Why the green Mission Winnow logo on the new Ferrari SF21 is actually a great idea
Today, at 2 PM Rome time, Scuderia Ferrari unveiled its 2021 Formula 1 challenger, the SF21. It happened with a video showcase featured on the Cavallino’s official site, which saw the likes of Mattia Binotto (Team Principal), Enrico Gualtieri (Power Unit Director), Enrico Cardile (Chassis Director), Laurent Mekies (Racing Director) and John Elkann (Executive Chairman) describing the newborn single-seater.
What caught everybody’s eye wasn’t the re-imagined nose or the burgundy touch of the thinned rear, but the Mission Winnow — the Philip Morris International subsidiary that has taken on the role of Scuderia’s title sponsor since 2018 — logo. It turned up people’s nose not for its shape nor its postion (on the engine cover, same as previous years), but for its colour: it is now green. A fluorescent, super shiny green.
The comments that followed were not surprising: the fans didn’t like the red/green contrast, the recent “let’s make fun of Ferrari” train took off and the jokes and the memes flooded every social media existing on planet earth.
That’s all that’s needed to say, indeed, the most powerful brand in the world striked one more time.
With what I would call an “Apple-ish move”, Ferrari put its and its new car’s names in everyone’s mouth, once again. Putting a such strangely coloured logo on the SF21 sides, Scuderia buffed its car’s iconicity and created a buzz that will last very long, just like Apple did with its iPhone 11 and 12 series. Cupertino’s newest phones present a bizarre set of cameras, that techies all around the world mocked because of its similarity with a cooktop. But now time has passed and everyone realized how much this cooktop is actually iconic and has become a distinguishing mark for the iPhone series. There surely are a lot of people in the world that can’t cook anything anymore without reminiscing that weird camera set.
Just like the case-study mentioned, the people thinking about the new 2021 F1 liveries will also recall the exquisite ones, like the Alpine or Aston Martin ones, but they will mainly focus on “that unusual green logo on Ferrari’s new single-seater”. Beautiful things come, get appreciated and then go, while strange, funny, bad or quirky ones are usually what keeps everyone’s conversations heated. From now on, there may probably be some students or office workers using an highlighter whose mind will suggest them something like “look, like the Mission Winnow logo put on that new Ferrari”.
Lastly, I think this choice has to be appreciated even more because it was brought to life by a team that made colour the fundamental element of its brand identity.
Let’s just hope this car will also be really fast, other than unusual and odd.
