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 that works to inspire and engage people through their passions in sports, entertainment and culture," explains co-founder Ryan Tinslay.
"So that could be anything. Motorsport for us is a big pillar based on our background - mine in particular - but that could be anything from how do we engage fans that are passionate about motorsport right through to how do we engage younger audiences that are passionate about internet culture.”
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. 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 want to understand that social can be the window to wider growth.”
Working with clients such as SAP, Hilton and the Mercedes F1 Esports team 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 an attention model,” says Tinslay. “On Tik Tok, if I've got 10 followers, I could still get 10 million views. Equally, I could have 10 million followers and produce bad content and get one like. So it's no longer 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.
“For example, we've worked in the past with a protein drink company and what we found was actually when you shake a protein cup, the watch rate drops. Which you would never expect because everyone shakes a protein cup, right?
"So if you've got a 30-second video and the final half of it is a sponsorship message, but in the first two seconds you're shaking a cup, people aren't sticking around to watch the sponsorship message.
"So how can you actually analyse how well your creative is performing on an almost play by play basis?
"If you can retain viewership, retain watch time, the algorithms will then continue to push your content, which means you're more relevant, you're more open, you get more attention. And that's what people are trying to buy - attention and eyeballs.”
Being a relative newcomer to the market, the recognition of the Award was beneficial in multiple ways.
“I think it's a really good signpost that we're on the right track," adds Tinslay.
"We've got the right mindset. I think over the past, sports activations - motorsport and F1 probably more so - generally have been very much PR, physical, hospitality activations.
"And my argument to that is always, ‘you could have a 2000 person hospitality set-up, which is extremely expensive. But you've probably got 25 million people in your target audience that aren't there. And if you invite all of them, that's going to be very expensive’.
"So there's that sense that the team that we've got is really great at what they're doing and that's the proof of that.”
To find out more about The Race Media Awards, including how to enter for next year, click here.
