J. Walter Thompson London (JWT London)

Piloted Shell-Ferrari Social Strategy, Growing 30,000+ Engaged Fans

Shell Motorsport / Ferrari Formula One Social Media Strategy | 2010 In 2010, social media was still largely uncharted territory for global brands. Facebook was often dismissed as something people’s children used, while Twitter was viewed as more of a distraction than a credible business platform. Senior Shell stakeholders were understandably cautious about investing in channels that were still largely untested. At the same time, Formula One fans were already gathering online in huge numbers. They were passionate, vocal, and hungry for content about Ferrari, Shell Motorsport, and the technical partnership between the two brands. The audience was there; Shell and Ferrari simply had not yet built a meaningful way to reach or engage with them. We were tasked with creating a pilot social media program to increase awareness of the Shell–Ferrari partnership and demonstrate how social channels could deepen engagement with Formula One fans. The first challenge was not creating content. It was building belief. As strategy lead, I developed the business case for the program and presented it directly to Shell’s senior marketing team. Working closely with Shell’s Brand Director, I helped determine which platforms to pilot and used competitor benchmarking to show what other brands were already doing, where the market was heading, and where the opportunity existed for Shell. Our goal was to help Shell participate in conversations that were already happening, engage brand advocates in the spaces where they naturally gathered, and increase the brand’s share of voice without compromising control, credibility, or reputation. I served as the lead point of contact with the Ferrari team throughout the engagement and personally authored the governance framework, moderation standards, approval processes, and channel guidelines that would shape how Shell Motorsport showed up on social media. Ferrari also had very little social media infrastructure in place at the time, so the guidelines I created for Shell Motorsport were subsequently adopted by Ferrari. Within the first six months, the pilot channels grew to more than 30,000 engaged fans and generated a measurable increase in positive sentiment toward Shell’s partnership with Ferrari. The results helped turn skeptical senior stakeholders into active advocates for the program and led to the initiative being approved for expansion across Shell’s other motorsport partnerships. What began as a pilot became a scalable social media model for Shell and an early foundation for how two global brands could use emerging digital platforms to reach wider audiences, strengthen fan relationships, and bring a long-standing technical partnership to life in an entirely new way.