WhatsApp’s new Netflix doc on F1 is a master class in turning advertising into entertainment

When Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton announced in December that he would be leaving the Mercedes team for Ferrari after 246 Grands Prix, 84 victories, and 6 drivers’ championships in 12 seasons, much of the focus was on Hamilton’s future plans.

Just as compelling was the empty seat Hamilton was leaving at Mercedes. His departure triggered an intense internal process for the automaker—the search for a successor. Many of the discussions and debates that resulted in Mercedes choosing young Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli played out over messaging app WhatsApp. 

That process is now the subject of a new one-hour documentary on Netflix called The Seat, dropping on May 5. Directed by Kyle Thrash, and produced by RadicalMedia, it’s also a WhatsApp commercial. 

The Meta-owned app is a producer, and created the project with its content partner Modern Arts. WhatsApp’s global head of marketing, Vivian Odior, says the company decided to create the doc in order to fully show how the app is often part of critical inflection points in its users’ lives. “When it comes to telling those stories, we believe in giving the space to properly unpack the role we play and share the full story of our user base,” says Odior. “We don’t believe we should be limited by ad formats. Storytelling allows us to occupy a unique position in the hearts of users and pushes beyond the functional role we play.”

This isn’t some ad-tiered piece of content. It’s a legitimate addition to the streamer’s F1 library. Many marketers will be shaking with jealousy or excitement, inspired to make their own move into entertainment. But be forewarned, creating content that can go head-to-head with other films and TV is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those searching for a formula. Even WhatsApp knows this is a unique brand opportunity.

Make your own luck

WhatsApp has long been a brand partner to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, and last year Modern Arts created a short film on Hamilton called Push Push. It chronicled the ups and downs of his racing career, as well as his personal struggles with dyslexia and bullying, woven into a conversation he has with a group of teens today about their own lives. 

That helped build the relationship and trust with Mercedes to make The Seat possible. Modern Arts has a track record of telling compelling stories around the platform, like its award-winning, 26-minute doc We Are Ayenda, about WhatsApp’s role in helping the Afghanistan Women’s Youth National Football Team escape the Taliban.

Zac Ryder, the agency’s cofounder and co-chief creative officer, says that made it a lot easier to start figuring out a story to be told around privacy with the Mercedes team. “It just so happens that not only is WhatsApp a sponsor of the team, but the entire Mercedes team literally runs on WhatsApp,” Ryder says. “You very rarely ever send an email. It’s all done on WhatsApp. They have hundreds of WhatsApp groups, and that’s how their entire team is organized, from little details around traveling to big things like engineering and car designs. It’s all shared across WhatsApp.”

In theory, this sounds like a formula for the greatest product demo video ever made. But Formula 1 teams are known to be about as forthcoming with secrets as the Pentagon. Ryder says Mercedes saw the value in giving the film access to its internal process, with the goal of helping F1 fans fall in love with Antonelli, a relatively unknown 18-year-old driver. 

For WhatsApp, the goal was to tell a privacy story by showing how well it functions in high-stakes situations. “Our job was to figure out how those two things can coexist to make something that was going to be compelling,” Ryder says. 

No one formula

It’s a unique situation for a brand to have its product at the center of a major sports story. Ryder says the strategy quickly became to make the project revolve around trust. The Mercedes team was trusting its F1 driver’s seat to Antonelli, but in the process it was also showing its trust in WhatsApp as a communications platform. 

In a typical commercial edit, marketers will obsess over how many times the product is mentioned, or the product appears, or the logo is flashed. Modern Arts CEO Brooke Stites says the film is not about that because the brand and its product are so intertwined with the story itself. 

As a marketing investment, Stites says the film cost about as much as it would to make and buy ad time for a 60-second commercial. Here, the entire budget went into the production because being on Netflix means there isn’t the need to pay for advertising space on TV and online. 

“It’s a totally different model,” says Stites. “It’s not cheap, but it’s what you’re going to spend on a 60-second spot that you then have to spend 10 times more to buy places that force people to watch it. Everyone who watches F1 content on Netflix is going to get served our film.”

The Seat is not a paid advertising arrangement with Netflix; it was acquired by the streamer in the same way other film and television content is acquired. Other major streamers were vying for the film, but Netflix’s connection to the long-running docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive made it the ideal home.

For some time brands and ad agencies have been putting “make a film for Netflix” in their marketing briefs, but the reality is, it’s not that simple. Stites says there are some critical ingredients a project needs in order to get anywhere near Netflix or any other top-tier streamer. 

“You have to have an amazing story and quality of craft,” she says. “All these streamers are looking at it and asking, ‘Is this something that’s adding value to my audience? Is this something that my viewers are going to actually want to engage with?’ That was a big part of the F1 piece.”

For other brands interested in this type of storytelling, Stites has a piece of advice: Tell a compelling story that involves your brand, don’t just tell your brand story. Every brand wants to tap into culture. To tell stories people really want to hear, you need to find the stories in culture that authentically include your brand instead of trying to force-feed your brand into culture. 

“We’re not telling a story about WhatsApp. It’s not about the brand,” says Stites. “Stories involving brands already exist in culture that are really actually very interesting, and people are willing and wanting to engage with them. Tell a story that people are going to care about, versus starting from a place of ‘Let’s tell a brand story.’”

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