Citroen's motorsport marketing dilemma

Around 8000 Citroen employees are going to be made redundant. And one is potentially going to be paid around €9million for driving a DS3 next year. Does that stack up? Is that right?

The emotional bandwagon is an easy one to jump on. In which case, of course it's not right. It's immoral and vulgar in the face of such financial hardship to see Sebastien Loeb being paid such a vast sum to do something that comes naturally to him.

But, look at this more closely. Take a more intellectual approach to the question and there is a case for paying Loeb even more money next year just to make sure he stays on. It might not always have been the case, but there is a very, very strong argument to show that Loeb sells Citroens.

This is the age-old argument about what some see as the misnomer of the marketing department being the first port of call when the budget cuts come calling. The trouble is, marketing can be a reasonably imprecise science (cue furious emails from the suited and booted world of marketing explaining direct correlation and data-based analysis). Sorry, but it is. Added to that imprecision is the fact that marketing often includes things that are quite interesting and fun to do - such as motorsport. And finally, that fun usually comes at a cost. And usually that cost is quite high.

Citroen was slow to latch onto the PR benefit of Loeb's success... © LAT

Add up all of those and, in a broad stroke, you have the reason why those marketing types can have the longest of faces when fiscal troubles strike.

And, make no mistake, fiscal troubles have well and truly struck at PSA Peugeot Citroen. For those of you who haven't heard, worldwide sales of the French cars are down 13 per cent.

Here are some numbers for you. Around the world, in the first half of 2011, PSA sold 1.86 million motors; that number's dropped to 1.61 million this time around. Citroen's global figures are 769,000 and 664,000. In Europe, we have purchased 85,000 fewer Citroens than in the first half of 2011 - down from 540,000 to 455,000. Even more worryingly for the chevroned ones, the Chinese (the nation with one of the fastest-growing car communities in the world) signed up for 8000 fewer cars. Citroen's PSA stablemate Peugeot's numbers rose from 81,000 to 104,000 in the same period.

And, in the wake of such stark financial figures, PSA has announced it will shed 8000 jobs and close one factory.

For us, as bad as those 8000 are, the question we want answering is, will it be 8004 - including Loeb, Daniel Elena, Mikko Hirvonen and Jarmo Lehtinen?

We're told the headline number won't rise by four.

In a statement to AUTOSPORT, Citroen said: "The announcement of last week won't impact our WRC programme. However, we are doing our best to look at options to reduce the financial support of the brand in our sporting package."

A decade on, it knows the value of a French driver winning in a French car © LAT

So, it's a no, but with the caveat of an effort to spend less of Citroen's cash.

At the top of this story I talked about paying Loeb more. And there's a very good argument for doing that. It did seem to take Citroen a while to latch on to the gold mine that was a Frenchman winning in a French car, but it's most definitely there now. The television ads have been coming and coming and the Loeb-Citroen partnership has become the darling of middle-France. Women love the Loeb effect and men love the fact that Citroens are an even cooler brand to be seen in.

And how could eight drivers' titles and seven manufacturers' championships not work for a car company? I'll tell you how... if the WRC wasn't being promoted and nobody knew about those numbers.

Argh! We're back there again. I was determined to get through a column without mentioning the word promoter, but it's happened.

I must admit, I admire Citroen's stance in keeping the WRC programme running, but let's see what happens if Loeb does decide to retire. It would be a whole lot harder to convince the board to keep ploughing in the millions if it's to keep (no disrespect to Hirvonen) a Finn winning.

Personally, I think we would really miss Loeb and Citroen if they went. Loeb's the benchmark for everything we've known for almost a decade. How much would a Jari-Matti Latvala or Hirvonen 2013 title mean without Loeb having been there? Not much in the short-term, but in the long-run everybody's memories of the Alsatian genius would fade in the same way they did when Michael Schumacher stepped from a Ferrari for the last time in 2006.

A Hirvonen win wouldn't be as marketable in France for Citroen © LAT

One thing I don't think we should expect, if Loeb does retire, is a return to the World Rally Championship after three years away from the service park.

Losing Citroen would also provide a hammer blow to the WRC. Like Loeb, the Versailles-built machinery has become the standard-bearer - despite the continued and often ferocious efforts of the Cumbria-prepared Fords.

It would be a tragedy if Citroen walked away just when Volkswagen was about to arrive, Ford's already here, Hyundai's coming and Toyota and Mini are on the periphery. We're gearing up for significant manufacturer support which, under the most straightforward technical regulations in the recent history of the series, could bring back the good times. And if we get a promoter (sorry - that word again) sorted any time soon, those good times could turn great.

I was at a Volkswagen test in Germany last week, and there's no doubting the effort going into the Polo R WRC and the marketing around it. And the sport's only going to benefit from such a dynamic, well-funded and admirably heavy-handed approach to broadcasting the news of VW's highest-profile motorsport campaign ever.

The grandest of grands fromages at Citroen have some tough decisions to make in the coming months. Loeb has just one. But both could have massive implications for our world.