British American Tobacco - British American Tobacco

Our partnerships

McLaren - A collaboration rooted in advanced technology

We are proud to be partners with McLaren, one of the most famous names in Formula 1 motorsport.

Our multi-year partnership gives us truly global marketing and innovation platforms to help accelerate our journey with our New Category products, focused on creating A Better Tomorrow™ for our consumers, shareholders, society and employees.

Having signed an initial collaboration agreement with McLaren in February 2019, we later that year, further enhanced our partnership, signing a new agreement which continues to support our corporate strategy by accelerating our transformation. “Accelerating Transformation” is at the heart of our commitment to achieving A Better Tomorrow™ by growing our portfolio of New Category products, which include our leading vapour range, Vuse, and our modern oral product, Velo.

Through our partnership with McLaren, we have a “dynamic branding” approach which sees us vary our branding race-by-race, at all times in line with applicable regulations and legislation.

Central to BAT’s partnership with McLaren is our ongoing work with McLaren Accelerator. These workstreams are centred within exploratory R&D and co-innovation, focused on the early stages of the programme as we share technology expertise to enhance our New Category product pipeline.

Our partnership includes:

Significantly increased branding positions on the McLaren Formula 1 car – including highly visible new sidepod branding, inside halo and front wing branding positions;
Partnering with Arrow McLaren SP in IndyCar in the U.S.

Kingsley Wheaton, BAT’s Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, said: “We’re extremely proud of our partnership with McLaren which has been going from strength-to-strength – whether it’s increased awareness of our portfolio of New Category products, technology insights and expertise to support our R&D activities or using the platform to create excitement amongst colleagues internally, we are absolutely delighted with what our partnership has delivered to date.

“Our partnership is giving us truly global marketing and innovation platforms to accelerate our journey with our New Categories business, focused on creating a better tomorrow for our consumers, shareholders, society and employees.”

Zak Brown, Chief Executive of McLaren Racing, added: “BAT’s transformation agenda remains central to this partnership, as does a shared focus on technology and innovation and we look forward to continuing our work together.”