Vodafone is pulling out of Formula One after sponsoring the McLaren team since 2007 (and before that Ferrari).
McLaren will doubtless replace Vodafone although the team’s star has fallen somewhat since Ron Dennis stepped down as manager to run the company’s sports car business and top driver Lewis (‘love me or hate me’) Hamilton jetted off in his new private plane to Mercedes.
The interesting aspect of this is will the switch enable Vodafone to put some much-needed oomph into its marketing? The top marketing job at Vodafone has been a musical chair with a trapdoor in recent years and its advertising has suffered accordingly.
The brand looks old and tired, certainly in comparison to 02 and resurgent Three, and people choose phone networks these days according to their choice of handsets anyway.
Vodafone’s share price has been scraping the ceiling recently as the boys in dark glasses hope a bid is on the way from Verizon (Vodafone owns 45 per cent of Verizon Wireless).
So Vodafone’s current agencies (RKCR/Y&R in the UK) may get some new ammunition soon. But maybe not for long.