Case Study

Faster fan monetisation with AI-driven personas for an iconic motorsport brand

Three Formula 1 cars, one dark grey in the foreground and two others (one white, one dark grey) in the background, racing on a track with red and white curbing on a turn.
Three Formula 1 cars, one dark grey in the foreground and two others (one white, one dark grey) in the background, racing on a track with red and white curbing on a turn.

Note: Client name protected for confidentiality

By compressing months of audience strategy into a two-day strategy acceleration workshop, WPP Open helped the brand define high-value fans, test engagement in real time and walk away with a board-approved growth plan.

Quantifiable strategic impact

  • Three months of work was completed in a two-day strategy acceleration workshop

  • Immediate feedback using three AI-generated personas as a synthetic focus group

  • Board-ready plan for targeted engagement and monetisation

Client context

An iconic motorsport brand with over 100M global fans – but an addressable database of only around 100,000 – needed board approval to invest in rapidly scaling and monetising its database. WPP Open’s Creative Studio enabled us to deliver an insight‑driven business case in just one day, giving the board a clear plan to unlock sponsorship and revenue potential from high‑value fans.

Challenge

The brand lacked defined high-value fan segments and a tailored engagement strategy. The goal was to reach hard-to-engage, high-net-worth individuals globally, ensuring audience growth directly translated into sponsorship ROI and influence. They needed value to match volume – growing the database in a way that would also increase sponsorship leverage – all under tight timelines to inform a critical board-funding decision.

Solution

WPP Open combined its strategy and ideation tools with synthetic focus groups to compress months of audience planning into 48 hours. By creating AI-driven fan personas and using them as a live focus group, the brand was able to test engagement concepts, refine value propositions and pressure-test sponsorship strategies in real time. This approach didn’t just produce insights faster, it accelerated the client’s top priorities, delivering board-ready clarity on how to grow high-value fan segments and unlock new sponsorship revenue.

Outcome

By compressing months of strategy into two days, the motorsport brand left with an actionable, board-ready plan to grow high-value fans and elevate sponsorship returns, while experiencing the first-ever use of synthetic audiences in a client workshop, a breakthrough that cemented WPP Open’s reputation as a leader in AI-driven marketing.