When the new F1 hit the big screen, fans expected fast cars and the drama of a real race environment. What they didn’t expect was a masterclass in brand integration and a cinematic case study in brand strategy done right.
Rather than traditional product placement, they were met with brands that felt like living, breathing characters woven into the film’s narrative and fan experience.
This made the film not just entertaining, but a demonstration of how strategic thinking can immerse a brand into culture, build emotional connections, and extend engagement across multiple platforms.
The Strategy Behind the Story
In brand strategy, everything begins with purpose. You define what the brand stands for, who it serves, and how it connects.
What F1 has done is bring this process to life by focusing on three core areas:
1. Discovery and Audience Understanding
The fictional APXGP team at the centre of the film is purpose-built for storytelling.
They understood that if you can weave together the story of your brand (in this case, F1) and the story of your audience (how they interact with F1) into one interesting narrative, then your audience will be drawn in and form a connection with the story.
By exploring audience motivations and cultural trends, there is a clear understanding that fans want immersion, realism, and authenticity. With this insight, APXGP became not just part of the plot but a real brand with a clear identity, purpose and personality.
2. Positioning and Narrative Development
By defining who APXGP are, they became more than just a plot device and have grown into a living, breathing brand with a personality you would define as ambitious, data-driven, and disruptive.
These characteristics align perfectly with lead sponsor Expensify, whose ethos is built on speed, automation, and smart performance, which is why they made the ideal partnership in this story.
But strong brand partnerships aren’t just about personalities; they’re about shared beliefs, purpose, and positioning. The alignment of all of these between APXGP and Expensify makes the sponsorship feel authentic and more impactful.
This synergy between team values and brand values is strategy in action.
3. Activation Through Immersive Storytelling
Traditional product placement leaves brands in the background, often missed or going unnoticed. But F1 has completely changed this by activating brands to bring them to the forefront and immersing them in the story.
In the film, Expensify isn’t just visible, it’s vital to the APXGP team’s operations. The software is woven into the story by being vital to the team’s daily operations and reinforcing its relevance to the plot.
Tommy Hilfiger doesn’t just sponsor the race suits, team uniforms and merchandise in the film; they launched a real-world APXGP fashion collection.
SharkNinja reimagines appliances as high-performance machines with a real-world, cobranded product range to reflect the speed, precision, and engineering excellence of Formula 1.
Each brand was chosen strategically, not just for exposure, but to enhance the narrative and for emotional relevance, which shows how brands can become living, breathing parts of a story rather than just background decoration.
Real-World Immersion and Multi-Platform Integration
By filming during live F1 races, the film blurs the line between fiction and reality.
Fans saw APXGP pit crews and liveries in real-world situations that extended the story beyond the cinema and into our lives.
And this story continues digitally through the EA Sports’ F1 25 game. Players can drive for APXGP, using the same sponsor-branded liveries, and step into the roles played by Brad Pitt and Damson Idris.
This kind of integration is rare and powerful, moving brands from passive observers to active participants.
The brand isn’t telling a story; it is the story.
This is how we think about brand activation. Whether it’s a new website, a product launch or a social campaign, every brand touchpoint should be immersive, contextual, and consistent with the brand behaving in a way that reinforces its strategic positioning.
Fictional Brands That Feel Real
The magic trick of F1 is that APXGP doesn’t feel fictional, but instead lives in the minds of the audience, complete with merchandise, fan communities, and recognisable sponsors.
Tommy Hilfiger’s Met Gala stunt, where actor Damson Idris arrived in an APXGP race car and suit, blurred the line between fiction and reality even further. By immersing the brand into real-life situations, brand building instead becomes strategic world-building.
And it’s now something real brands will be fighting for. Screen time that delivers meaning by going beyond visibility and into emotional relevance.
As the film’s distributor, Apple understood this. They pushed the boundaries with their new Haptic Trailer technology, enabling viewers to become fully immersed in the trailer through vibrations that synced with the action. This created a tactile, sensory experience on iPhones that meant Apple didn’t just market a movie; it delivered a brand experience.
The ROI of Strategy-Driven Integration
The combined brand partnerships and integrations pushed the film’s marketing value into the hundreds of millions before it even launched, which is something never seen before.
Anticipation around the film meant Expensify saw a significant spike in app downloads and user engagement after it was revealed as APXGP’s title sponsor.
SharkNinja’s APXGP collection gained viral traction on social media, while Tommy Hilfiger sold out several hero pieces from its new clothing line.
This is the power of brand strategy: when you align business goals, customer insights, and narrative, the result is more than visibility; it’s connections that drive conversions.
What This Means for Brands Today
F1 has redefined the rule book. It’s no longer about simply having your brand visible; you need to enter the culture, become part of the story, and earn attention through authenticity.
This film is a masterclass in how to build a successful brand through:
- Humanising brands so they have their own personalities and characteristics that align with audience expectations.
- Creating narratives that extend across multiple platforms, meaning the audience experience goes beyond traditional marketing methods.
- Using storytelling to make a brand meaningful and emotionally resonant, and not just memorable.
Generating emotional engagement through immersion. F1 has taken people beyond simply seeing and hearing about the brand by enabling them to feel like they’re part of it.
Strategy at the Heart of the Story
We believe great brands don’t interrupt, they integrate. The F1 movie proves that when brands are guided by strategy, they can transcend traditional marketing and become part of the cultural moment.
APXGP may be fictional, but the blueprint is real and shows we now need narratives that bring your brand to life through purpose, a clear understanding of your audience and building a world they want to enter.
By removing the line between fiction and reality, F1 has changed the landscape forever. The brands that thrive will be the ones that know how to tell a story, and more importantly, how to live in one.
Want to discuss your brand with a team of branding specialists? Don’t hesitate to get in touch for a no-obligation chat today.
