How JigSpace helped Alfa Romeo F1 Team to launch the C42 directly into the hands of their fans.
Creating an intuitive, engaging AR experience for the F1 fans
Like all great relationships, it just made perfect sense: when JigSpace was put in front of Yan Lefort, Commercial Director and Christian Dautenheimer, Head of Brand Management at Sauber Motorsport, that’s when the cogs started turning on the concept of a metaverse partnership to launch a groundbreaking fan experience.
The Swiss-based team has launched 2022 with a fresh identity, to tackle a new era of Formula 1®. Sporting a new team name Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN, a new driver lineup with the Finn Valtteri Bottas and the Chinese rookie Zhou Guanyu, a new logo and, a stunning new car called the C42, the team were looking for ways to foster the brand as champions of innovation in the minds of fans and the industry.
The challenge
The goal was to build as much fan engagement and brand visibility as possible for the start of the new 2022 season and the launch of the C42.
As one of the smaller F1 outfits, resources for large-scale Marketing and above the line campaigning was limited. The strategy was built all around the innovation approach and boosting the Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN brand in a "turning heads" style.
All the new F1 cars are unveiled with beautifully shot, cinematic videos, shared and reshared across their social media channels. The Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN outfit was looking for more innovative ways to launch the C42 directly into the hands of the fans using innovation and technology that would make fans and the F1 world sit up and take notice.
The C42 in a cinematic launch video
To achieve this goal, the solution had to be stable, secure and easy to use. Without requiring fans to log in or download anything. It also had to be accessible to anyone, across the globe on any device.
Not having a dedicated AR development resource to bring the concept to life, the team were thrilled when JigSpace confidently enabled the technology. It wasn't long before the C42 was ready to launch into the metaverse…
“To compete with the widespread accessibility of simply sharing a video (consider YouTube and social media channels), the C42 needed to be viewed and shared in AR with the same ease of use. JigSpace’s clever use of the Web AR viewer supercharges this user experience. It is simple and delightful to use. We are proud to be the first F1 team to provide this kind of immersive experience to our fans.”
Pedro Cebrián
Head of Digital and Content
The solution
The JigSpace and Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN worked together in a team environment to create the C42 as a 3D model and present it using augmented reality.
However, this initial solution was not immediately viewable by anyone, on any device.
The release of the car coincided with the launch of JigSpace’s world-first open, user-generated knowledge platform and web AR viewer. Through the groundbreaking use of Apple's App Clips and WebAR, the C42 can be viewed on the device in anyone’s pocket, with no need to download an app.
Users simply need to scan a QR code or follow a link to be immersed directly into the Jig.
Experience the C42 in Augmented Reality
The web AR viewer allows JigSpace users to show complex 3D presentations and models, through a no-code solution. Out of the box, it is an entirely frictionless experience to view and interact with objects in augmented reality. It’s kind of like a PDF; viewers can access and interact with it from anywhere by easily scanning the code.
“The end-user doesn’t have to know anything about the technology to experience the power of Jig The technology is transparent. We’re showing that the metaverse isn’t just a destination, it’s a mode for communicating in the same way we experience our reality - in 3D. With Jig, you don’t need to know any of that. You simply click a link or scan a QR code and you’re there. All the complexity is abstracted away.”
Zac Duff
CEO of JigSpace
The results
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN reveals the racing livery on Instagram
Within 24 hours of launching the C42 into the metaverse, the Jig had experienced more than 500K views.
Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN has experienced more fan engagement in 2022 than any prior season with the above reel experiencing more than 1.6M views and hundreds and thousands of likes. At the time of writing, it has been saved more than 6000 times by followers.
Fans have been eagerly creating reels, stories and posts, placing the C42 into their world:
From the outside looking in, the end product just appears to be a QR code or link and the user is taken directly into the experience, no matter the device. That simplicity is underpinned by incredible technology that makes creating and sharing Jigs easy, at a massive scale.
When the car livery changed from the camo test version to the full racing livery (above), it was with the click of a button. The power of the web AR viewer means that Jigs can be modified and updated without having to update the destination of the end-user. The C42 model was experiencing logo changes less than an hour before its official launch. With Jig, that’s not a scary proposition. You just make your change, save it, and it’s immediately updated for all users.
“JigSpace is just so useful for communicating the revolutionary design and beauty of our car, in an immediately accessible way. That’s why this partnership is so exciting for us. By using JigSpace we can show just how incredible our 2022 car is and give all F1 fans an intuitive, engaging experience that simply wasn’t possible before.”
Frédéric Vasseur
Team Principal of Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN
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