Moving at the speed of new media

Speed is the philosophy and practice in the opening decade-plus of this millennium. Speed of communication, information, acquisition. And so it made perfect sense to encounter a story that combines the incomparable speed of a virtual engine, Facebook, with a very terrestrial one: a 278-horsepower Tiburon GT, geared up for racing at 230 kilometres an hour.

As Montreal's JC Cote punched his car into gear Saturday in the first race of this season's Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship (CCTCC) at Mosport International Raceway in the Toronto area, he was doing so with Facebook literally all over his car.

With 400 million global users six years after its creation by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is an online phenomenon. First and foremost, it is about "connecting." But as JC Cote illustrates, the business these wizards imagined can be very ... "boutique" in its execution.

Cote, who lives in Old Montreal, wanted to race cars. He needed sponsorship. And so he conceived of an idea "on a Sunday morning barely two weeks ago, as (girlfriend) April and I were discussing how, via Facebook and Twitter, there were a lot of people, some of whom I didn't really know or had lost touch with, who were following what I was doing with the racing."

What he was doing was turning professional after a lifetime of flirting with it. Given the cost of car racing - between $5,000 and $10,000 per race, at this level - he had been seeking customary corporate support and getting "stock replies and lack of interest from natural-fit sponsors for a racing team."

But there were other messages, on Facebook, "from childhood friends and people who'd known me for a long time saying things like 'they weren't surprised I of all people was making a go of racing professionally full time' and other supportive messages to that effect."

"And so we decided that morning that there was no reason we shouldn't tap into that support."

They dismissed a straight-donation appeal as "cheesy," and came up with the entrepreneurial eureka: sell space on the car where people could post their Facebook profile photos, at $5 a pop. As of last Wednesday, Cote had raised $1,000, with some sponsors buying in for all six of his races.

"My hope is that after the first race has come and gone and people see that it's cool to have their face on a car, we'll get more people and eventually more traditional sponsors," Cote says.

And so we have a first: the Facebook Racer. And a human story, Cote's, of a dream deferred and realized.

"A race-car driver is what I wanted to be when I was younger," says Cote, who is 38. "I wanted to go to racing school. Unfortunately, my parents couldn't afford it."

He'd always felt like a natural fit for the sport. "In the confined space of a racing cockpit, it's advantageous to be of a certain build," and he is - 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds.

He'd kept a hand in as the years passed, driving at karting tracks, racing the miniaturized open-wheel cars - not your grandad's go-karting: These cars run upward of 120 kilometres an hour.

He'd always done well, confirming some natural ability. He'd driven the famed Trois Rivières track where Gilles Villeneuve got his start, met Jacques Villeneuve a few years ago and gradually gotten to know more of racing's inner circle.

"He's (Jacques Villeneuve) far more down to earth than anyone realizes and has really good values, considering the hyper-wealthy high-falutin' circle he's been exposed to. If it was not for his encouraging me to try, I might have never given professional racing a real shot."

Cote tried Formula Renault (an entry-level race-car series) in Europe and drove competitively. Other drivers, he says, told him, "Dude, you should totally do this. You're probably more marketable than a lot of guys out there."

"Then came the crossroads, involving a divorce, a new beginning for me on a few fronts. That was the kicker that made me decide I may as well go after this, now or never."

He "got serious last spring, did the second Renault open-wheel weekend in France, and finished third of 30."

He drove the last two races of last season's Canadian Touring Car Championship, did well and "signed on (to the series), given that what I was trying to do at age 38 would attract some sponsorship."

"I never expected the Facebook thing to blow up the way it did, with so many people rallying to help."

Perhaps that is what Facebook does. Or is it? Certainly, both the creators and users of social media revel in the bush fire word-of-mouth connectivity.

"Facebook and Twitter are a means for me to connect/reconnect with friends from my past and future friends, perhaps future supporters of my racing career and potential sponsors," Cote says.

"In fact, for my friends who live overseas, it's an awesome way to keep in touch and to get a glimpse into what they want to reveal to friends still living in Canada and the U.S.A."

Not everyone loves it. There are the moralists who complain about the sliding scale of venality. Facebook is an epic time-waster, a quicksand of movie trivia, chronic and toxic oversharing of personal info and footling "thoughts," and endless, numberless kittens; not to mention freaks so addicted they would status-update their current infarction or crime spree, the stalking of exes and etceteras.

