This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Pushkin. I never went to a Formula One race as a kid because we lived in southern Ontario, and there was just one F1 race in Canada. That race was in Montreal, a good seven-hour drive away. I never watched an F1 race on television either, because we didn't have a television. But what I did have was a subscription to the car magazine Road & Track, and Road & Track took F1 very seriously. Every month my newest shoe would arrive, I would turn immediately to the long, detailed account of that month's race. And I fell in love. It's been 50 years, but I can still rattle off the names of all the top drivers of that era from memory. James Hunt, Mario Andretti, Carlos Pace, Jacques Lafitte, and of course the greatest of them all, my adolescent idol, Niki Lauda, who won two world championships in the mid-1970s with Scuderia Ferrari. It was world championship material from the moment he joined the Ferrari team. There's no question that in 75, 76, I was really dominating the whole thing without any mistakes, so I did nothing wrong. I mean, this was perfect driving. If you had met skinny pre-adolescent Malcolm in the mid-1970s in rural Ontario, there's a good chance you would have seen me in my prized Ferrari t-shirt. I was a fan. One of what the Italians called Tifosi, a Ferrari devotee. And that's what it meant to be a fan 50 years ago. T-shirts, magazine stories, and a big Niki Lauda poster on your wall. But what does it mean to be a fan today? Today we have the internet and streaming and big data and AI and all the other accoutrements of the digital age, is there a chance to reinvent the meaning of fandom? My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to the latest episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where we offer our listeners a glimpse behind the curtain of the world of technology. In our first episode, we talked about how an AI assistant created with IBM WatsonX helps future teachers practice responsive teaching. Our second episode was how a custom AI model could help L'Oreal's researchers shape the future of what we put on our faces every morning. In this episode, how IBM, one of the world's preeminent technology companies, is joining up with one of the world's preeminent racing brands to fundamentally change how fans interact with their favorite team. The size of the Scuderia Ferrari HP fan base is staggering. 396 million people around the world identify as Ferrari fans. 396 million! The only other fan bases that big belong to the iconic Premier League football teams like Manchester United or Chelsea FC. I don't believe there is any other Formula One team that inspires that kind of devotion. Ferrari's job then isn't to necessarily grow its fan base. 396 million is more than enough fans. Their job is to deepen the connection people feel with the Scuderia Ferrari team. But if I'm Ferrari, how do I find out more about who my fans are, what they care about, what they want? How do I use my archives and data to create experiences that matter to them? How do I say to the guy who spent his childhood eagerly reading Road & Track every month, here are other ways you can get involved with your favorite F1 team today? The task of deepening an emotional connection in the digital age begins as an information problem, which is where IBM comes in. How would you describe what you do? I'd describe it as probably the best job at IBM. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to ask you, do you have the best job at IBM? I think so. I'm talking to Fred Baker, who leads sports and entertainment for IBM Consulting in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. You can probably guess from the accent, he's from New Zealand. We've had a really interesting range of experience over the past five, six years. We've worked with Premier League clubs like Liverpool Football. We've worked with England Rugby, St. Andrews Lynx. We also globally, we've got a global team. So we work with the Masters, the US Open, ESPN Fantasy Football, the Grammys. You do the tennis stuff? Is that all under your remit? Yeah, so we do Wimbledon as well. Yep, that's under my remit. If you've ever watched Wimbledon on television, I'm sure you've seen at various moments a little IBM logo on the bottom of the screen. That's because IBM has been Wimbledon's official information technology partner since 1990. When the idea of a collaboration between Ferrari and IBM was first broached, Baker actually took people from Ferrari on a tour of IBM's Wimbledon operation, just so they could see what a tech company like IBM could do for a sports franchise. which Wimbledon did you take them to last year's champs tell me what you showed them we take them into what we call the bunker so we it's literally underground at the champs and showed them how we bring everything to life from the data capture off the courts how we real-time categorize serve all those points to broadcasters and serve them into the app the website for millions of fans around the world they were really impressed by that I'm also impressed by that. IBM trained its AI on the language of tennis, and not only the language of tennis, but specifically the language of tennis at Wimbledon. So it can then decipher what an unforced error or a winner or a lob or, you know, idiosyncrasies in the language, it can decipher all of that. And then it can also tell what does a broadcaster like to talk about that is interesting to a fan. You know, we've trained it so it can not only analyze everything going on in the match, It can analyze past performances and rationalize results based on conditions or form and then make predictions that fans can learn from. But it can also pull out on the spot really interesting milestones, moments, data points that then come out of the mouth of a broadcaster. IBM is running an AI model that has been trained on huge amounts of tennis data in order to give human broadcasters ideas on what they can talk about. And it all takes place underground, right near the courts. It literally like it the underground floor of the broadcast center