Millennial Esports CMO Darren Cox was at the Rolex 24 at Daytona last weekend and talked on IMSA Radio about esports racing, real racing and so much more.

LONDON, UK (Tuesday, August 15, 2016): Esports racing reached a new level of professionalism on Sunday with the first-ever live Esports stream promoted by Millennial Esports through IDEAS+CARS

Held in partnership with Silverstone Circuits, The Wing pit garages were used to provide the backdrop for this breakthrough event.

Professionals from traditional sports broadcasting and Esports came together to showcase the direction of future content in this fast growing space. Streamed via McLaren’s YouTube and Facebook channels, the event formed part of the qualifying process for the World’s Fastest Gamer competition.

Rudy van Buren proved to be the winner of the first of four rounds hosted at the home of British Motorsport, which featured significant support from McLaren on their social media channels and with the decorating of the temporary studios with a McLaren road car and current Formula 1 machine.

Click to to view recap from round 1 at Silverstone.

Millennial Esports CEO Alex Ingelman believes this is just the starting point for the next phase of esports racing content.

“Millennial Esports want to professionalise the esports racing scene to provide a more structured platform for brands to come into this space,” Ingelman said.

“This stream, and the next three over the next three weeks, will start to do that. I’d like to thank the teams from Silverstone and McLaren on behalf of our group for their support and vision in this space.”
Presenters Ben Constanduros and Matthew Trivett are from the worlds of motorsports and Esports respectively but came together for this broadcast and see that it is genre defining.

The experienced Constanduros has worked on broadcasts for major championships including Formula 1, FIA World Touring Car Championship, FIA World Endurance Championship, DTM  and key events including the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the “Race of Champions”.

“I was thrilled to be a part of the production because it not only raised the bar for Esports racing but the quality of the stream was as good as its real life counterparts,” Constanduros said.

Esports-caster Trivett believes the crossover between real sports and Esports is a rapidly growing opportunity.

“The unique thing about racing Esports is the skills required to race RFactor2 can easily transfer across to the real thing. That is not always the case with other genres,” Trivett said.

“The gaming industry is huge and growing fast but I’m really pleased to be a part of this production with Millennial Esports and IDEAS+CARS as this competition – and the quality of the production that is being used to showcase the races – can also excite the mainstream audience as well.”

The next round of McLaren’s World’s Fastest Gamer will be held next Sunday at 8:30pm (UK time) and will again be shown live at http://facebook.com/mclaren_racing, https://www.youtube.com/mclaren as well as in conjunction with GiveMeSport at https://www.facebook.com/GiveMeSport/

LONDON, UK (Wednesday, November 2, 2016): IDEAS+CARS has joined forces with AerNow to take the next step in bridging the gap between virtual and reality using new innovative broadcast and streaming technologies.

Launched earlier this year by founder Darren Cox, IDEAS+CARS is an un-agency – a group of passionate and professional collaborators that have extensive experience in delivering exceptional IDEAS in the CAR world.

IDEAS+CARS specialise in connecting brands with the rapidly expanding eSports industry and will use AerNow’s new immersive video technologies to further grow the genre.

“As demand in the market continues to grow, the AerNow platform is ideally suited to bring together content into a consistent, next-generation, entertainment-focused eSports experience,” said Darren Cox, Chief Maverick Officer of IDEAS+CARS.

“This goes way beyond just simple live streaming. It is combining, video, data and information together into a format that can be consumed on a wide variety of platforms.

“We are very excited about the technologies being developed by AerNow as they represent a new era of publishing – it is not just video, not just information – the platform brings the entire package together in a unique digital experience.”

While many brands look at television, print and mobile as separate publishing outlets, the new partnership with AerNow provides an immersive rich media experience not seen before.

“Brands are able to take advantage of AerNow’s content ingest, video servers, network access points and real-time operating system CLOE to provide frame-by-frame synchronization and customized data visualization,” said Erik Davis, AerNow Executive Chairman.

“And we have only just begun.”

Providing this turnkey solution as a service enables IDEAS+CARS to focus on its core business: creating innovative, lean-forward experiences that meet the growing demands of sponsors and brands hungry for the engagement of their growing audience.

“AerNow has developed automated workflow solutions for the presentation of data, scoring, ranking, live and video-on-demand eSports experiences,” said Darcy Lorincz, AerNow Chief Technology Officer.

“There is a movement to better organize and regulate the eSports industry, but these efforts are at an early stage with no authority or standards yet established.

“Our eSports platform is a path toward setting those standards, solving issues related to quality of service and engagement for real-time, on-demand contests while integrating sponsorship and branding to provide monetization capabilities to all stakeholders.”

A new online research survey conducted by GMR Marketing recently shed new light on eSports players and fans, revealing they are receptive to brand presence in their sport, even agreeing that it could positively impact purchasing decisions.

