High octane marketing

Annie Kennedy studied Languages and Marketing in DCU and graduated in 1997. She spoke recently on the Travel Tales with Fergal podcast, which is hosted by Fergal O’Keeffe, who also went to DCU and graduated from Business Studies in 1994.

“I left Ireland the day after I finished my last exam in my DCU finals. I left Ireland and I never came back,” said Annie. “And it was never planned. Two days after graduation, I moved to France for three years, then lived in London for two years, and I’ve been in Switzerland now for 18 years. But always in jobs where I travel a lot.” “I’m from Wicklow and I have a huge family of 10 siblings. By the time I left home for DCU, we were already living on four continents. Between me and my siblings, we’ve got nine languages. We speak Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Portuguese, French, German, Spanish, English and Irish, of course.

“I live now in a place called Zug, which is classic Switzerland. It’s about half an hour from Zurich. It’s really multinational, which I love. It’s in a beautiful location. It’s quite low lying, but it’s surrounded by lakes and mountains. From every point, you’re seeing these beautiful mountain ranges. For example, from our balcony, we can see the Eiger.

“People often ask me ‘Did you have that planned?’, because I have had a 20-year career in sports marketing. But I got into Eurosport completely by accident. I was living in Paris. I had just done a year of the European Orientation Program (EOP), which a lot of LM graduates did. I had worked for BIM supporting Irish seafood exporters. And when that year was over, an Irish friend who was working in the marketing department asked me was I interested in Eurosport. And that’s how I got into sports marketing.”

“You’re actually in the F1 garage during the race and part of all that excitement. You’re under the podium when the Ferrari team wins and celebrating with the driver.”

After working for Eurosport in Paris and London, Annie moved to Geneva to work for UEFA. She was involved in some of the most memorable football sporting events over the last 20 years, including the Euro’s in Portugal in 2004.

“Portugal was the host country and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much passion and emotion in my life. They made it to the final and they lost against Greece. I was in the stadium for the final and we were all crying our eyes out. The emotion was just unreal. They’d worked so hard and gotten so far and then lost.” Annie then joined F1 in Geneva and later moved to Shell to represent the company with the Ferrari F1 team. “I’ve had two roles in F1. I worked for the Formula One group themselves. So literally for Bernie (Ecclestone) and that was in Geneva. And then I moved to work for Shell which is a partner of the Ferrari team. And I was managing that partnership for Shell.

“I’ve managed to work with four World Champion drivers Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. This is a lot of people’s dream job. I think it is an incredible sport. There’s a real passion among people who are F1 fans.

“There’s a huge amount of glamour there as well. But it’s not the same as the old days. Most of the drivers are fairly sensible. They’re really elite athletes and do an incredible amount of training. They need world class levels of fitness to be a F1 driver.

“There’s a ton of people working on it. We would have up to 25 fuel scientists and engineers in the background developing all these fuels and oils. We could introduce four or five new race fuels and lubricants during a season. We’d have a really sophisticated lab in the back of the Ferrari garage.”

Annie has been to all the race circuits and she shares her thoughts  on her favourites. “I would say Monaco is a favourite circuit of the drivers because it’s technically really challenging. But it’s almost impossible to pass. So, it’s not one of those circuits where the outcome can be really surprising unless there’s a crash or something.

“The races that the drivers love are the older circuits like Suzuka or Belgium. The circuits that tend to be preferred by people working in F1 are the street circuits like Melbourne, Montreal and Singapore. Because you’re right in the centre of a city. You have such an amazing atmosphere and can usually walk to the track and you feel the atmosphere of the city and you can go out at night and celebrate.”

Annie is currently working on the retail side for Shell based in Switzerland, but travels throughout Africa and that continent has such a special place in her heart.

Fergal O’Keeffe (Bachelor of Business Studies) Marketing Communication Specialist at Lume.ie @FergalTravel