at Wimbledon It literally almost under the courts Has IBM got the entire bunker Yeah How big is the room Oh, I'm sure our team would like it to be bigger, but it's big enough. There's probably 30, 40 IBM is down there. Oh, I see. Man in the fort. Seeing it live is just really impressive when you see how much work and intelligence goes on to then make an end experience for a fan that is really beautiful and representative of their brand and tradition. IBM's goal in taking Ferrari to the Wimbledon bunker was to show them what it looks like to harness the power of data and how this could help shape Scuderia Ferrari's fan and digital experiences. Could AI learn the language of Scuderia Ferrari? What was the original app like before IBM got involved? I'm speaking with Stefano Pollard, who runs fan development for Ferrari's F1 team. It was quite a good app, a very good digital product, but just an editorial product. So we were providing fans news and videos, articles, and it was mainly about that. The strategy and the idea was trying to use the app to have a deeper connection and interaction with our fans, making it more interactive. So turning it from an editorial product, which was a very good editorial product, to a more interactive product, digital product. With such a massive undertaking, I asked Stefano how it all started once IBM got involved. We started really with a very long couple of months of discovery phase. So looking at the current app, looking at fans, looking at what fans wanted from a fan app. Tell me a little bit more about that phrase, something the fan wanted. What is it that the superfan wasn't getting before that was something that would tie them even closer to Ferrari? Having run some focus group, having read market research, having spoken to fans and being a fan, the strongest insight is Ferrari fans and super fans want to be part of something, want to belong to something. So they want to be part of a community and ultimately they want to be part of a winning team. So they want to feel closer and get access. The way Stefano saw it, the opportunity wasn't with race days. When the cars are on the track, the Tifosi are already locked in. But there was an opportunity to engage Ferrari fans on the other days of the week, or during the off-season. Formula One is so much more than just the race. This is Fred Baker again. What we can do is relive the race and bring it to life after the fact. We can help them prepare, we can help them relive the past, and we can also bring the experience around race weekend to life as well. That, of course, made me wonder, how do you engage fans when there's not a race happening? Baker says it all comes back to data and information. Talk a little bit about data collection, because you're talking about a brand with tentacles everywhere, and you're trying to bring a lot of that stuff together in the app. this is an organization that has for decades used data for racing for performance it's not historically used that data for everyone in the world to see what we're trying to do is expose as much of it as we can to fans so part of collecting the data the challenge was around how you go across all the disparate different groups that collect data for different purposes the team that collects data on tires the team that has data on drivers on weather on competitors and so on So you're trying to bring all that together and source it and make sense of it and train our AI to understand what it means, what things on team radio mean, what nicknames mean, what abbreviations and slang and idiosyncrasies on car specifics and track specifics and so on mean. And you're also trying to design for something that is going to be fan engaging, but also appropriate to all the sensitivities of the privacy that's necessary. So you want it to be able to do all of that, collect all the data, produce something for fans in an automated way. But in order to design something to expertly engage the Tifosi, it's necessary to understand more about the passion and the type of national identity behind the fan base. You need to get inside the mind of the superfan. If you wanted to meet some modern-day Tifosi in the United States, you could head to a bar in midtown Manhattan called Fela. Every race day, Formula One fans gather at Fela to cheer on their favorite drivers, their favorite teams. And I mean, really cheer. I sent our producer, Jake Harper, to Fela on the day of the Canadian Grand Prix so he could see the fandom up close. The bar gets loud and so crowded, it's hard to move. Today, the room is packed with Scuderia Ferrari HP fans. Even your glasses are Ferrari. I just noticed that. Jake talked to a Ferrari fan named Gino, who was dressed head to toe in Ferrari's signature red and black. My shoes are Ferrari. Fully decked out. They were making fun of me last time I was here. They were like, is your underwear Ferrari? And I texted my girlfriend like, babe, I need Ferrari underwear. Did you get it? Not yet. Not yet. I'll work on it. Geno's fandom started with Ferrari as a brand. I love the cars. I think the 458 Scuderia is like the pinnacle of automotive engineering. That's my dream car. The 430 with the glass house for the engine. I mean, they're all gorgeous. It's always been an aspiration of mine to own one. So that naturally made me gravitate towards Ferrari. Even when the company I worked for sponsored AMG Patronus, I was secretly hiding my Tifosi at the races. Like Clark Kent in Superman, just hiding the uniform underneath. I love that. I love that. Yeah, I was wearing a Ferrari shirt underneath my suit. In one sense, Gino is typical of what Ferrari has learned about its followers. A lot of F1 fans, especially newer fans, are fans of drivers. But the Tifosi love Ferrari. It's the oldest brand in Formula One. the only team that has stuck around since the series was founded in 1950. But in another sense, Gino is not typical. He lives in New York. He can go to Fela to celebrate F1 with other Tifosi. I'm a big racing fan, and coming to this bar, I found a bunch of people that were in an F1. Now I'm at this bar every weekend, just