Sending a message – Communications giant Infobip teams up with Haas F1

Haas has announced a multi-year sponsorship deal with “probably one of the largest companies you’ve never heard of” – as global communications platform Infobip has partnered with the American Formula 1 outfit.

A Croatian company with revenue exceeding $1.8billion last year, Infobip provides communication tools to the likes of Google and Uber while also helping to deliver content on WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business and others.

The deal, announced ahead of Haas’ first home race of the season at the Miami Grand Prix, will see Infobip branding on the cars of Esteban Ocon and Oliver Bearman, while also helping the team connect with its fanbase in new ways using conversational AI and other tools.

“It’s a very proud day for us here, not only another home race, but a day in which we’re announcing our latest partnership with Infobip, probably one of the largest companies you’ve never heard of,” said Haas director of marketing Mark Morrell.

“But without knowing, you’ve most definitely interacted with them across many of the services and the apps that you definitely have on your phone.”

The deal marks the first time Infobip has branched out into a sports partnership and for the company’s chief business officer, both F1 and Haas was a perfect place to start.

“We touch around two-thirds of all the mobile devices in the world with our services,” explained Ivan Ostojić.

“We have clients like Uber, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Walmart, Coca-Cola. They’re all using our services.

“This will be the first time that we are bringing this to F1, to any of the teams and I think what this will enable us to do is to meet the needs of, especially of the new generation because we do generational research.

“We see that nine out of 10 Gen Z population members prefer to text with the business or their sports club than to call. We are really thinking that Haas reminds us of us, they’re coming from nowhere and trying to shake the establishment. This is also what we like to do so I think this partnership has a lot of passion in it.

“It’s the first ever sports partnership that we did. But it’s really kind of engineering to engineering. It’s excellence in hardware meeting excellence in software engineering. We have been offered partnership in other sports.

“Our CEO always said no, and then I called him and said, look, Formula 1 is not like 10 or 20 people running after the ball. This is like real excellence in engineering, where milliseconds matter.”