In what is set to stun the motorsport world, Ferrari are reportedly set to announce that their famous Red F1 livery will be ditched for Green in a major brand identity shift.
Sources within Maranello have leaked information on this website outlining a shift from the traditional Rosso to the Verde (green) of the Italian flag starting with the 2023 Formula 1 season when the first all-Green Ferrari will break cover and with it launch the sports car makers next generation.
An announcement from the Scuderia’s big wigs is expected to be made during the course of the Miami Grand Prix weekend; the USA is one of the Italian sports car maker’s largest market with over 2,000 cars sold annually stateside.
The thinking at Ferrari is that Red is part of their past, their legacy which they cherish but going forward, the world much more aware of environmental issues, green is the buzz word and the marketers and spin-doctors at Maranello see this as an opportunity to align their brand with future trends.
blah, blah, blah…
If you are reading this far, first thank you! It’s because you have been part of this “fake news” experiment triggered by incredible traffic numbers we saw with our April Fool’s story, one of our most-read stories to date and by a substantial margin. And there was not an ounce of truth to it, much like the above three paras.
The purpose of this piece is to report the fact to our readers that the “Rosberg to return with Willaims, Latifi gets demoted” tall-tale we told on 1 April attracted over 250,000 page views.
A fact worth pondering and worth sharing with our readers; despite our meticulous attempts to cover F1 from every angle, the harsh reality is that it is still the trivial stuff that gets the clicks.
Furthermore, from years of experience running this site, we have come to realize – based on comments or reactions to some of our articles – that a considerable number of readers do not go further than the headline or opening paragraph of an article before judging it, and at times go on to comment without reading beyond the headline and perhaps the first paragraph.
Our experience, posting reports and administrating the comments for a decade and a half, indicates that this headline devouring and first para skimming by ‘readers’ is largely responsible for fake or trivial news going viral.
In this highly competitive web-based motorsport/F1 media landscape we take it for granted, erroneously or not, that other F1/motorsport sites share similar traffic trends as us, in other words when we are doing well they are doing well and also when things are bad (traffic-wise) it’s across the board.
Whatever the case, traffic surges and spikes are part of modern media trends with teams at big publishing houses hired to optimize traffic through content.
It’s a ‘throwing-darts-in-the-dark’ kind of ‘science’ that shifts on the whims of algorithm masters toiling behind the scenes for Google, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and the like determine if reports like this or on April Fools’ go viral or not. Watch this space…
Now that you have got this far with the ‘experiment’ how does one interpret these trends and of course maximize the traffic induced by fake news without being fake?
While you ponder that, and for the record please note that Ferrari wants to remain Red forever!
Experiment over. Thoughts?
