Honda F1 team appoints marketing chief

The Honda Racing F1 Team has appointed David Butler as marketing director. He replaces Alistair Watkins to join the Alinghi America’s Cup sailing team earlier this year.

Butler joins from Laureus, a joint venture between DaimlerChrysler and Richemont that promotes sporting excellent, where he was marketing director for the group’s, sports awards, sports academy and good causes foundation.

Prior to that, Butler spent seven years at sponsorship agency Octagon in the UK and South Africa.

The appointment of a new top-level marketer comes just months after the racing team launched the “Earth Car” marketing initiative to raise awareness of environmental issues. It’s myearthdream.com website has since received 10 million hits and earlier this month fans had their names incorporated into an image of the earth used as the livery on the team’s RA107 Formula One race cars.

Nick Fry, chief executive, says Butler will be responsible for developing the “Earth” campaign and taking the team’s marketing programme to its next level.