When The Race Media Awards was first launched, there was just a single category for Agency of the Year. But it quickly became apparent that this didn’t accurately reflect the market, where small, owner-run agencies were offering very different services to the international global players.
Thus Boutique Agency of the Year was born, giving agencies with fewer than 25 employees – or five clients – a place to compete against each other, rather than go up against pan-international behemoths, with multiple offices and hundreds (perhaps thousands) of employees.
While international agencies offer a broad range of services, boutiques tend to specialise in one or two areas. In the case of AND THE NEW, this is a social-first approach to content marketing, and it was this focus, combined with fantastic delivery, that earned them the Award win.
Having launched in August 2021, AND THE NEW set out to differentiate itself from the other sports marketing agencies from the off. In fact, they don’t consider themselves a sports marketing agency at all.
“We’re a social-first creative agency,” explains co-founder Ryan Tinslay, “that works to inspire and engage people through their passions in sports, entertainment and culture. Motorsport for us is a big pillar based on our background – mine in particular – but we focus on building connections through peoples’ passions. That could be anything from how we engage motorsport fans through to engaging younger audiences with content that embraces current internet cultures. We set ourselves apart by looking at social and content through a real strategic and commercial lens.”
It’s well documented that Formula 1 was slow to engage with social media, but it’s also true that some of the big agencies also took a while to understand the value in direct fan engagement through channels that sit outside of traditional ownership models.
“No one quite had that focus of ‘how do you engage people on social? How do you grow social? How do you build communities? How do you really get into the heartbeat of fandom?’” Tinslay says. “You’ve seen TV audiences drop at a relative rate. You’ve seen YouTube spike. So the big phrase that we keep talking about is ‘fish where the fish are’. Now, social first for us doesn’t mean social only. It means we’re working with brands who understand that social can be the window to wider commercial growth.”
Working with clients such as SAP, the FIA, Mercedes F1 Esports Team, and the E1 Series gave AND THE NEW the body of work to take on one of the most competitive categories at the Awards, and it was the supremely creative approach taken to all projects that caught the eye.
The judges thought that AND THE NEW’s body of work was ‘fresh, smart, creative, and extremely impressive and diverse across many categories of racing. For a new boutique agency the quality and breadth of work was outstanding’.
“We’re in the era of the attention economy,” says Tinslay. “On TikTok, if I’ve got 10 followers, I could still get 10 million views. Equally, I could have 10 million followers and produce bad content that gets zero engagement. So it’s no longer all about followership. If you’re not creating content for attention, you don’t have relevance. So when it comes to some of the metrics, we really try to go down into real granular detail.
“We obsess over the first three seconds of content. You can have the world’s best video but, if it hasn’t grabbed attention from the off, you’re leaving so much potential on the table. There’s an abundance of data available, constantly, on these platforms whether that be view duration, completion rates or engagement rates, that if you don’t obsess over these then you’re not optimising for growth. So, whether it’s for a rights holder or a brand, the content strategy must take this into effect. If you can retain viewership, retain watch time and continually drive engagement, then the platform algorithms will then continue to push your content to the right audience and your relevance will grow – something every business is chasing.”
Being a relative newcomer to the market, the recognition of the Award was beneficial in multiple ways.
“I think it’s a fantastic signpost that we’re on the right track, and that we’ve got the right mindset to continue delivering in this fast-changing landscape. I think over the past, sports activations – motorsport and F1 probably more so – generally has been largely restricted to PR, physical, or hospitality activations. Now, we’re seeing much more importance on, and growth through, digital and content activations that capture a much wider audience at a fraction of the cost more consistently. I’m extremely proud of the everything our team has produced and some of the exciting new things we’re working on across this space. Keep your eyes peeled!”
To find out more about The Race Media Awards, including how to enter for next year, click here – https://theracemediaawards.com/
