Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode twenty. Madrid was madness in name only. The flamenco dancers were roughly thirty seconds of fun. Lewis was out in 3 minutes basically. The race for tenth Sky tried to sell us was a nothing burger. Onboards made both of us reach for medication. Kimi won, the podium was nice, and here we are.But the race was not the point this week. Drop culture is.We use Lando as our entry point because the coffee shop takeovers he did across London, Amsterdam and Barcelona while we were watching practice sessions are genuinely one of the best driver brand executions we have seen. We walk through the actual formula of drop culture, why scarcity and ritual and afterlife matter, how the Landostand connects to all of it, and why/what he is building across Quadrant, LN4 and the Amazon Prime deal starts to look less like merch and more like a legacy play. Then Carlos. We wanted so much more and we got fifty-five. Moody images, an iPhone on a tripod, cycling shorts that are a partnership anyway, Miami posters for $780, a New Era hat drop, and the word e-commerce said out loud on camera. Where is the story? Where is the pop-up? Where was his dad's go-kart team somewhere in Madrid, his home race? We diagnose this one at length and we do it with love. Mostly.Then George bought himself a barrier, cough cough, grandstand at Silverstone. It goes on sale days after the Landostand, at the same price point. We ask who asked for it? Whether the demand was there before the supply? And what happens when a driver brand built on ego rather than community tries to occupy space that another driver has already defined? George's beauty brand barriers will maybe go experiential.We close on Lando telling someone off camera that he just raced a race and he will drink what he wants, and why whoever owns that unnamed can needs to get their marketing team on it immediately.Imola might be the final race of the season. We heard it slip out on Sky. We are not not talking about what that could mean if Kimi is still where Kimi is in the standings.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #SpanishGP #Madrid #LandoNorris #CarlosSainz #GeorgeRussell #DropCulture #DriverBranding #Quadrant #BrandStrategy #KimiAntonelli #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai is back and Elyssa is boarding a plane, so we are calling up our reserve driver. Hooriya Hussain, marketing and comms extraordinaire, joins for episode eighteen. And she is fully qualified, having trained as a flag marshal at the Losail track as a teenager, repped Volkswagen Audi Middle East, and worked the Qatar Motor Show. She didn't just find Formula One. She was on the track before she knew what was happening.Zandvoort gave us a wet start, Max in the gravel in front of his own Orange Army, the Hulk avoiding it by a millisecond in real time, and Yuki back in the credits. After the rain it was really only a tight competition no team dynamics. We talk about what the George and Kimi dynamic looked like across a full race weekend, Lewis angrier than either of us can remember, Oscar not quite where Lando is right now, and Fernando somehow getting points. Someone prayed hard for that one.Then silly season, not much driver side but the 2028 race calendar decision looks like it is heading to Argentina, and we have feelings about what that means for South Africa, South Korea, and the race that Lewis Hamilton deserves before he retires. Hooriya brings the perspective of someone who grew up in Doha watching a young nation become a global sport destination almost overnight, and what that trajectory could look like for the African continent. We also take a detour to Bosuma St John's wedding in Ghana, which we are calling one of the best brand moves of the year and we are not apologising for it.Carlos Sainz launches 55. We wanted to love it. We did not love it. A direct to camera video, the word e-commerce, and a brand that could not quite commit to what it was. We compare it to Lando's coffee pop-ups, Daniel Ricciardo's whole universe, and ask who is going to call Carlos's team and fix this before Madrid.We close on AWS being read aloud in live race commentary and both of us needing it to never happen again. A B2B sponsor in your ears mid-race is not the ROI anyone should be chasing. We have invited them on the podcast to defend it. We mean it.Monza is next. Kimi has a grid penalty. Italy is watching. We know how this could go.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #DutchGP #Zandvoort #KimiAntonelli #LandoNorris #CarlosSainz #DriverBranding #AWS #Sponsorships #GrandPrixCalendar #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode seventeen, the last race before silly season, and Hungary delivered enough drama to carry us through the whole break. The boys were fighting. Carlos didn't apologise. Max did the overtake of the season and immediately wanted to report Lewis to the stewards. Classic.We open on the race, Carlos's brand problem, and why the bullish strategy he is taking right now matters more than people think going into a silly season where his name keeps coming up. We also touch on the Bahrain Grand Prix happening in Malaysia, which is a sentence that is genuinely hard to market, and what that means for the race calendar as a brand story.Then we get into our Best and Could Be Better format for the first half of the season.On the best list: the Landostand, which remains a ten out of ten with no notes. Cannes Grand Prix to be, Kit Kat losing a truck full of Formula One shaped chocolate bars and the internet losing its mind with it, a masterclass in finding an unexpected insight and staying true to a brand. Anthropic and Williams building in public together and making it a B2Human story as much as a B2B one. LVMH and the Louis Vuitton trophy trunk turning up at the World Cup and every Formula One fan in the comments going, yes obviously, we know what that is. Nu bank showing up simply and consistently. Cadillac figuring out how to use Bottas after a few races of working it out. And Charles Leclerc's adult era, a Ferrari wedding drive, an L'Oreal deal, and more eight sleep (and Leo) on the feed please.On the could be better list: Lego in year two, which tried too hard and lost the human truth that made year one so good. Meta AI on Mercedes with a reversed logo as well as consumer privacy concerns Velo at Silverstone creating an age-gated fan activation for what turned out to be a games tent, and smoke free sponsorship on a grid increasingly built around young fans. And finally, a gentle but firm note to Carmen to please rename the skincare brand. Barriers is not it. Two special silly season episodes incoming. Things are about to move.