Title	ALONSO ALPINE CODE
Brand	ALPINE
Product/Service	ALPINE
Category	D06. Breakthrough on a Budget
Entrant	HAVAS Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation	HAVAS SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation 2	HAVAS Paris, FRANCE
Production	ALLSO Paris, FRANCE
Post Production	ALLSO Paris, FRANCE

Name	Company	Position
Quentin Clausse	Havas Play	Art Director
Stéphane Guerry	Havas Play	President Havas Play
Nil Nivière--Schouvaloff	Havas Play	Copywriter
Fabrice Plazolles	Havas Play	Chief Creative Officer
Raphael Thierry	Havas Paris	Partner
Claire Bouvet	Havas Paris	Social Media Manager
Thibaut Arthaud	Havas Play	Account
Valerie Planchez	Havas Paris	VP
Tristan Lecuyer	Havas Paris	Motion Designer

Why is this work relevant for Social & Influencer?

It’s quite easy to use paid media budget or influencers to reach massive audiences, or selected ones. It’s less easy when it’s all about organic posts and brand only. We considered that we already got the best influencers we could have thanks to our two drivers, partners in crime on the track, our best ambassadors to speak about F1 and Alpine F1 Team news: Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon. This is the reason why we build the full activation around them. This is the reason why this work is relevant for Social & Influencer, beyond a traditional social media campaign.

Background

In 2021, Alpine starts in Formula1 for the first time in its history. The team chose two drivers: Esteban Ocon, young and talented French driver bringing his spontaneity and Alonso, double world champion in 2005 and 2006, oldest driver of the competition (40yo) and bringing his experience to the team with 322 GP raced, 32 wins, 97 podiums. The two partners in crime are driving so well that early August Ocon won his first GP in Hungary, thanks to Alonso support. The 26th of August, Alpine F1 Team and Alonso renewed their partnership by extending the contract for 2022. Brief: how to dramatize the announcement of Alonso signing one more year with Alpine F1 for the next season ? Objectives: brand awareness and visibility, positioning the brand as a game changer amongst the other F1 teams, announcements being always more traditional and classic with simple press release and some photos.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

Athletes contract extension has been revealed tons of different times on twitter, it is no more entertaining for fans. The racing team Alpine wanted to make it more engaging for F1 legend, Fernando Alonso. The pilot published on his official account gibberish incomprehensible tweets. They were in fact coded. Whenever a celebrity write nonsense tweets, the internet starts to wonder what is happening…How his communication advisors let this happened ? Is it a hack ? Is the community manager drunk ? In order to decode the true content of the tweets fans had to decrypt them using « Alpine » as the key code, Fernando’s racing team. These tweets were teasing the pilot prolongation, and unlocking a video after they’ve been decoded.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

2 main targets were identified : - First, Alpine community of fans - Then, Formula One fans in general: including Fernando Alonso fans, Esteban Ocon fans, Alpine F1 Team fans and the rising community of « F1 newbies » coming from « Drive to Survive » Netflix series for three years. These fans follow all the news, updates, trends and gossips coming from the Formula One ecosystem. They are very active on social media as well, younger than the average. Last, we decided to play it 100% organic to see how far our idea would go and would get traction. The choice of the good platform was key for us. We selected Twitter, the only platform where users first speak about what happens rather than about what they do. It’s also the best platform for live news. Last, it’s the platform of immediacy.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

We decided to create an encrypted discussion between Alonso and Ocon to start teasing about the announcement to come, the accomplices. We played it in 3 steps: - Step 1: Day-2, teasing with an encrypted discussion (24th August) Alonso posts an encrypted tweet, Ocon replies, Alonso bounces back. Then Alpine F1 Team jumps in with a clue, ALPINE being the key. - Step 2: D-Day, reveal (26th August) In a video of Alonso drifting with the iconic Alpine A110, the driver writes 2022 with the tyres of the car. - Step 3: D-Day, few hours later Official announcement on all Alpine and drivers social media ecosystem.

List the results (30% of vote)

Reminder : 100% organic activation. We played with the strong potential of our social media ecosystem : Alonso with 2.9M followers on Twitter, Ocon with 470k followers and Alpine F1 Team with 1.6M followers. A fast amplification (likes and retweets) from fans as well as growing interest about the drivers drove some media to amplify the story on their side. Followed by the reveal video and the official announcement, it led us to the following figures with our owned channels:  5.4M organic impressions, +220% vs average  +45% engagements vs average  10% of Alpine total mentions in 2021. Thanks to media amplification (earned), we got strong PR traction as well: - 350.2M gross reach potential readers - PR value estimated at 4.5M euros - 27 countries worldwide, reaching each continent. - 29% positive sentiment, 70% neutral.