It’s no secret that sports sponsorships are not cheap. Unless you are sponsoring the local footy team, brands collectively spend billions securing sponsorship presence in sport and particularly at major events. Bringing that sponsorship to life through a compelling activation for fans is even harder and adds another layer of cost.
But Honeycomb Strategy’s strategy director Kieran Collins and a series of leading marketers speaking at Cairns Crocodiles, presented by Pinterest, have shed light on their winning but divergent approaches to this thorny problem.
Collins believes that brands must consider behavioural science—including audience psychological, social, cognitive and emotional factors—to drive return when planning their activations.
“If you win with behavioural science, as a brand you take a huge step of making an impact in your sponsorship,” he said.
Honeycomb Strategy’s latest research, ‘Pit Stop to Podium’, applies a behavioural science lens to Formula 1 sponsorships to uncover what actually drives sponsor performance and why the same patterns emerge across audiences regardless of category or spend.
The study found the most effective activations consistently delivered on four key factors: attention, memory, experience and sentiment.
“The thing that’s definitely over‑utilised is attention—just visibility, just being there and being seen. I definitely think shifts in sentiment are under‑utilised. Ultimately, one of the reasons you show up is you want to positively change how people think about you as a brand,” added Collins.
Collins said brands often arrive at major events with an inherent advantage through association alone, but the difference comes down to execution.
“As a brand sponsoring an event, you’re going to approach it with some sort of starting advantage… but what amplifies where you start is how well you’re executing at the event. That’s where the behavioural science element really shines—having a part to play at the event, not just showing up for the sake of showing up, having meaningful interactions, creating that distinctive presence.”
One principle the data brings sharply into focus is ‘Identity Congruence’: the idea that people engage more deeply with brands that feel aligned with who they are or who they want to be. When a sponsorship feels personally relevant, it is processed more deeply, remembered more positively, and more likely to shift sentiment over time.
A brand that nailed this was MECCA. Rather than designing an activation for everyone, the brand made a deliberate bet on audience fit—leaning into the reality that Melbourne’s F1 crowd has the
highest proportion of female attendees of any race globally, and that the event has evolved into as much a cultural moment as a sporting one.
As a result MECCA ranked second for enhancing the attendee experience, and one of the strongest positive sentiment shifts of any sponsor in the study, not through scale, but through relevance.
Talking on a panel on Day 2 at Cairns Crocodiles, Alexandra Bokeyar, general manager of MECCA-Maginations spoke to why the partnership hit the mark for them.
“We did not bring the female customer to the F1, they were already there. During the weekend there was 46 per cent female attendance and globally it’s about 35 per cent. We have a predominantly female customer base, so for us it was like let’s think about the customer strategy behind these and let’s really think deeply as to why our customer wants to come and visit us at the F1. From there we created an experience that allows them to engage with us,” she said.
During the weekend fans could have made a pit stop for complimentary express eye services, plus an extended MECCA MAX range was available for sale trackside along with a line-up of limited-edition gifts.
Showing up a little bit differently, but still having a massive impact on the weekend was American Express. For Amex the partnership wasn’t just about being seen by racegoers, it was about creating a better overall fan experience.
“From an Amex perspective, when we think about this cultural moment it was around what are the passions of our card members? We thought about travel, dining, music and fashion. So we started our tour with F1 here in Australia with fashion on the grid, which was incredibly exciting. Then we built a three‑story building where people could actually see all the different music performances from that spot,” said Naysla Edwards, vice president brand ANZ, American Express at Cairns Crocodiles.
KitKat again showed up differently then Amex and MECCA but still left a lasting impact on racegoers. Its strategy was to be relevant at the event itself by playing into the racing theme.
KitKat did this by showing up with an activation that tested reaction time. The activation had buttons on the wall, one would shine a certain colour and you’ve got to react quickly by tapping it. The goal was to test racegoers reaction times by seeing how many buttons they could press within a certain time period. A skill that is very much required by the drivers on the F1 circuit.
It also owned the weekend by selling and handing out F1 car shaped chocolates. Something Collins was very impressed with.
“They really managed to be distinctive, stand out and break expected norms a little bit—you’d expect to get a little chocolate, but you wouldn’t expect to get it in the shape of a car. The principle behind the success would be attention hacking for attendees, which helps manage to cut through beyond just normal branding you’d see at events like this,” he said.
