Cadillac F1 Is Turning Curiosity Into Currency

"We designed a strategy to do both," he says. "Making sure we create content for the new fan and content for the existing fan."

"We designed a strategy to do both, making sure we create content for the new fan and content for the existing fan."

Formula 1's newest American fans found the sport through Drive to Survive and the F1 movie. Most have never set foot near a race. The gap between curiosity and commitment is the attention Ahmed Iqbal is after.

Few marketers are better equipped to close it. Ahmed Iqbal spent nearly three years leading social at TikTok and almost four at Twitter, after about a decade shaping the Audi brand.

He has watched attention move at platform speed and he knows what luxury demands of a badge. Now, as the first chief marketing officer in Cadillac F1's history, he's pointing all of it at the sport's hardest conversion problem: turning the curious into the committed without starving the faithful.

His answer, shared on The CMO Club Podcast at Web Summit Vancouver, splits into two disciplines. Know exactly who you're serving, and never make the door harder to open than it needs to be.

So Cadillac F1 is running two shows at once. In one, Terry Crews learns Formula 1 from scratch, documenting every step of his fandom. In the other, General Motors engineers build a race engine on camera for viewers who want combustion physics with their morning coffee.

There is no show in between. This is the strategy.

One Team, Two Playbooks

When you inherit a legacy brand with deep-rooted fandom, what’s the best way to garner support from new audiences?

You have two options—keep the beloved sport exclusive and elite, or open it up to an entirely new fan base. Ahmed Iqbal opted to apply the latter, and his bet paid off. 

The Crews series gives newcomers a proxy, someone learning the sport in real time with a seat over the team's shoulder. Iqbal lights up describing him: "He's already decided he's a mega fan, and he's learning the sport. He's really representing the voice of the new fan."

What Makes Fast runs in the opposite direction. "For all the core F1 fans that really get into the science of the sport, this is the documented journey of the General Motors engineers putting together our first race engine," Iqbal says. "It's a type of content that you don't often see in Formula 1."

It's a type of content that you don't often see in Formula 1.

Each series is built entirely for one audience. Neither apologizes to the other. The relationship gets stronger precisely because nobody is being half-served.

The Door Policy That Matches the Content Strategy

Serving the new fan well raises a harder problem. Formula 1 is expensive, global, and scarce. Its emerging audience largely can't attend the product it's falling in love with. A luxury brand could call that scarcity working as intended.

Iqbal calls it a design flaw worth fixing, and his fix keeps the exclusivity while changing its currency.

"There's always a barrier to entry to something special, and there always should be," he says. "But the barrier to entry doesn't always have to be access. It doesn't always have to be money. It doesn't always have to be a ticket price."

There's always a barrier to entry to something special, and there always should be.

At the Miami Grand Prix, the team rebuilt the paddock experience for fans, with simulators, food, driver appearances, and even a salon. Admission was free, but entry still had to be earned.

"The barrier to entry was getting ahead of it – RSVPing early, engaging with the brand on socials, and finding a way in," he explains.

The same logic drove the team's livery reveal, staged in Times Square on Super Bowl Sunday rather than the category-standard closed studio. "It's the most democratic place in New York to get to, 'cause every train goes there," Iqbal says. The reveal drew over 1.1 billion impressions, which the team's analysis ranked as the year's most watched.

Both moves filter for the same thing. Effort. Every fan inside the Miami activation had already followed the team, raised a hand, and taken an action. That's a very different crowd from one that simply cleared a price point.

Relationships Are the Metric

Ask Iqbal where he wants the brand in a year and he doesn't reach for reach.

"In other sports where you know that you're a part of a community, you talk about the team as a we," he says. "I'd love to get to that point and start to build that type of relationship with the fans."

The two disciplines converge there. Content built wholly for one audience tells that audience it's seen. A gate priced in curiosity tells them their passion counts for more than their wallet. Both are relationship decisions dressed up as marketing tactics.

Here's what should sting for marketing leaders sitting on decades of brand equity. Iqbal is minting loyalty with no history and no trophies, for a team that didn't exist two years ago, and he's doing it by refusing the two most common audience shortcuts: averaging the content and pricing the door in money. Most brands have more to work with and demand less of themselves.

The test fits in one question. When your audience talks about you, which pronoun do they reach for?

An audience you bought says they. An audience you admitted says we.

What’s Next?

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