McLaren Automotive’s organic campaign by SAMY at the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2025 won Gold in Social Automotive at The Drum Awards, generating 800K engagements and a reach of 19 million, outperforming major competitors and authentically connecting with fans.
At the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2025, McLaren Automotive outdrove every major brand—not just on the track, but across multiple social platforms. Our organic campaign generated 800K in engagements and a total reach of 19 million. We cemented our place as the most talked-about name at the event, proving that our strategy could cut through the noise of the world’s biggest automotive brands. More importantly, we achieved our core goal: bringing the raw energy and excitement of the track directly to a global audience, making every fan feel a part of the action.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed is the Super Bowl for the automotive world. Every major brand from Ferrari to Porsche and Lamborghini is locked in an arms race for attention. The challenge wasn't simply to post content; it was to find a way to authentically connect with a global, car-obsessed audience, capturing the unscripted moments of speed and passion that define the event. Our task was not only to stand out from the crowd but to prove that our content could outperform the competition organically.
Our success was the result of a deliberate, well-thought-out plan that placed our audience at the center. Weeks of meticulous planning went into creating a content-first production schedule, designed to capture every angle of the festival. We mapped out a narrative arc for each day, anchored by a specific McLaren model theme, to ensure our content flowed as a cohesive story, not a series of random posts.
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We also deployed the community team across different social media platforms ahead of the event, to remind fans that we were back, engaging with 'Goodwood Festival of Speed' content and even mobilizing their Community Managers to interact with us.
We didn't just want to tell the audience what was happening; we wanted them to be a part of it. We baked audience-first gamification into our plan, allowing fans to vote on which car we’d feature next or which part of the site we’d explore. Our use of interactive Instagram Stories and a dedicated Broadcast Channel created a two-way dialogue, inviting our community to directly influence our content in real-time.
With a very small team, we embraced the controlled chaos of the event. We operated at an unrelenting pace, sprinting from the paddock to the start line to capture live content at lightning speed.
We ran around the iconic site with a presenter, attached cameras to cars for unique shots, and wove through the crowds to get the perfect photo.
Our agile workflow was key. We captured content, edited it, secured internal approval, and distributed around 40 pieces of relevant content per day across six channels. This real-time production allowed us to react to audience decisions and comments, creating assets that responded to their choices in real-time.
Our strategy paid off. We didn't just meet our goals; we exceeded them, outmaneuvering every major car brand at the event…
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SAMY
SAMY. The Agency that Makes Brands Matter. We are here to lead the evolution of brand communication. We build relevance in a social first universe by integrating...