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #HungarianGP #CarlosSainz #LandoNorris #KitKat #Anthropic #Williams #LVMH #LouisVuitton #Cadillac #Lego #MetaAI #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode sixteen and it's a sweet one. Belgium delivered red bullets out of the gate, a stewards decision that had even George saying it was wrong, and Isack Hadjar going from twenty-first to sixth on strategy alone. We are in our reformed Max haters era and the tow lap did not hurt.We open on George. His brand has always been the safe one. The rule book reader. The politician of the paddock. So watching him come off the rails in public over the last few weekends is a genuine brand crisis in slow motion. We get into what it means when a manufactured persona starts to crack, why Toto is now one of the most interesting comms case studies in sport, and what it looks like when even a leader as skilled as him struggles to navigate a driver that's going against the team brand from inside the garage.Then the main topic. B2C is quietly arriving on the F1 grid and we want to talk about it. We use the Whoop x Ferrari partnership as our entry point. A consumer wearable carved out of a sea of enterprise tech sponsors, sitting on Charles Leclerc's race suit, We get into why these partnerships and how exclusive tech contracts are quietly blocking entire new revenue categories, and why teams negotiating those agreements need to think harder about where technology is going before they sign away the category.We also have words about Nespresso. The same George Clooney ad. Every commercial break. To a live captive audience of people who actually understand coffee culture inside a sport where drivers drink espresso before they get in the car. We have notes. And Mordecai has a pitch for Lavazza involving Alessandro, the man who pushes Charles's car out of the garage with the energy of someone who has never once considered not taking his job seriously. Book him immediately.One race to go before the summer break and silly season is about to start making noise. Esteban watch is officially on.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #BelgianGP #GeorgeRussell #Mercedes #TotoWolff #Whoop #Ferrari #B2CMarketing #Sponsorships #BrandPartnerships #FemaleFandom #Nespresso #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

British GP | Lego & the Landostand — Episode 15We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode fifteen and this was Mordecai's "home race". Over five hundred and fifty thousand people over a weekend. No Glastonbury this year, so Silverstone stepped all the way up, and it showed.We open on the LandoStand. Sixteen thousand fans in neon and blobs, Lando understood the brief in a way that nobody else on the grid has quite cracked yet. We get into why the visual identity works, why orange at Zandvoort is a murkier message, and why George's response to it told you everything you need to know about George.Then Lego. The second drivers' parade in Lego go-karts happened, and we get into the real question that raises, which is where the line sits between a sponsorship deal, driver obligations, and the ethics of using athletes in your marketing without direct compensation. We also ask whether the Lego partnership has drifted from its own brand formula. The engineering story, the STEM angle, the F1 Academy investment, and the creativity that made Lego iconic in the first place are all sitting there waiting to be used. The go-kart parade is the least interesting version of what this partnership could be.We also touch on Christian Horner showing up at Silverstone and Ollie Bearman driving Senna's first-win car in one of the best Sky segments in recent memory.Plus Fashion Roadman in the paddock giving us the logo-sport take we didn't know we needed, Shell and Ferrari's seventy-five year partnership getting a quiet nod in a weekend of very loud new money, and why by this time next year female fans will likely be the majority. The maths are the maths.Two more races before the summer break and silly season is about to get loud.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #BritishGP #Silverstone #LandoNorris #Lego #ChristianHorner #FemaleFandom #DriverBranding #Sponsorships #BrandPartnerships #F1Academy #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode fourteen, and they are both only recently recovered. From the heat. From the Croisette. From Cannes Lions.We open on Austria first. George Russell read the fine print, followed the rules to the letter, and won a race. The man will run to the stewards faster than anyone we've ever seen, but he can drive and the numbers don't lie. We also get into Crofty anointing a winner with ten laps to go in a race where everyone finished within two seconds of each other, the drone shot of the season, and why the Sky commentary bias conversation is not going away.Then we head to the south of France. Mordecai was there. Elyssa was there. The heat was unconscionable.F1 was everywhere at Cannes Lions this year, and we walk through it event by event. Salesforce announcing a new V-Carb partnership with a panel that was supposed to feature Arvid