In the heat of the summer months of June and July, you’ll often find a motorsport employee facing one of the busiest parts of his or her schedule.
The European races come thick and fast across a plethora of competitions, leaving staff clawing for the Formula 1 summer break in August. But one race weekend that stands out during this time of year and that leaves a lasting memory is the much heralded and legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Set in a small rural town on the outskirts of the French capital Paris, Le Mans is home to arguably the most technically challenging endurance race in our history, where drivers and teams battle it out across a mammoth 24-hour race to be crowned the ultimate endurance champion. This year, June 16-18 amidst a rare heatwave across Europe, the Edelman team representing Shell Motorsports descended upon the venue for the very first time and delivered exciting results.
Joining us at Le Mans in 2017, was a 60-team grid all fuelled by Shell V-Power and looking to secure their names in the annals of endurance racing history. Shell has a long-standing history with the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and Le Mans, and stands as the competitions Official Fuel Partner. Throughout its history together, Shell has in turn helped countless teams and manufacturers to realise their ambitions with innovations in fuel technology.
Sadly, as of 2018 Shell will no longer fuel the WEC and subsequently Le Mans, concentrating its focus on its other motorsport partnerships that includes; Scuderia Ferrari in Formula 1, MotoGP with Ducati, Hyundai in the WRC, NASCAR, IndyCar and the DTM Championship with BMW. With this at the forefront of our minds, we decided to leave a lasting memory on the sport that Shell has achieved so much in.
Over the course of a blisteringly hot weekend, we executed Edelman’s and Shell’s first ever installment of ‘Shell Live’, a Facebook Live video aimed at communicating our fan first brand approach to the motorsports world. The live video was co-hosted and presented by influencers Sam Fane, an automotive lifestyle vlogger with 265k followers on YouTube, and Emma Walsh, a TV personality with 28.8k followers on Instagram.
Both Emma and Sam presented live to a social audience over the course of the 25-minute video, and alongside production crew Smyle and the Edelman team, visited key areas of the paddock, including a rare insight into the Ferrari Motor Home and team garages where they spoke to drivers and mechanics to gain insights into the challenges a 24-hour race presents. The influencers also met with key Shell stakeholders and the Track Side Laboratory team, a mobile fuel analysis lab that follows the motorsport band across the globe.
To date, the Shell Live video – seen across Shell’s Motorsport pages here and amplified through our influencers channels, has achieved almost 500k views, over 15k likes, 246 comments, 672 shares and a total social reach across the weekend of 4.38M. Not a bad first attempt.
During the weekend, as well as managing Shell Live, Edelman hosted four lifestyle media in Shell’s hospitality suite overlooking the circuit; UNIlad, T3, Culture Trip and The Rising Man. This has culminated in a wide variety of coverage to help tell Shell’s unique story at Le Mans, all whilst soaking up the rich culture and history flowing through the infamous circuit.
The success of the whole weekend in unfamiliar territory was a real testimony to the Shell team from prep support through to the execution on the ground. Personally, this was my first major event as part of the Shell Motorsport team and despite immense pressure from numerous challenges across the weekend, the team delivered an excellent first Shell Live calmly and professionally and all-together reminded me exactly why I joined this winning company.
Stay tuned for more of Shell Live as we look to roll this out at many more exciting motorsport venues in the future.
Shell is an Edelman UK client.