about with four or five friends that I made just through racing. But lots and lots of Scuderia Ferrari's 396 million fans don't live in a big city with a Ferrari bar. And lots of those 396 million fans aren the kind of hardcore fan who dress head to toe in Ferrari signature red and black A group that large is diverse necessarily And one of the first tasks that IBM and Ferrari set out to do was to understand the full range of the Tifosi phenomenon People like Gino, hardcore fans, they were easy. They would follow Scuderia, Ferrari, HP anywhere it wanted to go. But who else was out there? The most interesting addition to the F1 fan base were those who watched the phenomenally successful Netflix documentary Drive to Survive. These tended to be newcomers to the sport, more Americans than Europeans. What was their emotional perspective? What did they want? Here's Fred Baker again, the guy with the coolest job at IBM. If I'm a passionate fan, I want to read a totally different thing on the app to a casual fan who is of the Netflix Drive to Survive generation versus some really niche personas that we found that are super interested but don't find it accessible yet until we start to deliver to quite different needs that they have. Working with IBM Watson X, Baker and his team began to develop personas, archetypes of all the possible kinds of Ferrari fans. Because if Ferrari wanted to get better at talking to their fans, they had to understand who the fans were. And the personas are helping Ferrari and IBM create an app that caters to the Tifosi in all their iterations. How many personas did you come up with? I think we had over 10 in the end, maybe a dozen. And this is different, yeah, archetypes of people. Even that process is helped by AI. So we train AI to help us develop out a persona. We can get really detailed as to what each archetype is and their hobbies and backgrounds and so on. So our own Watson X helped us in developing those personas, like our research helped us uncover a segment of middle-aged women in China who Ferrari is a real status symbol and they're really interested in the Scuderia Ferrari brand and now they can engage more with it but it wasn't yet uh you know accessible or inclusive enough for them to feel comfortable doing so real spectrums of fans across those dozen personas that we had to design for give me some more examples of personas can you give me a couple more just so I get a flavor yeah sure so the other obvious one is the drive to survive fan and that they're probably not a diehard all their life scooter or ferrari fan but they've really got into the more social side of formula one that's been born out of the really popular series drive to survive on netflix you then have gamer personas who are into you know esports is growing massively in motorsport and they're probably not necessarily into the real life racing quite so much but they're certainly into gaming so how do you appeal to them then casual fans who are sort of into the luxury of scooter ferrari but not the sport necessarily do the personas have names yeah i mean we give them human names so we had a max we had a alfonso i think we had a pedro the woman in china is she watching f1 or is she interested more in the brand and what it signifies yeah more in the brand and being part of a community if i'm that persona in china then i probably don't feel like I belong to it truly yet, but I'd love to feel like I do. So I could start to become a part of a digital community, learn more about the brand, probably get access to exclusive merchandise or, you know, if I can't necessarily own a Ferrari car, which let's face it, not many people can. And if we're reliant only on the people who can own a car, then we're probably not going to get much engagement. So how do we make others feel that they're still a part of that community? This is what I mean when I say the task of relating to the Ferrari fan base is a data and information problem. It's about collecting, organizing, and analyzing the needs and wants of an enormous pool of people and speaking to each of them in their own emotional language. Giving all the work Fred put into understanding Ferrari's fan base, I was curious to know how his framework would categorize me. I want to figure out which persona I am. So I'll describe to you my relationship to Ferrari. You tell me. So what I am is a huge car nut. So I like all cars. Yeah. Obsessively. Collect on a very limited stage vintage cars. Read serious car magazines. Been a lot of time on car websites. Have a historical relationship to F1 because I grew up with Niki Lauda battling James Hunt. in Lauda's Ferrari years. I have a great nostalgic connection. Went to Italy with my nephew and went to the Ferrari factory and rented one of those to drive around. And I follow F1, but I don't think I would ever go to an F1. I wouldn't fly to Miami for F1 in Miami. I wouldn't go that far. And I don't have time to watch F1 on TV on a regular basis. But I'm interested. and I have a red Ferrari t-shirt, which I've been known to wear. And if I ever got really rich, would I buy a Ferrari? Yes, I would. Okay, so where am I in your breakdown? Yeah, I think you're probably a combination of the, I think it's casual loyalist is not gonna overtly go out of their way to sort of spend money on the racing, but they are loyal to the Ferrari brand and they have nostalgia with it or whatever it might be. and then the luxury enthusiasts as well. So in that type of fan, you're right. We're probably not going to engage you by doing a ton more on race weekend, but we can engage you by bringing this hugely rich amount of archive material, footage, feelings, and past drivers of yesteryear by bringing them to life. is there an app that you saw another brand doing that served as a kind of model i don't mean within f1 i'm talking about from any other yeah bill on top of being a very sport passionate i'm a let's say a marketing passionate a digital passionate guy so i have a lot of apps and also for my job, I try to look at different markets and different apps. As we were talking, I was thinking about Strava. I'm