A new brand identity for the biggest and most diverse esports racing programme on the planet. Designed to explore the boundaries where virtual and real-world driving skills meet by recruiting fiercely independent esports racing tribes from cross-platform and cross-title, in a search to find the ultimate Champion of Champions.

The brief was to create a new brand identity for McLaren’s esports programme, the largest and most diverse racing esports programme on the planet.

The three principle objectives of the new brand:

1. Build credibility in a burgeoning racing sport at ground level

2. Engage a young and diverse global gaming audience: from casual mobile gamers to hardcore sim racers

3. Attract a different category of partner into McLaren Racing and the McLaren Group

Built on the powerful insight that the skills of virtual racers mirror the skills of real racers, McLaren created a pioneering grassroots programme to find racing talent in gaming.

The McLaren Shadow Project is the largest and most diverse racing esports programme on the planet, crossing the rivalry that exists between players from different platforms (sim vs. mobile) and games (Project Cars vs. Forza), creating a new gateway into elite racing for partners and fans.

The programme had to engage with a young and diverse global gaming audience: from casual mobile gamers to hardened sim racers.

We discovered a competitive rivalry exists between players from different platforms (sim vs. mobile), formats (Xbox vs. PlayStation) where each gamer fiercely identifies with their own teams. Our solution was to combine both gaming and hardware vernaculars with the sense of tribalism inherent within the gaming community to create a compelling identity.

A driver development programme was developed to exploit the intriguing tension between virtual and real-world racing, utilising the skills and technological capabilities developed from over five decades of racing in elite motorsport and applying them to gaming.

The centre of the programme revolves around a global talent competition to find the champion of champions across a series of online and physical gaming qualifiers spread throughout the world over the course of several months.

Finalists are invited to the McLaren Technology Centre over four days for the most technologically advanced biometric human performance evaluation in esports using McLaren’s F1 driver performance methodology.

Racers are also tested in a number of events and competitions across the virtual and real-worlds in order to explore and test the transference of ‘core skills’ into real-world racing. Races include Formula 1’s inaugural Esports Series, driving a World Championship winning Formula 1 car at Goodwood, competing at the Race of Champions to testing in the McLaren simulator.

Content was created as highlight shows and livestreams throughout the programme, as well as a variety of articles exploring the intersection of virtual and real-world racing.

The project was a huge success for the brand:

525K entrants recruited as new McLaren racers

Global appeal - The top 10 markets spilt across 5 continents (North America, South America, Asia, Europe and Oceania)

130M combined total global reach from all digital and social channels (owned and non-owned)

2,948 articles reaching 1.58BN in reach

Four new technology brands recruited as Partners into the McLaren Technology Group – Huami, HTC Vive, OnePlus and Alienware.