Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast

Brand Formula
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Welcome to Brand Formula, a new podcast focused on the marketing and brands at play in Formula 1 today.  Your hosts Mordecai & Elyssa, have 30 years of marketing experience across agencies, in house at brands, digital platforms, content studios, and more. Also, they are big F1 fans. Elyssa was raised on F1 from childhood and Mordecai is a Drive To Survive covid convert.  Each week Brand Formula will bring to takes on the brands around F1, the teams, and the driver’s themselves. Analyzing the advertising and marketing moves being made, the audience as it continues to evolve across markets, and look at white spaces they think need to be covered. Who is seeing a ROI and who’s DNFed.  Here we look at the brand formulas shaping F1 today. Thank you for listening, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 5 hr ago

    US GP || Texas-maxxxing, Brand Meaning & Apple TV’s Spin

    We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode twenty four, the US GP, where the Texas tropes were out in full force. Jeremy Clarkson kept F1 British Upper Class. Ted Cruz was on the podium. And was that a grid girl holding the chequered flag? Please don't take us back in time Formula 1. To the future, Kimi is two points from clinching and we are on our way to Mexico. We are talking Daniel Ricciardo, the disruptor that every driver brand will benefit from in future. Like Liam Lawson did when Danny Ricc showed up to his music gig. Enchante’s pop-up at COTA tells you about building a driver brand when you are no longer driving, and why Lando’s using that as his benchmark, and blowing it out of the water. We also give a quick mention to F1 Academy’s new champion, Alicia Pomowski, at twenty years old. The configuration of motorsports, including MotoGP, that created the sea of marbles every driver was talkinging about, and felt like a massive brand crossover opportunity that nobody quite seized on the broadcast side. Then the two main topics. First, the new sponsor announcements. Twelve partnerships confirmed for 2027 with a lot of B2B tech in the mix, and a question we keep coming back to around whether borrowed meaning is enough. Is putting your logo in the paddock actually delivering a return, or are you just hoping the association does the work for you? And is it enough as the cost of that keeps rising. Adobe coming into Gucci Racing is the headline sponsorship deal. But the partnership that actually made us feel something was AbbVie at McLaren, linking every ten constructors’ points scored to a ten thousand dollar donation to patient advocacy organisations, tied directly to the ten percent of people worldwide affected by autoimmune diseases. There is your brand formula. An actual story with an actual scoreboard. Then Apple TV. It has been one year since the deal was announced and Liberty Media’s Derek Chang took to the stage in Austin to talk about what it has delivered. We break down the quotes, including the comparison of the Apple retail store to a distribution ecosystem for F1, and ask you to sit with that for a moment. The race viewership numbers are not being disclosed, but is being spun, which tells a very interesting story about what Apple is choosing to count. We also get into what Apple is genuinely doing well, what the Dolby Atmos announcement meant for Elyssa’s Sonos cart, and why the education gap between what Apple is offering and what a fan actually understands about how to access it is the clearest miss of the whole year. Link to the full race article: https://www.the-race.com/business/why-f1-is-so-sure-its-apple-tv-deal-is-working/ Mexico is next. Lights out and we’ll see you there. Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere. #F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #USGP #Austin #COTA #AppleTV #McLaren #AbbVie #Sponsorships #BrandPartnerships #F1Academy #DriverBranding #KimiAntonelli #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    US GP || Texas-maxxxing, Brand Meaning & Apple TV’s Spin

