Business: Mol Group and how it plans to use the WTCC to grow

Now in its second full-year of title sponsorship of Zengő Motorsport and their star driver Norbert Michelisz, fresh from another crowd pleasing home win at Budapest two weeks ago, the Mol Group aims to use the FIA World Touring Car Championship to push itself further and take on the other oil and gas giants of the world.

Selling cars is a big business, but while various manufacturers dip in and out of different motorsports, and some avoid motorsport altogether, the same can rarely be said for the oil and gas industry, which see motorsport as a key investment to promote their brands to the masses, and Mol Group is one of the latest to start pushing themselves globally, using the WTCC and Norbert Michelisz, often regarded as the independent driver who should be given the next available manufacturer contract, to do this.

The small Zengő team wheeled out their new Honda Civic last year, dropping the orange colour scheme it has used in the three previous years for a new angrier looking black and red car, now carrying the colours of Mol Group, the parent company of Hungary’s largest petrol station chain Mol, and the WTCC’s race fuel provider Panta Distribuzione S.p.A.

From the early days of Mol Group’s involvement with Zengő and Michelisz, when the company’s Mol logo appeared diminutively on the nose of the Hungarian’s BMW in 2012, to increased prominence when the team became Honda’s sole customer programme in 2013, to being a fully incorporated title sponsor in 2014 with the new generation WTCC cars, Mol Group have been consistently and quickly ramping up their involvement in the championship which has made Michelisz a national sports star.

“In the past, four years ago we gave Zengő our logo, they got some money and that was it, but this year for the first year, the helmet, the racing suit, the car, has been branded with one single brand,” said Dominic Kofner, Corporate Comms VP of Mol Group to TouringCarTimes. “We’ve built up a Facebook site, a Twitter site, a microsite, we’ve made a huge step as we want to get as much money back as we can from this sponsorship.

“We’ve hired agencies to help us; we have internal people on it and have expanded the budget. We feel for us motorsport is a sport for us to be in as we are an oil and gas company.”

“And with Norbi (Michelisz), for us it’s a perfect fit. He’s Hungarian; he’s a Hungarian superstar; Zengő is a Hungarian team and Mol is a Hungarian company. Mol had their first victories in Hungary and then we’ve grown internationally…and begun pioneering in the other countries. We’ve had huge challenges and still have challenges, and this is the same situation with Norbi. We see him as a superstar who’s now competing internationally and facing similar challenges, so that’s why for us it’s a great fit.”

Kofner sees the WTCC as the perfect series to develop the Mol Group brand internationally via the achievements of Zengő and Norbert Michelisz, who outscored both the factory Honda drivers in last year’s championship.

“The Mol Group brand is one we want to develop as an international brand, and the WTCC is the only sport we support with international relevance,” he said. “We support football and ice hockey, but these are national events, but for us, Zengő and Norbi is a real international sponsorship, Hungary is only our second focus as I want the sponsorship for an international audience. In Hungary we already strong, we are the biggest company in Hungary so we have no problem with brand awareness, we need to improve our brand awareness in all countries besides Hungary.”

The manufacturer teams in the WTCC all carry title sponsorship from the major oil and gas companies of the world, with Total adoring the dominant Citroën C-Elysées, Castrol having joined the Honda programme when it launched in 2013 and with Lada having had two major Russian oil giants on their cars in the last three years, with first Lukoil and now Rosneft.

Smaller companies such as Valvoline have also been involved in the WTCC for many years, with their logo emblazoned across Tom Coronel’s privateer Chevrolet. Kofner knows Mol Group are joining a championship fighting against bigger, well established brands, but argues that there’s a model for this and a marketing precedent that he hopes will make Mol stronger.

“We perceive ourselves as a challenger brand,” said Kofner. “(As a company) we are not in the league of Shell or BP or Exxon. I compare it a bit like how Red Bull was against Coca Cola, or in the 80s, Apple against IBM, or Virgin against British Airways. We are a challenger brand and we know where we want to be, and that’s why we need the WTCC and this sponsorship to get this brand awareness like the others have, but we also know we are smaller than the others, we are even smaller than Rosneft, but it’s our ambition to grow and we are one of the few oil and gas companies who has a very strong growth strategy, and with Norbi we will grow together.”

Kofner also explains that the investment that Mol Group has made in the WTCC has seen a strong return on investment. The company, along its other subsidiary brands, is involved in a number of different motorsports, right now through Michelisz, the WTCC is a strong programme for the brand but the company is also mindful of other commercial opportunities within motorsport which it is also involved in through its Ina and Panta brands.

“If I look at what I spend in the WTCC and what I get back, the business works, so it’s worth it to spend the money here,” he explained. “It can always be better, but people seem to think we have only a sticker on the car, but we have been working with our team with the whole project for more than 12 months; so it’s a huge resource project, and to expand even more in other series and with other drivers means doubling the resources so we have to see if it’s economically feasible for us.

Looking ahead to next season, Michelisz’s movements, whether he stays at Zengő Motorsport for a seventh consecutive year, or an opportunity arises at a manufacturer team where the possibilities are that Mol could either move across with the five-time race winner, or be unable to due to clashing commitments, Kofner explains that at the moment, Mol’s WTCC programme is very much dependent on their driver’s plans.

“With the set-up we currently have in the WTCC, we’d be happy if we could continue, but it also depends on Norbi and what he does next year,” he explained. “We also have a subsidiary called Ina, the Croation oil and gas company, which are in the rally business, and Panta is also in many motorsports, so in the next two to three years we want to see where we are already, in the MotoGP, touring cars and rally, and then we have to see where we get the best out of it and start to focus. At the moment, I have to say it very much depends on Norbi.”