A substantial majority (85%) of all surveyed eSports enthusiasts were “brand-positive” – stating they were always or usually appreciative when brands tied to reach out to me through the gaming world.

Both AerNow and Darren Cox have been first-hand witnesses to the impact eSports has had on motorsports. While at Nissan, Darren Cox founded “Nissan PlayStationGT Academy,” a global video game contest that pitted gamers against each other to compete to become real-world race drivers.

AerNow, partnered with Always Evolving Motorsports, owns the race team supporting US racer Bryan Heitkotter, the first American winner of the GT Academy.

Heitkotter has become a respected world-class driver, placing fifth in the 2016 Pirelli World Challenge season in the US in a season which included a dominant back-to-back double victory weekend in Utah.
IDEAS+CARS has also recently launched the eSPORTS+CARS virtual racing team. These two companies will continue to collaborate to innovate and push the boundaries of eSports.

Their insight on the shifts in their Industries and the real need for Innovation NOW was very interesting, but I couldn’t tie together some of the things I was hearing enough for them to be useful to me until this article from USA Today popped onto my sushi conveyor belt (more on that theory soon).

The simple line from that article below should be sending shivers through the Automotive industry;

“Quite simply, cars are becoming less important or less accessible to Millennials”.

And one statistic should ring bells in the heads of those that only understand numbers (there are a lot of those running car ‘Brands’).

In America … “Only 24.5% of 16-year-olds had a driver’s license in 2014, down from … 46.2% in 1983”

Plenty of reasons why of course – Social media, Uber, Insurance cost, regulation etc etc. Clearly the new players in the Industry (yes that means Uber, Google, Tesla, Le TV etc) are moving far faster than the ‘old guys’.

But the question is what are they doing about it? Well the old adage about needing to know you have a problem in order to fix it rings true. My colleague in TV tells me that it is only in the last 12 months that TV execs have started to panic about the decline in TV numbers. Worrying if true. And perhaps a reflection of where the old car guys are today.

So what do the old guys need to do? Like me they need to learn to listen.

They need to stop thinking that young adults (I hate the phrase Millennials – sounds like they are never going to grow up and buy cars) are acting like they did when the old guys were young. The Scalectrix car, red Lambo poster and Motorshow brochures are just not going to cut it to drive Brand Love today.

What will? Well we are all just about to find out. And I know where my money is. Quite literally.

* I have also developed something called patience as well recently but thats another story…

Next blog – My Black Box Theory

DC

MAGUIRE’S VOICE
“And suddenly it was all pretty clear. The answer was fewer clients.  Caring for them, caring for ourselves, and the games too. Starting our lives, really.”

PRINT SHOP GUY
“That’s how you become great, man. You hang your balls out there.”

After 41 years my automotive apprenticeship is over. I’m going to “hang my balls out there” (again, some would argue) and just focus on the simple stuff that I enjoy and that I know makes a difference – just ideas and cars.

The world is changing. Something’s are not changing fast enough. The rate of external change is faster than the rate of internal improvement in most companies. Everyone agrees something different needs to be done to balance this equation. I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to help automotive companies speed up the change they know they need to make by coming up with well thought through and perfectly delivered ideas that fully reflect the companies we work with’s ‘WHY’.

We are passionate about it. And I passionately believe the support for the automotive market in disrupting the establishment using strategy, consultancy, ideas generation and down right hard work has a gap for a few hard working, passionate, maverick car guys and gals – all with history in doing this stuff already.

IDEAS+CARS is not a one size fit all solution – if fact we will only work with a very small number of people we like – but like Jerry Maguire we will immerse ourselves in a brand (athlete) and it’s challenges and will try to come up with big ideas that will either be part of the change, signal the change or to force a change.  Because at the end of the day change is all about Ideas.

As Stalin said “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”

Ideas motivate and change people inside and outside of a brand. Big ones that reflect the way the Brand wants to go or what the Brand wants to become, change lives and can change the perception of the Brand overnight. First job will be to ask Why? Why are you wanting to change Perception/Direction/Volume/Interactions?  Because an idea without a purpose is just a guess.

We will be consciously reckless. So yes we will keep asking WHY?  You can read elsewhere about our mantra – they are a little bit like Jerry Maguire’s mindset. And we are not bashing other peoples approach to helping brands change – we just think there is an alternative – like Jerry did.

IDEAS+CARS just want to help those that know somewhere along the line you are going to need some big, hairy arsed, disruptive ideas to make the change real.

