Formula 1 and the myth of "too niche"

A viral photo and the conversation around it is proof positive not only that small audiences can create big impact, but that in a chaotic consumer landscape, having a niche audience can be a superpower. Here's what brands need to know about leveraging the power of small

Did you see this photo that went viral last week?

If you didn't, you're among the few.

Not since the image of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's first public embrace after the Chiefs' victory has a single photograph and the conversation around it so dominated my social feeds.

In the photo, which has accrued more than 5.6M likes and counting on Instagram, car racing icon Lewis Hamilton , dressed in a head-to-toe black double-breasted suit layered under a thick wool black overcoat, stands next to a red Ferrari F40 model, staring straight into the camera in front of the Maranello, Italy headquarters of Formula 1 racing team Scuderia Ferrari.

The image, shared to commemorate Hamilton's official debut with the team, lit up group chats, spiked Google searches for "Scuderia Ferrari," sparked a massive rise in social mentions (according to social listening platform YouScan), and sent everyone from GQ to the Daily Mail scrambling to cover what the moment meant not just for the sport, but for entertainment, fashion, and culture at large.

This image, as well as the clever mix of cross-platform content Scuderia Ferrari shared that lent additional dimension to this moment, transformed what was essentially a PR announcement for a niche sport into Super Bowl-level cultural currency.

Barely a decade ago, this kind of moment might not have made peep outside of dedicated motorsport circles.

Formula 1 was seen as the definition of "niche"—a rich man's hobby, a Sunday morning TV slot for gearheads, a European-centric sport struggling for global relevance.

The conventional wisdom: Racing was too specialized, too technical, and too niche to matter beyond F1 fans.

Here's why that conventional wisdom was wrong.

And why this isn't just another success story about a brand going mainstream, but rather, a masterclass in the power of "niche" products, interests, and communities to explode attention, relevance and loyalty that ultimately reaches a much broader audience.

I first learned this lesson about the power of niche when I joined Facebook to lead lifestyle partnerships in 2013.

Facebook had bought Instagram only a year earlier, and when I arrived at the company,?I saw a golden opportunity in the fashion community's organic embrace of Instagram.

What I realize at the time: if we threw fuel on the fire of that nascent organic traction in the right ways, we could generate attention, relevance and growth for the platform of Instagram as a whole.

So I turned all my attention to Instagram, working day and night for the next 12 months to plug Instagram into the fashion community.

The results over the next 12 months spoke for themselves:

Nine models, including Karlie Kloss and?Cara Delevingne, graced the cover of Vogue with the cover line "Instagirls."

Instagram was named one of the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company?"for its beautiful relationship with the fashion industry."

And the platform grew by nearly 100M users—all in the space of just a year.

What I took from that experience: Organic community is insanely powerful. Even if–and perhaps especially if–it's "niche."

A similar pattern would play out in Formula 1 just a few years later.

In 2016, Liberty Media made what seemed like a puzzling move: they acquired Formula 1 for $4.4 billion.

The sport was facing declining viewership and an aging audience.

But Liberty saw something others missed.They weren't buying a racing company.

They were buying a passionate community that could become a cultural phenomenon.What followed was one of the most fascinating transformations in modern entertainment.

Instead of trying to broaden the sport's appeal by diluting its complexity, Liberty Media doubled down on what made F1 unique.

They just changed how they told the story.

Enter the Netflix documentary series “Drive to Survive.”

While TikTok and YouTube would later become home to countless F1 memes and red-hot homages to drivers, it was this series that sparked what The Cut would later call the "Fangirlification of Formula 1” by turning technical precision into personal drama, pit stops into plot points, and racing statistics into character arcs.

As with the fashion community on Instagram, F1's passionate fans were already there.

Throwing fuel on the fire of their passion with the right content just lit the spark.

So what lessons can we take from what F1 has done–and continues to do today, as this latest moment has shown?

Lesson #1: Technical complexity is fine–as long as there's a good story

When most brands try to expand their audience, they water down what makes them special.

Liberty Media did the opposite. They kept the technical complexity of F1 but pushed to find universal human stories that brought the drama: rivalries, ambition, and triumph over adversity.

The result? Instead of reaching a broader but shallower audience, they created deeper engagement that naturally expanded their reach.

Lesson #2: Nurture the niche, and watch the multiplier effect

Today, F1 boasts average viewership of 1.13 million viewers for each of the season's 20+ races, and the? #Formula1 hashtag has garnered 90B views on TikTok.

Most impressively, the fanbase is solidly mixed: women now constitute approximately 41% of the global fanbase, up from 20 percent in 2019. This isn't just growth–it's exponential impact.

But here's what's fascinating: Viewership for the 2024 Formula 1 season fell 3 percent year-over-year in the U.S., and according to recent data from @gotracksuit , awareness of the F1 British Grand Prix decreased by 4 percent in the U.K. over the last 12 months.Once upon a time, this might have been seen as a warning sign.But it demonstrates something crucial about cultural impact:

When you invest deeply in a passionate community, their influence far outweighs their numbers.The Hamilton-Ferrari moment exploded because an already-engaged community amplified it exponentially, creating waves of impact far beyond its "niche" borders.

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Interested in dialing up attention, relevance and loyalty by leveraging your brand's niche audience?

I've got a system for doing just that.

It's called The Community Catalyst, and I designed it to give small to mid-size brands (approximately $35M-$300M annual revenue) the power to do this without having to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

I'm currently running a pilot of The Community Catalyst and?I am booking new clients to kick off at the end of Q1.

Want in? Comment on this post or DM me and I'll get you all the details.