TRIBUTE TO AUSSIE SPONSORSHIP PIONEER

Tribute to Aussie sponsorship pioneer -Image: LAT

Australian John Hogan didn’t invent big-money motorsport sponsorship, but as the marketing boss of cigarette brand Marlboro in Europe, he established commercial branding of race teams as their financial foundation.

By MARK FOGARTY

Sydney born Hogan died in London overnight, succumbing to COVID-19. He was 79.

He had a profound effect on motorsport by directing hundreds of millions of dollars of Marlboro sponsorship into F1 from the mid-1970s into the early 2000s.

His legacy remains as tobacco giant Phillip Morris, owner of the Marlboro brand, is still a ‘silent’ backer of the Ferrari F1 and Ducati MotoGP teams.

PM is behind the non-tobacco Willow electronic cigarette initiative, which supports both Italian teams.

Hogan’s influence extended worldwide, with Marlboro and other PM products sponsoring race teams throughout Europe, USA and the Asia-Pacific region.

In Australia, Marlboro backed the Holden Dealer Team and Peter Brock for more than a decade, then Phillip Morris’s Peter Jackson brand backed Nissan Motorsport, Glenn Seton Racing and Alan Jones’ Stone Bros-run touring car team until tobacco advertising was outlawed in 1995.

Hogan’s Marlboro World Championship Team of sponsored drivers in the ‘80s was the template for support across multiple categories in Australia.

Team Penske was backed by Marlboro in CART and IndyCar in the 1990s until the late 2000s.

Through Hogan, Marlboro’s motor racing largesse extended to bankrolling future F1 stars in F3 and F3000, most notably Ayrton Senna and Mika Hakkinen.

Hogan moved to the UK in the mid-’60s, holding marketing positions with Nestle and Coca-Cola before gaining a senior sponsorship role with Phillip Morris in the early ’70s.

An early backer of future world champion James Hunt, he identified motor racing as the right vehicle to promote Marlboro worldwide through F1.

He switched Marlboro sponsorship from BRM to McLaren in 1974, winning the world title with Emerson Fittipaldi and then Hunt in ’76.

Hogan brokered the ‘shotgun marriage’ of McLaren and Ron Dennis in 1980, creating the Marlboro McLaren juggernaut that dominated F1 in the ‘80s and early ’90s with Alain Prost and Senna.

In the mid-’90s, Hogan switched Marlboro’s backing – by then amounting to $100 million a year – to Ferrari.

He rose to the position of vice-president of marketing of Phillip Morris Europe before retiring in the early 2000s.

He then had a brief spell in 2003 as the sporting and commercial director of the ill-fated Jaguar F1 team.

He was often mistaken as a close relative of Australian comedian Paul Hogan. He certainly wasn’t Hoges’ brother and may, at best, have been a distant relation.

He did, however, possess a similar sardonic humour and no-bullshit attitude. He was a power player and a kingmaker, but never an ingratiator.

He played the politics of power his financial clout afforded him, among drivers and teams, not F1 itself.

I knew and had limited dealings with John Hogan during my decade in F1.

While I can’t profess to have known him well, he was a typical transplanted Aussie – dedicated, innovative and laconic.

He was a pioneer in global sports sponsorship, leveraging the worldwide appeal of F1 to reinforce Marlboro as a household name.

Along with the famed ‘Marlboro Man’ in TV ads, F1 was the cigarette brand’s most famous – and most influential – promotion.

Hogan, to my recall, was a decent bloke who loved motorsport and believed in its promotional power while also funding a ladder of opportunity to the top.

He was definitely among the pioneers of the large-scale sponsorship that shaped the commercial foundation of major league sports as we know them.

For the past 25 years, big-tobacco backing has been illegal and socially unacceptable, but in his day, it funded many champions and champion teams to the enjoyment of millions.

John Hogan was a man of his time and excelled in promoting F1, as well as the now long-established junior driver development system.

Despite the spectre of cigarette sponsorship, so many in motorsport owe him so much.