a huge Strava head. It's my favorite app. If you don't already know, Strava is used by millions of active people around the world. I'm a runner and the app shows me a map of where I went, how fast I ran, what my heart rate was, what the weather was, on and on. Are you a cyclist or a runner? I'm a runner. I'm a runner. I run marathons and ultra marathons. I did last year 100 kilometers. As it turns out Stefano is a Strava head too Right after I spoke to him I followed him on Strava He and I run roughly the same distance every day at the same pace And if I ever in Milan I almost certainly going to look him up to see if he'll take me out on one of his favorite routes through the city. This is what I love about Strava. You can find people to run with and interact with. Strava is a community of like-minded people. And for those like me, the Strava app becomes a regular part of my daily routine. And that's what Stefano wanted for the Ferrari app. Are you interested in creating sort of robust forums for Ferrari fans to communicate with each other? I think you have to work in three directions. So direction number one is Ferrari to fans. So providing them something which is compelling, which has value. And this I think we're already doing and we're working on it. Second way is fans to Ferrari. so help like allowing fans to better interact with us which was something we were not doing with the previous app for example we have just introduced two features which are polls so basic ones but polls and the possibility like the submit your message feature so really to work on this way fans to ferrari and then the third important way to to build a community and nurture community is like fans to fans so if you were able to work on those three dimensions of ferrari to fans fans to Ferrari and fans to fans, that's how you could really create a strong community and start really monetizing and creating value. I think we are very strong in the first dimension right now. We are building the second one, so fans to Ferrari, and then definitely the third one has to be there in order to have a complete community engagement. So let's talk about results. Scuderia Ferrari HP launched the new app at the Miami Grand Prix in 2025, incorporating AI elements and tailoring it to those archetypes Fred was talking about. Are more people using the app? Are users spending more time on it than they did on the older version of the app? Yes. We doubled these months the daily active users we were having last season. So compared to the average of 2024 season, we have more than double of daily active users. Also, we are doubling a normal month's downloads, so we did in these months more than two times the download we are doing in a normal month. We are increasing by 35% the average time spent on app, so KPIs are good. If you build the right app, they will come. For generations, fans of all varieties have met in public places. The stands of stadiums in bars to watch races and matches on television. But there's a chance now for fandom to exist on a higher and broader level, for a community to be created over the internet, even when the fans are vastly different people who live vast distances apart. I could imagine Gino in his Ferrari Red and Black using the Scuderia Ferrari app, relating to me as I relive my memories of Niki Lauda from the 1970s. Maybe I could use the app to learn something from the woman in China, the Tifosi newcomer, or some 17-year-old who got sucked in first by a drive to survive. I can imagine myself as part of that vision, taking my lifelong obsession to the next level. Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, Amy Gaines McQuaid, Trina Menino, and Jake Harper. We're edited by Lacey Roberts. Engineering by Nina Bird-Lawrence. Mastering by Sarah Bruguere. Music by Gramascope. Strategy by Tatiana Lieberman and Cassidy Meyer. Special thanks to Scuderia Ferrari HP and the bar and restaurant Fela in New York City. Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries and Ruby Studio at iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glaube. This is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions. I asked Fred Baker to come up with a hypothetical, something that could fulfill my childhood dreams, something that this type of technology could theoretically do that might appeal to a fan like me. Someone whose interest in the sport went back 50 years. He said, what about using AI to bring historical cars to life? Bringing to life cars of the past allows fans to simulate a 1950 Ferrari race versus 1971 to see which car would be faster. So it's those sorts of trade-offs. Wait, you could do that? Tell me what that last thing you said. You can run simulations, race simulations out of the app? You can't out of the app at this point. so you know i know potentially potentially yeah yeah it can you know it simulates based on a whole range of factors that we can feed it and train it on wait so i could hypothetically you could allow me to compare nici lauda for example to a contemporary driver and and i could say if i put nici lauda in a contemporary car what you're saying is that there is a scenario where i could recreate that era in modern cars and get a sense of how my childhood heroes were performing uh would have performed in the present day yeah yeah so you can analyze and understand how you would rank all drivers of all time based on their different traits of a driver right so you can say who's the best late braking who's who was typically the best on a tight track with limited overtaking opportunities who was the best overtaker who was the best of all these traits you then apply those traits and rankings to different tracks and different cars where you know different some different cars are better for a late breaker some different cars are better for a you know on straights and so on so you can simulate you could hypothetically allow fans to simulate any scenario you could say who's going to win in monaco on a 1980 model car you can put a current driver in a 1980 car equally so you can do all sorts of fun simulations and that's just the beginning.
