Overview

Oracle Red Bull Racing (ORBR) is an F1 racing team based in the U.K. that came into existence late in 2004 with ambitions to challenge for race victories and world championship titles. Christian Horner was named team principal and he guides the development of the team.

ORBR is coming off a victorious 2021 season with, Max Verstappen, winning the Driver’s Championship, awarded to the most successful F1 driver over the season. ORBR is charging on this 2022 season, as they lead the race in both the Driver’s and Constructor’s Championship, which is awarded to the best team each season. ORBR provides innovative experiences using tech both on the physical and virtual track, as well as with their personalized fan experience known as The Paddock.

Supernova Award Category

Next Generation Customer Experience

The Problem

Oracle Red Bull Racing faced a big question heading into 2022: How do you top one of the most thrilling Formula 1 seasons of all time? Drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez collected 23 podium finishes in 22 races, and Verstappen was crowned F1 Drivers’ Champion after a season-long duel with rival Lewis Hamilton.

Oracle Red Bull Racing was looking to drive innovation, shake things up in Formula 1, and set an example in the sports and entertainment industry. As a world champion team, it needed a fan experience platform that reflected the loyalty and dedication of its devotees. To deliver an unrivaled experience, ORBR needed to turn to their data to understand their fans and answer questions like, “Who are our fans? Where are they located? How many races do they watch?” These are just some of the questions asked by motorsport marketing teams looking to build customer loyalty within their fanbase. Today’s sports brands, like Oracle Red Bull Racing, need effective technology in-house to get to know who their fans are and what they care about. Oracle Red Bull Racing set out to bring each fan closer to the action and give them the insights they can’t get anywhere else.

The Solution

ORBR is also known in F1 circles for being passionate about its global fan base, producing exceptional content and engagement opportunities. In the 2021 season, Oracle and ORBR launched a first-of-its-kind fan loyalty platform powered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure —The Oracle Red Bull Racing Paddock—to bring the excitement of F1 to fans all over the world. The Paddock delivers a unique experience to each fan to bring them closer than ever to the race action and make them feel like they’re truly a member of the ORBR team. The Paddock rewards fans for both their in-person and digital interactions with the team with perks and experiences that money can’t buy. In 2022, ORBR is incorporating the ability to create user-generated content, to bring an even deeper layer of personalization to fans. The better ORBR gets to know their fans, the better they can shape the experiences for them!

The results

The Paddock fan loyalty program set the standard across F1 and the sports and entertainment industry. ORBR is extremely data-driven and using Oracle tech to analyze their data has enabled the team to energize fan connections and create personalized experiences for each fan.

The membership growth and usage of The Paddock have been explosive since its creation. With several activities for ORBR fans to engage with, such as watching race highlights, taking quizzes, and finding hidden codes; fans can earn and redeem points to receive rewards. Awards include ORBR memorabilia, digital wallpapers, team wear, factory tours, meet and greets, and once in a lifetime opportunity to engage with ORBR!

To help the marketing team personalize fan experiences, Oracle Unity connects all available data sources to simplify, consolidate, and create a real-time view of each fan. It gathers customer signals and applies them to the customer profile in real-time, so the marketing team has the most up-to-date insights about the customer at every moment, to make sure fans are getting the right content at the right time.

Within The Paddock at the 2022 British GP, Oracle Analytics Cloud and ADB provided real-time ingestion of race data from play seat simulators. The analytical dashboards showed the fastest laps, sectors, and speeds for gamers racing on the Silverstone Circuit, which fueled the fans’ competitive drive to try the simulator and make it on the leaderboard.

Metrics

In The Paddock’s first month, 16 million loyalty points delivered, and a 390% increase in website accounts, along with 300 rewards redeemed & 10,000+ promo codes entered.

From The Paddock’s initial launch through the end of the season, ORBR has members from 189 countries, a 383% increase in fans agreeing to receive emails, with up-to-date info specific to their interests. Within the first four months, Oracle Responsys had already sent millions of emails for the team. 18,703 loyalty codes hidden in social media treasure hunts that were found by fans and more than 5,500 questions asked by fans, with selected questions answered on a team podcast. 6.4 million loyalty points redeemed by fans, delivering more than 34,700 rewards. The 1st batch of reward signed by driver Sergio Pérez sold out within 30 minutes of going live and fans twice set records for traffic to the ORBR website, driven in part by The Paddock.

Outside of The Paddock’s successes, ORBR ran billions of computer simulations on OCI to prepare their 2021 championship season race strategies & to help them make real-time race decisions, like when to make a pit stop to change tires and increased by 25% the number of Monte Carlo simulations ran in 2021, all while keeping costs within the tight spending regulations defined by the sport.
 

The Technology

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
• Oracle Advertising and CX:
  • Oracle Marketing
  • Oracle CrowdTwist Loyalty & Engagement
  • Oracle Unity Customer Data Platform
  • Oracle Eloqua Marketing Automation
  • Oracle Responsys Campaign Management
  • Oracle Marketing Consulting
  • Sauce Video
  • Unity
  • Infinity IQ
  • Maxymiser
• Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC)
• Oracle Autonomous Database (ADB)
• Oracle Data Science Platform

Disruptive Factor

Formula 1 is the fastest-growing major sports league in terms of online followers. The expansion in online options to watch the racing, as well as to follow your favorite teams, has had a huge impact on the sport and changed the ways in which fans expect to participate in the sport they love.

Oracle Red Bull Racing is a world championship team known for innovating not only on the track but also in how they create the best fan engagements in the sport. Whether it’s driving a race car through city streets for people to see or using data to personalize digital engagements for each fan, Oracle Red Bull Racing focuses on an unrivaled experience that sets the bar for what fans should expect from the sports and entertainment organizations they follow.

The three broad goals for The Paddock platform are driving innovation, delivering exceptional experiences for their fans, and expanding the fan base. ORBR drives innovation and sets an example across sports and entertainment with its new approach to engaging and rewarding fans. The Paddock was built to provide a clear and compelling value exchange for fans of the team, opening up many new personalized ways to keep them engaged. And as F1 can’t survive without its fans, ORBR strives to retain and grow its fanbase by bringing fans closer to the F1 experience. The launch of The Paddock was game-changing in how Formula 1 fans are engaged with and included in every lap of the race.

Shining Moment

It was clear Oracle had the ideal product suite to create a fan experience unique to F1. And with Oracle Marketing Consulting, ORBR did not have to become product experts. The consultants crafted everything from campaign strategies & integration to web design & coding. With this data-driven support, ORBR is able to bring race addicts closer than ever to the fast-paced world of Formula 1.