British American Tobacco - Our global partnership with McLaren

Our partnership, with one of the most famous names in Formula 1 motorsport, gives us truly global marketing and innovation platforms to help accelerate our journey with our New Category products, focused on creating “A Better Tomorrow” for our consumers, shareholders, society and employees.

In late 2019, we further enhanced our partnership with McLaren, signing a new agreement which will continue to support our corporate strategy by accelerating our transformation. “Accelerating Transformation” is at the heart of our commitment to achieving A Better Tomorrow by growing our portfolio of New Category products, which include our leading vapour range, VUSE, and our modern oral product, VELO. Through our partnership with McLaren, we have a “dynamic branding” approach which sees us vary our branding race-by-race, at all times in line with applicable regulations and legislation.

Our enhanced partnership includes:

• Becoming a Principal Partner of McLaren from the 2020 Formula 1 season;
• Significantly increased branding positions on the Formula 1 car – including highly visible new sidepod branding, inside halo and front wing branding positions;
• A commitment for the two companies to co-create marketing content to drive increased awareness of the partnership;
• Partnering with McLaren for its return to the full-time IndyCar competition in 2020, which will see 17 races take place across the U.S.

Central to the partnership is also our ongoing work with McLaren Applied.  BAT and McLaren share a passion for technology, innovation and design.  We’re working together on a number of projects, sharing technology expertise, focused on enhancing our New Category product pipeline.

Kingsley Wheaton, BAT’s Chief Marketing Officer, said: “We’re extremely proud of our partnership with McLaren which has been going from strength-to-strength – whether it’s increased awareness of our portfolio of New Category products, technology insights and expertise to support our R&D activities or using the platform to create excitement amongst colleagues internally, we are absolutely delighted with what our partnership has delivered to date.

“Our partnership is giving us truly global marketing and innovation platforms to accelerate our journey with our New Categories business, focused on creating a better tomorrow for our consumers, shareholders, society and employees.”

Zak Brown, Chief Executive of McLaren Racing, added: “BAT’s transformation agenda remains central to this partnership, as does a shared focus on technology and innovation and we look forward to continuing our work together from 2020 and beyond.”

Watch Kingsley discuss the enhanced McLaren partnership and our New Category ambitions with Sky News Business Presenter, Ian King.