Formula 1: Rebrand | Wieden+Kennedy

We assembled a design and strategy team, led by W+K design lead, Richard Turley (whose past credits include redesigning Bloomberg Businessweek) to create the brand’s new visual identity, which includes logo, typography and brand behaviours. The logo was unleashed in a live end-of-season spectacle at the close of the Formula 1 Etihad Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

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We then started work on Formula 1’s first ever marketing campaign, which challenges the sport’s perceptions by showing through the eyes of the fans what F1 really feels like.

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Engineered Insanity

The new campaign premiered ahead of the season opener on March 25 with bold imagery, a new tagline and a hero film, which features six of F1’s biggest super fans. A sixty-second film, Engineered Insanity, shone a spotlight on the innovation, endurance and elemental nature of the sport, putting superfans at the visceral heart of the action, as though they were the ones battling it out from behind the wheel. The film was first teased by the fans through their personal social accounts before being launched by F1.

Engineered Insanity formed the backbone of a multi-platform campaign that kicked off in Melbourne with high impact out-of-home advertising, featuring proximity in-airport and in-city posters, hand-painted murals and extending to extensive social and digital channels. The campaign rolled out to appear in key Grand Prix destinations including China, France, Germany and the US as the season unfolds.

Results:

The logo reveal was covered by more than 1,500 media outlets across with globe within just five days, generating more than 35,000 Tweets. Key coverage came from titles including the BBC, Fast Company, The Telegraph, Complex, ESPN, High Snobiety, Daily Mail and It’s Nice That. An exclusive feature with Creative Review was the title’s most read article in 2017, despite being published in the last six weeks of the year.