If you keep your eyes open in business, the first day of #Leaders15 was not a surprise. My summary of day 1 on twitter was the following

1. Content is still king

2. Collaboration is the only mindset

3. Access for fans is expected

4. Interaction through technology is everything #notasurprise

5. Digital content approach is the new school for broadcast OR roadcast has to borrow from digital or die

6. Grow the audience then monitize (obvs)

7. Use free social content to drive views for live sport (obvs)

Pretty obvious stuff really. For those with their eyes open anyway. But here were self proclaimed ‘Leaders’ studiously taking lots of notes – yes in paper based books – by clearly wealthy over 50 year olds. They looked surprised at these insights and wrote notes like they were hearing the words for the first time

Many of the ‘digital’ guys on stage talked about hiring a millennial to teach the ‘Leaders’ about digital – most of the over 50 set could not refer to spell checks in their Hilton Hotels stolen note pads (free stationary but HUGE watches) they would have to ask someone under 40 what a Millennial was / is / did when they were back to their Oak panelled office.

The 30 – 42* year olds, who seemed to be there to sell to the ‘leaders’, wore the uniform of the hip and trendy ‘I’m a creative, not a salesman’ – very blue suits, very brown shoes, facial hair, no tie. They nodded in agreement with the insights provided. “I’m all over that boss, that’s what I have been saying for years, digital, yeah, engagement, monetize yeah.”

* I’m 41 so I extended the range

On day two the big watches and the Brown shoes reconvened with a Dirty Martini / Peroni hangover and theirs and my brains were blown.

The two subjects were gaming and e-sports. There were stats that blew the mind

• Twitch bought by Amazon for $1bn

• Biggest event prize fund in 2015 was $18m (double that of ICC Cricket World Cup)

• Esport revenue will triple in 3 years

• Naming rights for a premier event independently at $20m

• 104 mins average time on platform per day

But it was the insight, the speed of change, the professionalism and the clarity of thought of the speakers that blew the hangovers away. EA CEO Andrew Wilson was eloquent when he compared the shift in gaming to music purchasing. Gaming was the same as buying a music tape from a shop – it is now like the Spotify model – to use his words “it permeates out of every part of our lives”. With ink running out of American Airline pens he went on to say that gaming was an experience industry that had to deliver $2 of perceived value for every $ spent (quoting the founder of DEF JAM – “Deaf who?” Called the Dirty Martini brigade).

I have been involved in gaming for 10 years – but even with my eyes open I had been missing some serious shifts in consumer behaviour. Well I hadn’t – it just hadn’t registered how big it was. When you hear the impressive Wilson saying “we are facilitating human connections …in games and in real sports …” and saying one of his focuses is on “how we connect when they aren’t playing the game”. How is he? He did not mention a channel or site or stream or platform he used one word – “Content”.

I will write a blog on content soon. It shall include a Yo Sushi analogy which explains my theory of the relationship between content and platforms.

E-Gaming deserves pages of comment – which they will get soon. I’ll just leave you with one quote;

“we don’t need old school broadcasters – we are mainstream already – our last tournament had 28 million viewers”.

Yes indeed – the future is now. And it really doesn’t need the past.

Simon Sinek keeps it simple. He urges you to work out your Why. “WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed every morning? And WHY should anyone care?”

You are reading this so I assume you care what is our WHY?

I know that the majority of communication to drivers by car brands is delivered by those tied up in history, admin, meetings, rigid structures and stale agency relationships. They are 100% reliant on historical data and therefore have lost all ability to come up with new, relevant ideas.

Meanwhile their drivers are part of a new world of communication, where ideas and content are the new commodities. Drivers get excited by cars of course – but they now desire content around those cars.

Not just reporting, not just spec sheets, but wide ranging, multi channel content. Films, pictures, blogs, tweets, stories, infographics and and and. They also want new ideas and not just new cars that they can get involved with, interact with and debate about. They want those ideas to reflect the reason they love cars and a particular brand. So everyone needs a why.

Think of the stuff you have loved in cars in the last year. Or the reason you fell in love with cars. It was either a person or an idea or a bit of both. For me it was the 6-wheeled Tyrell and several poor quality car films of the 70’s. For some it might be that famous red Lamborghini Countach poster. Movies and posters are now on YouTube and Instagram not BBC1 and bedroom walls. But the concept is the same.

There are hundreds of thousands of people working on ideas in car design and engineering. But we think not enough in generating ideas to show off those cars and their brands and the content to add richness to the cars and ideas. That’s why we are here. And we believe we are good at it. And we also will work passionately to keep being good at it for people that want us to. Indeed we will work with common sense, but uncommon effort.

So our WHY is
“New ideas and breakthrough content excite drivers about cars. We love cars and are passionate about creating the best ideas and content in the world that disrupt the status quo.”

….And to carry on the Sinek golden circles here is our How and What. What is yours?

HOW do we do that?
“Discover, Disrupt and Deliver using the most passionate, professional collaborators in the car world.”

WHAT do we actually do?
“Based on your WHY, we help you do crazy stuff and tell people about it.”