And yes, the Internet is a mosquito swamp of scams and gullings, stretching our understanding of human credulity. All the Ougadougou bank transfers and Irish lottery windfalls out there - how do they work, exactly? Presumably, the good people of the Burkina Faso banking community would not be sending out these mass email lures without landing at least a micro-percentage of dupes, so, who is falling for this? How can that be possible?

But is there really still a sucker born every minute? Social media offer what seems low-friction access to zillions of plugged-in, high-consumption people, a dream come true for marketers. However, it also seems to have a built-in filter. It's not necessarily a captive audience for any product or service, as some corporate entities striding in with their let's get the kids involved with their hip-hopular music approach to PR have learned.

In 2006, GM lit its own exploding cigar when trying to tap the breezy new consumer/corp give-and-take, inviting hipsters to create their own ads for the Chevy Tahoe SUV. Activists turned the tables and loaded up the company's site with ads announcing "Peak oil is here. Maybe you should walk" and "Global warming isn't a pretty SUV ad. It's a frightening reality." So that didn't work.

Then there was Honda, trying to gin up Facebook interest in a new vehicle called the Crosstour. Some guy named Eddie Okubo liked it. Eddie posted: "Interesting design. I would get this car in a heartbeat."

Followed by another poster's response: "Maybe you like it Eddie because you're the MANAGER OF PRODUCT PLANNING at Honda (light trucks in particular)? Lol!"

Eddie used his real name, the Facebook-scam equivalent of walking into a 50 Cent concert in a leisure suit. Eddie: Stealth marketing requires actual stealth.

The social media trade-offs are multilayered and complex, but once the corporation opens up to them, the effect can boomerang.

Witness Nestlé's recent spanking by Greenpeace, via Facebook, over the corporation's sourcing of palm oil (an ingredient in Kit Kat bars), which was deforesting Indonesia and threatening the survival of the orangutan. That is a sentence no human being outside of Woody Allen could have written before 2010.

And there was Facebook itself launching the Beacon advertising system, which attempted to provide advertisers with access to info shared by users on third-party sites.

Cue the screeched accusations of invasion of privacy (and outright malfeasance), and Facebook founder Zuckerberg's eventual capitulation.

Critics assail the ID-leaching modus operandi of the site itself. Given that personal information is the money-blood of the advertising world, sites like Facebook encroach ever further into users' lives, bartering (or enforcing) site access or functionality for more of your info or contact network. Of course, most of these critics are criticizing on Facebook.

What all these corporate approaches lack is something JC Cote obviously had: transparency, and sincerity.

There's the logo picture of his racing helmet, and a link to his site. He's all energy when he talks about the Tiburon GT - "that's what it is on the outside, on the inside, those cars are completely stripped out to the bare metal, with roll cages and racing engines and modified suspension and brake pads. It's got a V6 Hyundai engine. Highly tuned and modified for racing. It looks like a street car."

But it's a rocket ship with 278 horses under the hood. "Had a little incident last year, got T-boned on a corner. A little damage to the car and a few rattled nerves," but no damage done.

He's hopeful about the mini-movement he's started to finance his dream - $5,000 to $10,000 per race, remember - "once you figure in mechanics, fuel, tires, hotel, meals, transportation. And that's on the lower rung of what professional racing costs. And the only reason the CCTCC is that inexpensive is because it's only the third season. I've got a feeling that as it becomes more and more of a staple in North American racing, it's gonna double and triple."

He ranks it "right behind Canadian Tire NASCAR, and one of the best-run series in the country. People think it's beer-swilling 55-year-olds, but race weekend it's (surprising) to see how many women there are in the stands."

He'll be racing only six of the seven events, "because on Grand Prix weekend here, I'm gonna race Formula 1600 for Mortimer Racing" on the F1 track.

The waterproof Facebook profile stickers were delivered Tuesday. So Cote is a fan. Indeed, part of this interview was done live on the phone, and part online.

"People may criticize things like FB, but here we are, you and I, communicating via FB since Day 1 (of this story)."

Hmmm. Marketing opportunities. The Facebook Racer. I'd get on this if I were you, Mr. Zuckerberg.

markjlepage@yahoo.com

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