At the 2025 Miami Grand Prix the Formula 1 drivers did not do the usual parade on the back of a truck: they drove ten full-size cars built from LEGO bricks, one per team, drivable, with electric motors and real tyres. No rule required LEGO to do it. The multi-year partnership signed with Formula 1 in 2024 guaranteed its presence at the Grands Prix; the idea, carried out together with Formula 1 and the ten teams, gave it images that were shown around the world.

That is the difference between a sponsorship and a sponsorship people remember. Creativity in sports sponsorship is not decoration on a campaign: it is how a brand turns a right it has bought into something the audience wants to watch, share and remember.

In brief

• A sponsorship contract buys space and rights; creativity decides what they become.
• The ideas that work in motorsport come from the race, the product or the brand’s history, not from an advert placed on top.
• A good idea is measured: it must bring attention, but also results.

Why creativity matters more than the logo

A logo on the bodywork or the race suit is still the starting point of almost every sponsorship. But on its own, the logo competes with dozens of other brands on the same car and the same grid. The audience sees it without looking at it.

Creativity comes into play after the signature: it is the work that decides how to use the rights acquired, the hospitality, the drivers, the images, the space at the circuit. In our experience, the share of the budget set aside for activation, meaning everything done around the rights, weighs on the result at least as much as the rights themselves. We cover it in the guide to what sports sponsorship activation is.

Three ideas that worked

LEGO and the Miami parade

In May 2025 LEGO and Formula 1 replaced the drivers’ parade truck with ten full-size cars, one for each team, made of bricks and drivable at low speed. The idea came from the product: a construction toy brand building, in front of everyone, the cars of the championship it sponsors. The same cars were then announced for a tour of other Grands Prix.

Gulf and McLaren at Monaco

At the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix McLaren raced in the light blue and orange of Gulf, the oil brand that had made those colours famous on racing cars since the late 1960s. An idea built on history: a special livery for a single weekend, at one of the most watched and photographed Grands Prix of the season, rounded off by Lando Norris on the podium.

Red Bull Stratos

In October 2012 Felix Baumgartner jumped from a capsule hanging almost 39 kilometres above the ground, in a project built and signed by Red Bull. It is not motorsport, but it is one of the most cited cases of a brand that does not buy an event: it creates one. We wrote about it in our analysis of Felix Baumgartner and Red Bull.

More examples, from Formula 1 to Formula E, are collected in the guide to the most creative sponsorships in motorsport.

Where ideas that work come from

In the successful cases we have seen, ideas almost always come from one of these three sources:

• the product: the brand brings to the track what it does best, like LEGO with its bricks;
• history: the brand uses a genuine link with motorsport, like Gulf with its colours;
• the race: the brand builds the idea around a moment of the weekend, such as the drivers’ parade, the podium or the pit stop.

When an idea comes from none of the three, the audience is likely to recognise it as advertising placed on top of the race, and scroll past it.

Where creativity stops

Creativity has limits too, and it is better to know them beforehand. There are the sporting and technical regulations, which decide where and how a brand may appear. There are the rights: the official race footage belongs to the championship’s rights holder, and an idea that uses it must be provided for in the agreements. And there is consistency: a brilliant initiative that is far from the brand’s values gets people talking for a day and risks confusing them for a long time.

How to measure a creative idea

The media value of an idea that goes viral can be very high, but it remains an estimate of the cost of the visibility, not of the result achieved. A creative idea is judged like the rest of the sponsorship: with indicators set in advance, such as contacts, sales and awareness among the target audience. The method is described in the guide on how to use analytics to measure sponsorship strategies.

Who it works for, and who it does not

A creative activation pays off most for brands that have a product to show or a story to tell, and for those entering a championship crowded with sponsors, where standing out is the condition for being noticed. It pays off less when the budget barely covers the rights: an idea without the means to carry it out well risks delivering less than a well-placed logo. In that case it is better to choose a smaller property, where the same resources can make a difference.

How we work on ideas

We start from the sponsor’s objectives and the rights available, then look for the idea where it really comes from: the product, the brand’s history, the moments of the race. We check regulations and rights before proposing it and define how to measure it. We do this in Formula 1 sponsorship as well as in MotoGP sponsorship. In our model the commission is paid by the sports property, not by the sponsoring company: that is why we can propose the most suitable idea, even when it is not the most expensive one.