When he sprayed champagne in the face of an unwilling Chinese podium girl, Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton single-handedly reignited the podium girl debate.
A year ago, Tour of Flanders second place winner, Slovakian cyclist Peter Sagan, caused even bigger outrage when he grabbed the bottom of a podium girl who was busy kissing the winner.
Whether or not Hamilton deserved to cop a spray has already been covered in The Roar. What hasn’t been discussed is whether podium and grid girls are good business.
The most visible ‘girls’ are in Formula 1 and the Tour de France. F1 has a global audience of half a billion viewers and le Tour at least 1.5 billion. F1 and le Tour are all about sponsorship and the podium girl concept is based on the belief that beauty sells. That logic worked when they were introduced in the 1960s and sponsors were selling to an exclusively male audience who made all household purchasing decisions (apart from groceries).
The four jersey sponsors select Le Tour’s podium girls. Criteria are looks, endurance, personality and linguistic abilities. It’s a fair bet that women who gun the last three categories but are on the plain side won’t be in the running.
The 2015 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix promises that grid girls will bring, “… trackside glamour back to the grid, the girls will be meeting and greeting fans and posing for photographs every day of the event.”
In both sports, the women are forbidden to have anything to do with the sportsmen outside the track and podium. A podium peck on the cheek is a job requirement and they speak to sportsmen only when spoken to.
People have an inherent bias towards beauty. Good-looking people make more money and customers prefer to buy from good-looking sales people.
The catch is that this only applies when we are dealing with the opposite sex. When we are dealing with attractive people of our own sex, we are biased against them.
Since the 1960s, purchase decision-making has pivoted 180 degrees. Across the world women make 60-80 per cent of purchase decisions – from consumer goods to large purchases. To sell more, sponsors need to tap into a bigger audience that includes the new purchasing power – women.
Nielsen research shows that women don’t respond to the same advertising psychology as men. Knowing what we do about the same-sex beauty bias, podium girls are more likely to put the brand at a disadvantage by instantly setting off the negative gender bias in women. Which is bad because women need to be paying positive attention to a brand before they will even think of purchasing.
The women sponsors are targeting – the ones with purchasing power – are also likely to wonder why capable, multilingual women are being called ‘girls’. Women don’t respond well to negative comparisons or associations. They remember more and differently, to men.
PETRONAS, Pirelli, Bose, Epson, Blackberry, Slazenger and others sponsor the Mercedes Benz team. When they signed up, it wasn’t for global coverage of their brands plastered across Hamilton behaving in a way that alienated, not attracted, potential customers. Those potential customers have long memories, especially for the negative.
Shifts in purchasing power have flipped podium girl logic on its head. When F1 driver Susie Wolff wins a place, will she get a kiss from a podium girl? Will it be 1960s titillating or 2015 kind of weird? What will women make of sponsors using a subservient, beautiful woman to try and catch their attention?
Two weeks ago, the World Endurance Cars series dropped grid girls. Chief Executive Gerard Neveu said, “It’s old school to have such a concept as grid girls. Surely the world’s moved on? And motor racing should follow quite closely what the rest of the world’s doing in that respect.” According to Neveu “…the star at the end is the sports cars and the drivers of the car.”
It will be interesting to see if promotion based purely on technical excellence, rather than photo ops with eye candy, grows World Endurance Car audiences.
Viewers think they are watching sport. For sponsors, it is just another big billboard and they always follow the purchasing power. Interesting times.
Rabbitz
Roar Guru
Yes, misandry is the new black.
nordster
Guest
Everything is misogyny now....they're even guilting the males into self censoring! Luckily as a homosexual i am allowed to indulge in as much misogyny as i like and call it comedy;)
pjm
Roar Rookie
You're the dinosaur saying there are jobs women can't do.
pjm
Roar Rookie
Now that I think about it I'm sure they'd be able to get another job solely based on their sex, like as a sports reporter.