  2. 14 Oct

    Singapore GP || Comms 101 for Everyone

    We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode twenty three. We predicted George would meet a barrier. He met a barrier. "Monaco" but at night is beautiful singapore. The rest of it was a comms disaster from start to finish, and we took notes. We open on the Lewis and Charles Ferrari social media takeover midweek, which was the best thing Ferrari did all weekend by a significant margin. The banter, the chemistry, the complete absence of anything resembling that energy by Sunday. A sandwich, as Elyssa called it, with the good stuff very much at the top. Then we get into the main topic. Comms 101. Because this weekend gave us so many case studies we could build a university syllabus around it. Toto in the team principals press conference going after people on social media for suggesting he is "engineering" George's poor performance which is not the conversation anyone was having. Every week Toto talks is landing him on his back foot immediately. Learn from Kim Kardashian she completely recovered her WAG reputation Sunday with a clean apology for Martin on his gridwalk and a reset that the whole paddock moved on from immediately. The contrast in those two approaches tells you everything about what reactive comms costs you versus what prepared comms gives you. Then the FIA and the SQ1 software situation where cars ran with boost modes that other cars didn’t have for twenty-seven seconds and the response was essentially, if you have a problem with it, protest later. Comms disaster number five hundred and seventy something for the weekend. We get into the broader question of whether Formula One now has too many channels open at once. Radios broadcast live. Drivers in multiple press pens per weekend. Social access at every session. What that gives you in storytelling and what it costs you when something goes wrong and there is no buffer between the moment and the reaction. Kimi not doing social around race weekends and losing nothing from his fan connection for it is, we think, the case study worth studying here. We also get into the wider question of what 2026’s technical regulations are doing to the human element of the sport. Max’s radio with GP during a race with multiple technical issues is a masterclass in trust and split-second communication. Ferrari’s race management on Sunday is the opposite. When a driver cannot trust the people talking to him through his helmet, the decisions that follow reflect that. We talk about it in terms of trust, leadership, and what eroding that relationship does to performance on both sides. We will be back in two weeks from America for COTA. Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere. Lights out. #F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #SingaporeGP #CrisisComms #BrandStrategy #LewisHamilton #Ferrari #TotoWolff #KimiAntonelli #FIA #DriverBranding #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. 7 Oct

    Bahrain GP || Rebooting Software & Nike in F1

    We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode twenty two and Sepang gave us everything. Rain. Chaos. A software reboot in the longest formation lap. Record attendance, record female fan attendance, record 18 to 24 attendance. And a podium that felt like a documentary about why people fall in love with motorsport. We needed that race and we got it. We talk Toto. He is doing his version of struggling right now and his version is still a masterclass compared to most. The Martin Brundle interview, the quote about what it means if Kimi wins versus if George wins, and the moment Sky cut to him at lap fifty with his arms crossed saying nothing. We dig into what it looks like to manage two drivers when one of them is almost certainly going to be world champion and you built both of them. We also get into George's unexpected fanbase in Malaysia, Lewis overtaking Isack Hadjar and the crowd noise you could hear through the commentary, and Lance Stroll finishing a race for the first time this season and collecting a three million bump in the process. We have thoughts, and aren't surprised. Our Brand Formula this week, Nike is reportedly coming to Formula One as the official clothing partner for F1 staff. A brand that spent a decade making the wrong calls now showing up for the smallest possible slice of the opportunity?! We walk through why Nike is in the position it is, what taking themselves off shelves to chase D2C actually cost them, what Hoka and On are doing that Nike stopped doing, and why showing up to dress the pit crew is renting relevance rather than earning it. We also get into what a genuinely interesting Nike F1 play could look like, including one that nobody seems to be making around female fans and underrepresented athletes, and what the On rapid prototyping story could have been if Nike had asked the right questions first. From there we get into F1 Academy. Where it is, where it has fallen short, what Susie Wolff said at Cannes about only taking B2C brands onto those cars, and why the volume of noise around its failure tends to come with a misogynistic undertow that frustrates both of us. We also talk about why we think a woman on the F1 grid is a commercial inevitability and not just a dream, and why Jamie Chadwick saying she doesn't think it will be her was the one thing we didn't want to hear from a racing driver. Singapore is next. Night race. Sprint. Charles in a black suit with HP blue. And George may meet a barrier. Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere. Lights out. #F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #MalaysianGP #Sepang #Nike #F1Sponsorship #KimiAntonelli #GeorgeRussell #TotoWolff #F1Academy #FemaleFandom #DriverBranding #BrandStrategy #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Bahrain GP || Rebooting Software & Nike in F1

