Brands collectively spend billions securing sponsorship presence at major events. Yet for most, the honest answer to “did it work?” remains elusive. New research from Australian marketing consultancy Honeycomb Strategy suggests the problem is not measurement – it is the “mental model “marketers are using to design sponsorships in the first place.
Pit Stop to Podium, the latest in Honeycomb Strategy’s Digital Insights Series, was conducted in partnership with research firm Pureprofile. It analysed 19 sponsors across the 2026 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix – tracking what on-ground attendees and broadcast audiences noticed, remembered and felt, not just days after the event, but weeks later, once the immediate noise had cleared.
Being present is not the same as being remembered
For decades, sponsorship has been treated as a game of exposure – logos, signage and reach. But gone are the days where slapping your logo everywhere delivers results. The brands that win aren’t just visible, they harness behavioural science to become relevant, memorable and impossible to ignore.
Even in the days immediately following the event, consumer attention was far from guaranteed. Over time, memory consolidated around a small number of brands, while many others quickly faded from view.
The research evaluated sponsors across four dimensions: attention, memory, experience and sentiment. As the data makes clear, great sponsorship is not just about what people saw – it is about what they remembered, felt and did next.
The brands that made the podium
Qatar Airways led on every measure, ranking first for unprompted awareness both immediately post-event and two weeks later, with more than a third of audiences reporting a positive sentiment shift after exposure.
Heineken and American Express rounded out the podium. What united all three was not spend or signage dominance – it was intentionality.
“The difference between the brands that made the podium and those that faded into the background wasn’t budget, it wasn’t even prominence, it was intentionality,” said Kieran Collins, strategy director at Honeycomb Strategy.
“Every decision, from the activation design to the touchpoints they chose, was rooted in a deep understanding of how their audience actually behaves. The brands that win don’t just show up with a budget and a logo. They apply behavioural science to their activations to engrain themselves in the experience and become impossible to ignore.”
What behavioural science reveals
Honeycomb Strategy’s research applies a behavioural science lens to identify the specific principles that drove top F1 sponsor performance and why the same patterns emerge consistently across audiences, regardless of category or spend level.
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.
MECCA MAX is one of the most instructive examples. 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.
The result: MECCA MAX 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.
“MECCA MAX’s activation aligned with the evolving F1 crowd – where the event has become as much a cultural moment people actively show up for and share, as a sporting one,” added Collins.
Identity Congruence is one of four behavioural science principles the research identifies as the key differentiators between sponsors that resonated and those that were forgotten. The full framework, case
studies and how each principle translates into practical execution are contained in the report.
Scale creates opportunity, execution determines outcomes
American Express was 1.5 times more likely to be noticed by on-ground attendees than the average sponsor – but visibility was only part of the story.
The brand built a membership ecosystem within the event itself, turning passive exposure into active belonging. Cardholders did not just encounter American Express at the Grand Prix, they belonged to it and non-members aspired to.
The report also highlights several mid-tier and newer sponsors such as MECCA MAX, Nestlé KitKat and TAG Heuer who competed against legacy players with deeper pockets and decades of brand equity – and still
managed to cut through. What they did differently is one of the most instructive parts of the research.
The question most brands aren’t asking
Beyond the behavioural science framework, the report introduces a practical sponsorship diagnostic checklist designed to stress-test strategy before investment is committed and sharpen execution once it is.
It starts with two deceptively simple questions: does your brand belong here, or is it just paying to be here?; and would this sponsorship make intuitive sense to your customer, without explanation?
If the answer to either requires justification, the research suggests that’s a structural problem no activation budget can fix.
The report features a full checklist, the winning formula and the complete case studies on what the top performers did differently.
“Pit Stop to Podium gives marketers the evidence and the framework to distinguish effective sponsorship from expensive presence,” concluded Collins. “The behavioural drivers of attention, memory and sentiment are knowable. The brands that understand them are already pulling ahead.”
