotion, which you know the packs were specially designed. It said Race to Britain, which was essentially you know pick up a pack of Wrigley's

[00:22:21] and you could win a trip to Silverstone. Ah, interesting. And these were introduced in modern trade in the premium stores, large format retail stores across the country. And I think it did a lot of good for Wrigley of course

[00:22:36] but also for us because we were a team that was just starting off. And then when the time came again, coinciding with the Indian Grand Prix and us wanting to get people to raise a flag, we said what are the other things that we can do?

[00:22:50] And this was a very interesting idea which came up. We tied up with McDonald's in the south and west Kunal. Correct. Yes. 96 stores I remember. 96 stores. And we said buy a meal and you could travel to Abu Dhabi if I'm not mistaken. Correct. Yes. Okay. Yes. Interesting.

[00:23:09] And oh wow, I never knew this existed honestly because everything we had in our local store but that's so crazy because of course it gives you so much visibility. Absolutely. So many people walk into McDonald's already. So you know the menus, the mats on the table,

[00:23:23] they were all branded with this campaign. So across these 96 stores. Correct. And again you know it just goes down to the theme how can we reach out to newer audiences. KidZenia iMagica was similar levels. KidZenia came up saying we will make everything for children.

[00:23:42] You want to be a firefighter, see how we do as a child. You want to be a bartender or sorry, barista is more like it, you can do it as a child. So the one from a billion hunt,

[00:23:51] we were going to actually present it with a go card in a KidZenia outlet in Mumbai saying you can actually become a racing driver there as well. Much like you can choose various career alternatives. Here's how you can do with becoming a racing car driver as well.

[00:24:08] And similarly with iMagica, I remember they reached out saying would you like to sponsor and get visibility here and I said no, I will build one of those amusement rides which resonates with Force India about speed, about G-forces and so on and we actually went down the road

[00:24:25] of researching partners who could build this for us at cost. So it's similar to what Ferrari has in the Ferrari world. You can actually go sit in a 4D or maybe now it's a 440D studio where at that time, Fernando Alonso would take you on a lap

[00:24:41] around Fiorano in one of the Ferrari F40s or something. So we said can we build something like that for iMagica where people who come to experience thrill also get to experience what's the, can you have a Formula One driver drive you

[00:24:55] in one of these simulator setups across an iconic circuit like Monza and the likes. If I may add that research which Kunal is talking about is some really hard work that the two of us and one more colleague Nishreen had to do,

[00:25:09] we actually had to go to Universal Studios in Singapore and get inspired there and then we had to go to Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi so that was the research that Kunal is talking about. Fun research on roller coasters sitting there spending time

[00:25:22] and also research on what the food around tastes like and what the beaches around might taste like. But good important points, good important points but I wish the Kizena one went through because I would have had a point of flex to my friends

[00:25:33] when I went to Kizena around that point like look this is also relevant career option but hey thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Inside Line F1 podcast. Folks if in case you enjoyed listening to these four

[00:25:44] Cindy Astore's episodes and also the other episodes of the podcast please please subscribe to the Inside Line F1 podcast on whatever platform you're listening to us. And of course if in case you loved it so much please share this episode with some like minded friends

[00:25:58] and family members who you think might also enjoy this quite a fair bit. Thank you folks and I'll see you soon. Bye bye. I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Amazon Music once again for partnering with us on this episode of the podcast.