Lindblad and delivered Liam Lawson instead. Lando Norris and McLaren's CMO Lou showing up at Sport Beach to talk about golf. Carlos Sainz walking out to Smooth Operator, getting mispronounced by his own panel moderator, and still delivering on why Drive to Survive access was the best brand decision he ever made. George Russell packing a room so full people were sneaking in from the Croisette. And Susie Wolff, hosted by Naomi Schiff, laying out the F1 Academy sponsorship playbook in a way that made Mordecai realise we've been sleeping on what the Wolffs are quietly building. That one is getting its own episode.We also get into Aston Martin's FT panel on redefining luxury, the gap between their brand story and their on-track reality right now, and what a board-level moment looks like when performance and narrative are no longer aligned.And we close on Mordecai's biggest Cannes takeaway. The creator era has officially arrived at the festival, and the dinner is about to be bought for a very different guest list. Next year's Cannes will not look like this one. We're putting it on record.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere. Silverstone is next and Mordecai is surrounded by pop-ups.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #AustrianGP #CannesLions #McLaren #Williams #AstonMartin #CarlosSainz #LandoNorris #GeorgeRussell #SusieWolff #F1Academy #CreatorEconomy #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are at the baker's dozen, and we needed to start with Lewis Hamilton. A win that transcends the sport, an anthem that broke us, and the most public phone call of his life happening directly into a press pen microphone. Brand Lewis is officially back, and we are here for it.We also get into the Monaco appeal fallout that nobody actually wins, ie. Pierre Gasly's P3 created a domino effect with no clean resolution, are caught by surprise that Sky brought us a Love Island x F1 crossover moment. Then the real conversation. F1's sponsorship deck is worth three billion dollars, sponsor visibility is up ninety percent since 2020, and nearly six hundred different brands can get exposure in a single broadcast. So we ask the question that's been building for a while. Is it time for F1 to actually get selective?We get into the rise of wellness brands on the grid, why gambling sponsors banned from the Premier League are now knocking on F1's door, the genuine tension between fintech brands and gambling categories sharing the same sponsorship deck, and what it means that Formula One is one of the only sports left where brands don't seem to care who they're standing next to. We also unpack the B2B versus B2C split quietly reshaping where sponsorship money actually goes, and whether Monaco followed Miami's playbook this year a little too closely.Plus a global lens on why some sponsorships are doing as much foreign policy work as commercial strategy, what the TikTok and Claude rollout patterns can teach us about sponsorship territory restrictions, and why Levi's covering up their own logo at the World Cup is some of the smartest brand judgment we've seen all year.We close on growth. F1 is up 138 percent in revenue since 2021 and nowhere close to plateauing, but we ask what sustainable growth actually looks like once it inevitably does.We're off to Cannes Lions next week. Catch us there or catch us back here for episode fourteen.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #BarcelonaGP #LewisHamilton #Ferrari #Sponsorships #BrandPartnerships #FIA #CannesLions #SportsSponsorship #BrandFormula

We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are one dozen episodes deep, recording straight off the back of a Monaco that gave us everything. Chaos, strategy, red flags, DNFs, speed penalties, Lewis and Toto on a podium, and a 19-year-old winning five in a row at a race that hadn't seen an Italian winner since before he was born.Monaco was Mercurial.We open on the race itself, Kim Kardashian handling the paddock with grace, Charles Leclerc committing to Ferrari for the long haul at his home race, and Toto Wolff stepping onto a podium for the first time in a decade. That last one said more than any press release could.Then we get into Brand Kimi. We break down the three pillars quietly building one of the most compelling driver brands on the grid right now, and why what makes it special is almost entirely what Kimi is not doing. He goes dark on social during race weekends. He doesn't chase sponsorships. He didn't build his brand. People built it around him, starting with a Netflix documentary that began shooting before he ever turned an F1 lap. And now he is five wins in and leading the championship at 19 years old.We talk about the worker athlete racer pillar that earns him respect from Lewis and Max in a way we genuinely have not seen between those two before. The youthful playfulness and humility that a sport full of managed personas keeps trying to sand down in its younger drivers. And the Italian identity pillar that makes him a brand ambassador for an entire country whether F1 knows what to do with that or not. Spoiler: they left him off the Imola poster.We also get into what it means that the people telling the best brand stories in F1 are increasingly the ones running the teams. Bradley Lord going from chief communications officer to deputy principal at Mercedes. Luxury fashion houses promoting their CCOs to CEO. Story-first leadership is becoming the formula and we are not surprised.Ollie Bearman gets a mention. Not everyone on the grid has been allowed to be a kid. That matters more than it sounds.Barcelona is next. Lucky episode thirteen incoming.Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere.Lights out.#F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #MonacoGP #KimiAntonelli #BrandKimi #CharlesLeclerc #Ferrari #Mercedes #TotoWolff #DriverBranding #BrandStorytelling #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.