The Missing Diamonds of Monaco; Marketing Genius or Manic Madness

Formula One - where the stakes are high, and the costs are even higher.

How high you ask? To give you an idea, a typical front running team will spend anywhere between $350-400 million per year to fight for the world championship, a budget that is obtained through sponsorship, prize money, and vehicle manufactures such as Mercedes and Ferrari footing the bill. Now as much as we would like to believe that this money is simply handed to teams on a silver platter with a note that says “spend as you need, you’ve been good this year,” we know that realistically, this is far from the truth. Obtaining funding and meeting costing requirements isn’t an easy task - even in Formula One, costs are counted down to the penny.

So knowing what a challenge securing these large sums of money can be, can you imagine what a team’s reaction would be if someone came along and instead of handing them a cheque for stickers on their car, they wanted to put two $250,000 diamonds in each nose cone of their car, at the most crash-worthy event of the calendar?

Well that is exactly what happened for the Jaguar Formula One Team at the 2004 Monaco Grand Prix - and all was well and good… until the diamonds went missing.

You might think its crazy, but this is the story of the missing diamonds of Monaco, and the marketing genius behind it.

Beautiful - but daring.

The year was 2004, The Olympics were being held in Athens, The last episode of Friends was aired and Oceans Twelve was due for release. However, Village Roadshow Pictures weren’t looking at advertising Oceans Twelve through the usual means, they wanted something that was daring, outlandish, crazy even to promote their new movie.

Now from what I can only imagine, a marketing team must have been sitting around a conference room, beer bottles littering the table, old pizza boxes lying in the corner and the stale smell of cigarette smoke and body odder wafting through the room, with the question “how do we advertise this movie” written on the white board (OK, I may have watched a few to many movies my self). Then, in a sudden “aha!” moment, an intern stands up and says “I’ve got it! Why don’t we put half a million dollars worth of diamonds in the front of a Formula one car and race it around the streets of Monaco?”

If we consider the premise of the Oceans movie series, based on stories of heisting highly valuable items such as diamonds in expensive locations such as Monaco with unpredictable turns at every corner, when you think about it putting diamonds in the nose of Formula one cars isn’t such a bad way of thinking along the lines of what the movie represents.

So a deal was struck with the Jaguar Formula One team, the diamonds were arranged to be placed in the nose of each vehicle in the team, media and press were arranged to hype up and promote the marketing efforts and off and racing with diamonds in the nose of the car the team went. This alone, seems like an exciting story. But then the best thing that could of happened, happened.

Driver Christian Klien didn’t even make the end of the first lap when he collected the wall, smashing the front nose cone into pieces and sending the diamond flying. And that diamond was never to be seen again. Was it grabbed by an official? maybe a spectator? Or washed down a drain?

Questions, Questions, Questions, everyone had questions and everyone was talking about the missing diamond. The media couldn’t get enough!

Not only was this “stunt” talked about by Motorsport fans, it was now worldwide news. People who never in their lives would have never watched a Motorsport event were now talking about the missing diamond in the Formula One car. And when they wondered why the diamonds were there, the answer of course was, “because that’s how Oceans Twelve wanted to promote their film!”

Both Jaguars had a race worth forgetting, but the attention was still on them!

- Photo credit crash.net

The weekend was won by Jarno Trulli in the Renault, but yet no one was talking about him, the focus was on the two Jaguars that failed to finish due to incidents and mechanical issues, and this was all because of the missing diamonds!

And how did the film do? With a budget of $110 million it became the 10th highest grossing film raking in $362 million at the box office. Half a million dollars doesn’t seem like a bad return of investment does it?

So whats the moral of this story? In marketing its the ones who think outside the box who truly win the race.

We love partnering with Businesses that want to think outside the box!

Have a crazy idea on how to promote your business/product?

Make sure to get in touch!

Manager@codymckaymotorsports.com