  4. 28 Sept

    Azerbaijan GP || Baku & Brand Identity

    We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode twenty one and Baku delivered a race of two halves. Thirty-plus laps of nothing much and then a photo finish, boys fighting on the radio, and Isack Hadjar on his first race back getting a podium. We will take it. Petty spats and team driver v driver kicked off with Charles not acknowledging the tow Lewis gave him in qualifying. Lando going after Franco Colapinto in multiple post-race quotes felt out of character. Bottas and the technology failure that gives us a provocation about where AI actually sits in race-day decision making. And Ferrari asking their driver questions at two hundred miles per hour that the pit wall has the answers for (not Lewis.) We're classic brand formula this week talking Brand Identity McLaren dropped a new logo mid-season. We walk through why the timing is odd, why the comparison to Jaguar's rebrand keeps coming up and why it's also not quite fair, and the part of the story that got completely lost in the online noise which is that this logo is genuinely theirs, predating every brand that people are now comparing it to. We get into Lou's role as CMO and the pattern of big brand moves she makes every decade, the SUV launch and what it means to Disneyfy a brand that previously ran on one very iconic colour, and the question of who this is actually for when McLaren is simultaneously trying to be a racing team, a supercar marque, a lifestyle brand, golf brand, and accessible enough for a new generation of fans to feel a part of it. That accessibility conversation takes us somewhere broader. The female fan and the price-sensitive fan are solving the same problem in the same way, which is making it themselves. The grey market in F1 merch exists because the sport has not closed the gap. And as Lando's brand gets stronger and his IP matters more, that grey market is going to get complicated. Plus BWT losing their Alpine home to Gucci and the whole paddock apparently deciding nobody wants to go pink. We have thoughts about Cadillac and a dash to the side. We also touch on Jamie Chadwick driving a Williams in Portugal, ten years after Susie Wolff did the same, and what that says about where a woman on the F1 grid actually sits in the timeline. Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia is next. Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere. Lights out. #F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #AzerbaijanGP #Baku #McLaren #BrandIdentity #Rebrand #LandoNorris #Ferrari #JamieChadwick #BWT #Gucci #Alpine #Cadillac #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. 13 Sept

    Spanish GP | Snooze Fest, Sainz is Selling Photos & George Bought Himself a Barrier

    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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Spanish GP | Snooze Fest, Sainz is Selling Photos & George Bought Himself a Barrier

  6. 9 Sept

    Monza GP || Kimi for Italy, Gasly for Pole, History Made

    We are Brand Formula: An F1 Marketing Podcast. Mordecai and Elyssa are back for episode nineteen, and if you did not cry at least once this weekend, we have questions about whether you were actually watching. Kimi Antonelli. Nineteenth to first. Twenty six passes. His birthday week. His home race. A solo lap in qualifying that stopped everything. A flag from his dad with handwritten notes from the people he loves. Ragu eaten out of a Pirelli trophy in front of the Tifosi. And then the next day, go-karting with the whole team to say thank you. We are not over it and we are not going to be. We also get into Pierre Gasly taking pole at the track where he has won before, in the city where he lives, in what might be a preview of what his brand story looks like when he is driving a Gucci livery next year. With the F1 2027 season launch happening in Milan, is this the beginning of Pierre in the spotlight? Then Ferrari. This was their moment. Lewis in that F40. Charles with his history on that track. The Tifosi showing up as ever, like no other fanbase in the sport. All the ingredients. And then the strategy calls that followed, or didn't, and what it tells you about what happens when a brand with one of the great stories in sport cannot make the leadership decisions to match it. We also get into the Monza trophy, which nobody liked until Kimi ate out of it, the grid gig that played to an empty crowd, the AWS commentary situation improving, and have our eyes on Madrid. Madrid's testing week brought us copper wire theft, three suspension failures, two chassis failures, and a track that at least one team principal is already calling a car killer. We are setting our recordings to extra long just in case. And Disney continues to take crumbs. They showed up at Monza with the Cars activation that F1 fans have been waiting for since the partnership was announced. It landed like a tree falling in a forest with nobody around. Like, subscribe, and find us at @brandformulapod everywhere. Lights out. #F1 #Marketing #SportsMarketing #MonzaGP #KimiAntonelli #PierreGasly #Ferrari #Lewis Hamilton #BrandStrategy #Leadership #Disney #Sponsorships #FemaleFandom #BrandFormula Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Monza GP || Kimi for Italy, Gasly for Pole, History Made

  7. 25 Aug

    Dutch GP || What Sprint?, Driver Dynamics, & Fifty-Five's Failure

    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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Dutch GP || What Sprint?, Driver Dynamics, & Fifty-Five's Failure

  8. 27 Jul

    Hungarian GP | "Leclerc, Leclerc", Sainz Spice & Best and Could Be Better

    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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Hungarian GP | "Leclerc, Leclerc", Sainz Spice & Best and Could Be Better
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About

Welcome to Brand Formula, a new podcast focused on the marketing and brands at play in Formula 1 today.  Your hosts Mordecai & Elyssa, have 30 years of marketing experience across agencies, in house at brands, digital platforms, content studios, and more. Also, they are big F1 fans. Elyssa was raised on F1 from childhood and Mordecai is a Drive To Survive covid convert.  Each week Brand Formula will bring to takes on the brands around F1, the teams, and the driver’s themselves. Analyzing the advertising and marketing moves being made, the audience as it continues to evolve across markets, and look at white spaces they think need to be covered. Who is seeing a ROI and who’s DNFed.  Here we look at the brand formulas shaping F1 today. Thank you for listening, Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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