SALT LAKE CITY, UT (April 1, 2013)- Now in their fourth season of professional racing, Magnus Racing has grown from a fairly unknown organization to undoubtedly one of the most well-known Porsche teams in the professional sportscar scene. Like any world-renowned organization, however, the 50th Rolex 24 at Daytona GT Champions have undergone an effort to appear as though they’re giving a detailed, thorough examination of their branding prior to entering the 2014 United Sports Car Racing season.
With many fans wondering over the years just where the “Magnus” name came from, the entire organization is proud to capitalize on this opportunity to announce a complete and thorough re-branding.
The story actually begins with the team’s recent partnership with the highly touted New York advertising agency, Sterling Cooper.
“When the time came to create and re-brand our new sportscar entity, we knew it was key to partner with the right agency,” stated Magnus Racing Team Owner John Potter. “For me, it was less important to work with someone who knew the motorsport scene, but instead, someone who came from a city that would impress everyone around me. Sterling Cooper are from New York, so I figured that would work.”
Located on Manhattan’s famed Madison Avenue, and with a vast list of highly touted clients, the principals at Sterling Cooper were thrilled to take the call from Potter.
“When we got the call from John, I was absolutely thrilled,” stated Roger Sterling, Senior Partner at Sterling Cooper. “It was clear from our first conversation that he was completely open to our meticulous, two-step approach. It all begins with step one: ask for a credit card. It’s a very critical part of our research and understanding of the client’s need. Step two is simple: make sure the charge clears. That’s the part of our research that really sets the stage for the project’s future. Once we realized our numerous charges on John’s credit card would clear, the team became an instant fit!”
With an impressive resumé of projects prior to Magnus, Steling Cooper are a signature part of the Manhattan scene, and have been involved in a number of prestigious projects over the years.
From managing the Lucky Strike advertising account for years, to working with Heinz, Secor Laxatives and even The American Cancer Society, Sterling Cooper are known for their strong ability to speak in vague tongue to any client with deep pockets.
“We take what we call a multi-billable approach,” stated Don Draper, Junior Partner at Sterling Cooper. “The biggest part of branding research is creating a giant document that really makes the client feel good about hiring you. In our experience, we’ve found that you can’t properly create a massive research document without first putting a lot of writing in it, as clients catch on when you just write with a big font. Because of this, we have to take a lot of time to think of things to write about, and of course you need a partner who allows themselves to be billed for that.”
For Potter, what impressed him the most about the Sterling Cooper research approach, was the number of people they reached out to as they gathered information.
“I was thrilled with the comprehensive approach the group took,” continued Potter. “They seemed to include a number of people from different outlooks, and that was important to me in the process of branding Magnus.”
Roger Sterling echoed that sentiment.
“The single most important part of branding research is making sure the client thinks you’re working,” stated Sterling. “The first thing we did was gather a list of people who were friends with Potter. We knew if we talked to them, he’d think we were working really hard. We find it’s not that important to actually get a lot of opinions, just those of the people that report back to the client. It’s a tradition that has served very well in advertising, and seems to apply well to racing.”
After impressing everyone at Magnus Racing that they were successfully getting “everyone’s” opinion, Sterling Cooper then turned to the most important factor; the fans.
“It was clear from the beginning, that we needed to look like we were listening to the fans,” claimed Don Draper. “It’s really great. By creating fan initiatives, we gave the illusion to everyone that we really had our finger on the pulse of modern marketing. Of course the by-product is that we didn’t really have to be accountable for our own ideas… talk about two birds with one stone! Some might say that was just an easier way of cutting out the need for any overhead internally, but I’ll take any of those critics on. We’re advertisers, accountability isn’t our problem.”
As announced last week, the team launched a number of social media contests, forum questions, and more. This lead to a massive response from the “Magnus Nation,” only further dissolving any responsibility from Sterling Cooper. With the fans now feeling successfully integrated, Sterling Cooper had to move to the third phase of their invoice: design and creation.
“Once we received our ‘inspiration’ from the fans, we of course came to the hardest part of the process: the design and implementation,” lamented Sterling. “This is the most challenging part, as we’re actually expected to deliver something at this point. For most marketing groups, delivery isn’t really the specialty, so we had to make sure that John Potter was ready for this stage of the invoice. Luckily, Potter was OK with paying for hours and hours of: ideas, designs, and round-table discussions with our top creatives.”
After all of the research, the discussions with people close to Potter, and of course ‘inspiration’ from the fans themselves, Sterling Cooper were finally ready to deliver the proposed name and logo for this new sportscar entity.
“Magnus Racing; Team 44”
“Magnus is a name that epitomizes everything this team is about,” stated Draper. “It has a European feel to it, almost like a Nordic God. This team is powerful, it is unrelenting, and bigger than life. We actually came up with pages and pages of rationale behind the “new” name, which we were happy to bill the team for.”
Even though all the new agency did was add “Team 44” to the brand, John Potter felt satisfied that, even though he’d paid a lot, he’d totally received something that he could never have just done on his own.
“It’s crazy that after all of the research, all of the time billed, and all of the fan discussions…. Sterling Cooper delivered something incredibly underwhelming,” stated John Magnus Potter. “Regardless, I was very satisfied. I had a massive book to justify the process, which makes it easy to defend in case fans don’t like it.”
With the team now recognized as one of the best in GT racing, it’s clear that Sterling Cooper did a great job of making a great spectacle out of a fairly average re-branding. While Magnus’s popularity may have more to do with their ability to create exciting on-track action as well as interactivity with fans, Sterling Cooper still likely to take credit.
“The beauty of agency work is the ability to modify your story,” stated Roger Sterling. “Because Magnus has become so successful recently, we’ve been able to take a lot of credit for our work, even if the team’s on-track results are a large part of their current reputation. What’s great, however, is if the team wasn’t popular, we could have just quietly walked away and no one would have known. Either way, the credit card cleared!”
With Magnus Racing headed in to the third round of the Rolex Series championship as the GT point leader, who knows what the next steps of the legendary brand may be.
Whatever the future holds on this April Fool’s Day, the team would like to express their gratitude to the fans, media, and competitors alike.
(Sterling Cooper's Roger Sterling and Don Draper. Photo Credit: AMC)
(Roger Sterling, John Potter, Don Draper. Photo Credit: Regis Lefebure and Photoshop)
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 03:48PM 
