Marlboro & Scuderia Ferrari in F1: Is the relationship coming to an end?

Scuderia Ferrari, is the name of the F1 team that rings a bell with everyone. With names like Alain Prost, Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso this is the most famous team that the F1 has ever known. The dream of most F1 pilots. Many successes were achieved amongst some less impressive championships.

But I want to zoom in on the relationship with Marlboro today. It all started in the mid 1980′s when Marlboro became a secondary sponsor of Scuderia Ferrari. From the end of the 80′s on Marlboro has become the primary sponsor of this successful team. And finally in september 2005, at a moment where other F1 team turned their backs at the tobacco industry, Marlboro and Ferrari signed an extension of the contract until 2011. In this periode Ferrari will gain about 1 billion dollars from this agreement. While Marlboro keeps visible and therefore relevant. Look fine for both parties, so what’s the problem?First of all, one must understand that Marlboro has been targeted by health regulations of different governments across the globe. The EU is very keen on reducing tabacco advertising in all it’s ways. That’s why they allready had to leave as a big sponsor of women’s tennis in the past. During this contract of 2005-2011 a lot has changed. Ferrari was forced to remove the Marlboro logo from it’s car and drivers. That’s why they came up with a barcode that had to replace this logo. Since this was known a huge scandal broke loose. And that’s why the barcode has been forbidden from now on too.

Even while Ferrari tried to convince everyone that it was not related to Marlboro in any way they were forced to remove it anyway. And that’s why they’ve now come up with the new logo for 2011.

So what do you think. Can you still link this logo to Marlboro? I wonder if the relationship between Scuderia Ferrari and Marlboro slowly is coming to an end. Ferrari gains a lot of money from this deal but it becomes harder and harder for Marlboro to make people see that they are the main sponsor, let stand alone “a sponsor”, of Scuderia Ferrari. But on the other hand, F1 and sports like Ducati, are the only sports left where Marlboro has a connection with. The brand effects on their brand awareness can not be underestimated, even if their logo is not visible like in the times when Micheal Schumacher was Ferrari’s “weltmeister”!