How E ink technology can change motorsport sponsorships

The same tech used in Amazon Kindle (e-ink) will revolutionize corporate sponsorships in Formula 1.

Check out how McLaren Racing is leveraging this unique display technology to take its branding efforts to the next level.

Motorsports are significant business opportunities, especially at the Formula 1 level, where teams can spend over a hundred million dollars in a single season.

Corporate sponsorships help offset these costs and allow other companies to benefit from a Formula 1 team's efforts.

Placing a corporate sponsor's logo on a Formula 1 race car is a great way to get brand awareness for the company.

Sponsors must compete for placement with limited space on a Formula 1 car — but this technology changes that.

Check out these screen grabs from testing this morning.

The car's cockpit view shows the change in branding the viewer sees around the driver.

In this case, it was the Google Chrome logo and the #Chrome.

We've seen this idea before at CES 2022, where the BMW Group demoed an SUV completely wrapped in E-Ink, allowing the vehicle to change its appearance from white to black or introduce different patterns and designs.

And last year, McLaren announced a partnership with Seamless Digital to upgrade their cars with these E-Ink screens.

At the USGP in Austin, McLaren Racing upgraded their MCL36 cars with a pair of these displays, one on either side of the cockpit.

F1 technical analyst Craig Scarborough gave us this sketch to show how the technology works.

This revolutionizes the way sponsors can be featured during a Formula 1 race.

With the new technology, multiple logos can be programmed to appear on the car during specific times, locations, or even depending on the race's progress.

For example, sponsors can pay to have their logo prominently displayed when the car is in first place or pay more to have their logo appear longer while the car is stopped in the pits.

This unique new technology has nothing to do with the car's performance and everything to do with increasing the profitability of competing in Formula 1.

It is a fantastic way to maximize the return on investment for sponsors and increase sponsorship opportunities for teams.

Of course, having more logos on the car means someone must keep track of the value the sponsors get from these placements.

There are people and companies whose job is to calculate the amount of screen time the sponsor's corporate logo had.

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