Cigarette manufacturers spent billions of dollars in automobile racing,
starting in 1968. Back in the 1800’s,
cigarettes were sold as healthy items – believe it or not, good for the lungs! By
the way, that was the approach used to introduce cigarettes to the Chinese
market in the latter part of the century. Soon the medical profession caught on
with tobacco’s twisted rationale, but as the multi-billion dollar industry has
always involved money and power all over the world, cigarettes are still sold
freely all over, but advertising it has become impossible. It was not entirely
so back in 1968, although there were some prohibitions in certain medias and
certain countries. That was the very reason why cigarette manufacturers embraced
racing with gusto, specially because direct tobacco advertising was prohibited
in TV almost universally. As racing became more of a TV product, it became a
very useful advertising medium for cigarette advertisers, almost the only way their
brands could appear on an ever more relevant and influential platform. With
time we got used to seeing Marlboro and Gitanes sponsored Formula 1 cars
without signage in races such as the British and German Grand Prix. Eventually,
cigarette sponsorship has become universally outlawed.
Now, we see logos of the likes of Martini
and Chandon omitted from Formula 1
cars in the Abu Dhabi and Bahrain Grand Prix. I have not quite understood why
the Singha logo is allowed to appear on Ferrari,
for Singha is Thailand’s main beer brand. Maybe beer is allowed, champagne and
vermouth not allowed?
Be that as it may, I was just meditating about the condition of the
Brazilian Stock Car championship. Although a local championship, a number of
well known drivers of Formula 1 pedigree race in this championship, including Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa, Ricardo
Zonta, Antonio Pizzonia, Lucas di Grassi and Nelson Piquet Jr. A large percentage of the grid is sponsored by
pharmaceutical companies, mostly generic drug makers. This pattern began years
ago, with the success of Medley.
This works in Brazil, it would not work in the US, for instance.
Brazilians are prone to self-medication and buying medicines in pharmacy
without prescription is a national pass time. In the US, you never even see the
medicine’s packages for most prescriptions, generic or not: medicines are
removed from boxes and placed in pharmacy containers. So generic drug makers
have no reason to even thing about advertise. Of course, this does not apply to
brand names such as Viagra, which
most famously sponsored NASCAR cars. In fact, a lot of TV and magazine
advertising these days is done by pharma companies, specially as TV audiences
become older and older. The young set is leaving TV aside, after all.
Returning to the Brazilian Stock car championship, if the government
does decide to curb or prohibit generic pharmaceutical companies advertising,
the championship would be in a dire situation. Both this year’s champion and
runner up (Daniel Serra and Felipe Fraga) are sponsored by pharma,
in fact, Fraga’s team, Cimed, had no less than five cars in the Interlagos season closing event.
I have discussed the matter of sponsorship and money at length in my
book Motor Racing in the 70`s – Pivoting from Romantic to Organized
which can be bought here or in
several amazon.com stores worldwide. I discuss the astounding wide variety of
industries that sponsored racing endeavors back in that pioneering decade, and
funny enough, pharmaceutical companies were not common at all. Things change.
For the sake of Brazilian Stock Car, let us hope there is no advertising ban on
generic drug makers. And let us hope not many thousand Brazilians die from improper
self-medicating…
Much more information about racing in the 70's can be found in my book MOTOR RACING IN THE 70'S - PIVOTING FROM ROMANTIC TO ORGANIZED. It is a 472-page book about racing in the period, with 242 photos, covering Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3, Formula 5000, other lower formulae, Formula Indy, NASCAR, Touring Cars, Sports Cars, Can Am, Trans Am, IMSA, DRM, local racing scenes, main driver profiles, plus long lists of makes that raced in the period, main drivers and racing venues from 85 countries, year highlights, performance and financial analysis of the sport. It can be bought at Amazon shops in the USA, UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Australia, Japan,
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