Rabbitz
Roar Guru
Man.... Never write comments from your sick bed. Should read "I mean there hasn't been an accusation of misogyny"
Jay (the other one)
Guest
Racist? I think you should read the article again. If you want to be in the minority of dinosaurs dictating that it's cool for women to be trotted out as podium eye-candy then I feel sad for you.
Rabbitz
Roar Guru
Phew. I was getting worried. The Roar's conversion into "Mama Mia" had appear to stall. I mean there hasn't been an accusation of misandry or any faux feminist angst for a couple of days.
nordster
Guest
Distract from ugly riders/drivers, Marc Marquez excepted;)
Gremlins
Guest
Maybe implement the reverse side of the coin: only good-looking blokes are allowed to stand on the podium and have a) their bums groped, b) unwanted slobbering kisses from a stranger and/or c) champagne (probably cheap plonk) thrown in their faces. Much and all as I love watching cycling and F1s and V8s, I find the podium girls simply irrelevant. What do they actually DO?
Rellum
Roar Guru
I personally thought it went too far with Grid girls when they would line the walls on the walk up to the podium, effectively turning them into wall paper.
Kaks
Roar Guru
So we should now take the hostess's away? Because Hamilton wrongly thought it was a good idea to spray someone with champagne? and how about how Hamilton has been branded as a racist by some idiotic people? http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/lewis-hamilton-called-sexist-for-champagne-antics-but-fans-rush-to-his-defence-1.3032330 as i said, major overreaction.
Jay (the other one)
Guest
I don't think you need to know too much about a particular sport to recognise when a guy like Hamilton goes and does such a buffoonish thing. Yeah, she looks like she's having a great time.
Will Sinclair
Roar Guru
Yeah, it's an interesting one! I really believe the whole concept is antiquated and should be scrapped. But the only real losers out of such a move would be the podium girls themselves, who I imagine have a pretty cool job!
nordster
Guest
Grid girls are great business. Both for the sponsors, the sport and the girls. Thats why they are there. And why u will only be able to remove them with banning or some shrill social media campaign. It reflects the largely straight male audience and participants in motorsport. Nothing at all wrong with that. Maybe it even helps the riders/drivers pre race as it gets their ummm 'juices' flowing. My fellow queer bretheren and all u female fans just need to demand more grid boys to balance the situation out. As far as objectors to grid girls go, is this a prude thing or is it a gender thing? Would a couple of grid boys make it ok? I dont even want half haha....just one or two out of a field of 20+. Would that quiet down the faux outrage brigade? :)
Kaks
Roar Guru
I am sick of the overreacting minority dictating what should and should not occur in sports that they do not even know about.
Kath Logan
Expert
You're correct, that is how the TdF podium girl started. Now, it's a team of 4 women who do every podium event for the duration of the Tour.
pjm
Roar Rookie
And the only people to be hurt by this will be the girls.
nickoldschool
Roar Guru
" F1 and le Tour are all about sponsorship and the podium girl concept is based on the belief that beauty sells." Not solely kate, its also a tradition, right or wrong, that some countries have. In France, most country towns events, in sports or other fields, involve who you call 'podium girls' and what they call 'les miss'. And I can guarantee you in 99% of the cases the pretty girl of the village giving a kiss and small prize to the winner of an amateur race isn't selling anything or linked to any sponsor deal. Its just a tradition, the village or town elects a miss every year, she attends most events in the following 12 months. She often wears her "miss Dubbo" banner, that's it. I don't like it and find it tacky but no more so than cheerleaders and many other occasions where women are used as bait.
Will Sinclair
Roar Guru
Excellent article - thanks Kath. Personally, I think they've been retained as a bow to tradition more than anything. It's difficult to imagine your average F1 or cycling fan even knows which products each girls is meant to represent, let alone imagine these girls are having any material effect on consumer behaviour. So it's almost certainly time the tradition was wound up.