Infiniti of Manhattan

 Current Program Expands for 2012 Formula One Season -

Infiniti today announced it will expand its partnership with the Red Bull Racing Formula One team for the 2012 season. The announcement, made at the Korean Grand Prix, follows the win last weekend in Japan by Red Bull Racing driver and Infiniti global ambassador, Sebastian Vettel, of his second world drivers championship.

From 2012, Infiniti will feature more prominent branding on the Red Bull Racing F1 cars, with enhanced logos on the side of the chassis and cockpit top of the next generation car. The Infiniti name and logo will also be expanded to new areas on the drivers' overalls and team equipment. In addition, Infiniti and Red Bull Racing will increase the global and market leverage of their partnership through more marketing and media activities throughout the year.

Speaking at the Korean Grand Prix, Andy Palmer, Executive Vice President, Nissan Motor Company, said: "When we announced the partnership back in March, our single objective was to boost global brand awareness for Infiniti. In just seven months, the results have exceeded even our most ambitious targets, leading to our becoming the most highly exposed automotive brand in Formula One this season. As we look ahead to the second year of our partnership with Red Bull Racing, we are now extending into exciting new areas of technical and product collaboration."

Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner added: "In the short time we have been involved with Infiniti it has become clear that the closer we work together the more performance advantages can be gained by both sides. It has been a phenomenally successful first season to date, and deepening our partnership further provides us even more scope to share knowledge and expertise, leading to mutual benefits on the track and the road."

This accelerated program, just seven months after the partnership was announced, further solidifies Infiniti's shared vision with Red Bull Racing, with work streams already in place to develop the partnership into a technical collaboration. Infiniti will also continue to build on its personal agreement with Sebastian Vettel, who has already worked on several projects with the company including the launch of the Infiniti FX Sebastian Vettel version at the Frankfurt auto show in September.

• In a partnership with the designboom online art magazine, Infiniti Digital Art Competition winners' work will be shown in an international exhibition: a museum-without-walls.
• Infiniti inspires a search for new talent and starts a creative conversation with global customers.
• Distinctions between art, technology, media, commerce and culture are creatively blurred as interactivity becomes reality.
• Adrian Newey, Chief Technical Officer of Red Bull Racing and a judge of the Competition, says of design in general: "The limits are not yet established."

"What is art?" This is a question which never changes, but the answer to it does. Voltaire said it is the "business of art to improve on nature" and Infiniti, the luxury performance automotive brand from Japan, believes it is the business of art to test limits, exploiting technology to the full. New mechanical technologies changed completely the value and meaning of images and newer digital technologies, and the promise to change and enhance the value and meaning even more. In essence, art is about things seen and remembered, and about things imagined and interpreted. Even more so with digital art.

Digital technology has transformed old art forms and is creating new digital art ones including music, holograms, 3-D mapping, interactive installations, and virtual reality. But the rules of digital art have not yet been written and as soon as they are written, they will be broken and re-defined. Digital art is therefore developing a life and indiscipline of its own and as the art collector Charles Saatchi said, if he knew what he was looking for, it would not be worth the search. The four judges of the Infiniti Digital Art Competition agree.

THE INFINITI PROPOSITION
Infiniti takes its role as curator of digital art very seriously. Traditional Japanese culture attributes special value to abstract ideas and to aesthetic sophistication. At the same time, contemporary luxury products must acknowledge the demanding customer's appetite for ever more extreme experiences of quality. For Infiniti, curating a Digital Art Competition is a research project designed to test the limits of creative possibility: re-defining art and re-defining luxury are creative expeditions which cover the same ground. The Italian designer Ettore Sottsass, Jnr. once dismissed the sponsorship of opera, ballet and theatre when he stated: "Industry does not need to buy culture, because industry is culture". Luxury brands have often been slow to realise digital possibilities?..until now. As an Infiniti Digital Art Competition judge, Adrian Newey, says: "Successful design must include the maximum amount of development potential." That is what Digital Art offers Infiniti, an exciting journey where the destination cannot yet be imagined.

INTERACTIVITY BECOMES REALITY
The Infiniti Digital Art Competition will both create new audiences and strengthen existing relationships with well-informed taste-makers. Infiniti believes that its bargain with customers should not be a passive one, but a continuing exchange of ideas. The Digital Art Competition helps realise this by giving ideas the space, time and air they need to develop all over the world. Now, a new definition of art becomes a new definition of corporate communications.

Yeoh Guan Yong of Shanghai's Super Nature Design, one of the Infiniti Digital Art Competition judges, says: "Art is about finding individual voices and searching one's own heart and soul. It is also about unique self expression. It is so great that Infiniti is discovering new talents in the digital art field. Infiniti's partnership with designboom is ideal to search for hidden flair. It is important for artists to explore innovative dimensions in art and express very imaginative ideas. I am looking forward to seeing the creativity of artists which encompasses fantastic stories within their digital art. I hope 'Nature' can be part of the inspiration for artists to explore and be inspired."

Advanced technology: Where will it end? As Adrian Newey says: "The limits are not yet established".

To enter the competition and to view terms and conditions, visit www.designboom.com/infiniti or www.infiniti.eu.

About Infiniti
Infiniti comes from Japan. Its line-up of performance sedans, coupés, convertibles, SUVs and crossovers is now being launched across the globe through a dedicated network of Infiniti Centres or dealerships which share a commitment to individualised and exceptional customer service. For more information, see Infiniti.com

Press information, Photographs and videos are available from www.infinitipress.eu. No password is required.

Amel Boubaaya, Lifestyle
M: +41 79 399 83 19
E: a.boubaaya@infiniti.ch

Wayne Bruce, Communications Director - Europe
M: +44 7768 802176
E: wayne.bruce@infiniti.eu

Simon Wittenberg, Infiniti Lifestyle Communications Agency
T: +44 207 491 9934
E: simon@sidhuandsimon.com


About Designboom
The world's first web-based art, architecture and design magazine, designboom publishes key contemporary issues and critiques of all aspects of art, architecture and design through the organisation of design exhibitions and collaboration with leading companies on the sponsorship of international design competitions. Designboom encourages a continuing dialogue between creative professionals, industry and society.

PR contact:
Jenny Filippetti
E: jenny@designboom.com