ELEMIS & Aston Martin: The F1 Partnership That's Hit the Ground Running
Since entering the sport earlier this year, ELEMIS have become one of the standout partners in F1 this season through clever product launches, fan activations & carefully-considered collaborations.
When luxury skincare brand ELEMIS were announced as the Official Skincare Partner of Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team back in February, while excited, I must admit I was also a little skeptical. As the first-of-its-kind partnership between a Formula 1 team and skincare brand, there was no blueprint to follow.
F1 has been experiencing a boom in sponsorship activity in the last number of years with it seeming like everyone wants in on the action, but the expectations of what actually makes a successful and meaningful partnership are high. On top of this, female fans of the sport have been crying out for brands to recognise their presence, their buying power and their engagement. So when it was announced that a beauty brand was entering the space in quite a significant way, the expectations heightened. The partnership needed to deliver among an audience who have been wanting their voices to be heard & position to be seen for so long. Spoiler alert: ELEMIS has certainly delivered. Let’s take a closer look at how.
Knowing & Cultivating Their Core Audience
With a massive global fanbase of over 826 million, F1 opens the door for sponsors in the sport to engage with a vast potential market of potential consumers. But it’s rare that a campaign can truly appeal to such a large, diverse audience without feeling too generic and lacking substance. To be truly successful, you need to identify the specific audience cohort that your brand wants to engage with and are actually likely to want to ELEMIS were clear from the outset on who they were showing up in F1 for - female fans. With 41% of the total F1 fanbase now being made up of females, the market is huge but concentrated and engaged. Through their social media content, on-site activations, ambassadorships and product launches, ELEMIS have been focused and remained loyal to their core audience.
Authentic Creator Collaboration
As mentioned before, the global & sports creator economies are booming and changing the landscape of sponsorship activations. It’s no longer enough for brands to simply engage with creators for their campaigns in order to reach mass audiences, the creators must be carefully chosen, align with the campaign’s objectives & share the brand’s values.
To celebrate the launch of this partnership, ELEMIS gifted multiple beauty & lifestyle creators with a range of products that sent social media into a flurry of excitement. Importantly, the creators were already established trusted figures within the beauty & lifestyle digital spaces, as well as many being F1 fans themselves, helping to reinforce ELEMIS’ brand identity in a truly organic way. The gifting campaign also helped them to reach new audiences who sit within the perfect intersection of having an interest in beauty, sports & F1. For female F1 creators who have been creating content and working with existing partners in the sport for a while, their involvement in this partnership also felt like a natural collaboration and extension of creator work. The creators also share the same values of the partnership in advocating for women’s participation in sport and highlighting the very real duality of being a motorsports fan and also having an interest in beauty & fashion. Nothing helps solidify authenticity more than shared values.
Embracing the Experiential Era
I recently watched a TikTok video which discussed the new experience economy that we are entering with the boom of immersive experience & pop-ups, with even giant fashion houses like Jacquemus crafting branded pop-up experiences. From day one of this partnership, ELEMIS invited fans in. Initially holding a pop-up in Harrods, customers could enjoy complimentary pit stop facials while shopping the brand. The London store also displayed cleverly built F1 car out of the best-selling Pro-Collagen Cleansing Balm which illustrated ELEMIS’ commitment to mirroring Aston Martin’s sustainability efforts, the brand itself being B Corp certified. The brand also activate onsite at Grand Prix weekends with their ELEMIS Pop-Up Spa concept which launched at the Miami Grand Prix and will travel around the race calendar this season. The experience was elevated even further at the Monaco Grand Prix, with the brand hosting a spa experience onboard a yacht, offering pit stop treatments to guests, really embodying the lifestyles and routines of luxury that surround Monaco & it’s guests.
(*As an aside, the creator of that TikTok video also left an interesting comment in response to a viewer on the video saying “you can recreate the setup of an experience, but not the story around it.” I think that’s very relevant too with what we’ve seen ELEMIS do in the last couple of months. It feels likely that due to their success, we’ll see more beauty brands enter the space, but they won’t be able to replicated the same barrier-breaking entry as ELEMIS has had, being the first beauty brand to really challenge the status quo of F1 sponsorship and how they set themselves apart with how they choose to activate).
Clever Product Launches
Earlier this week ELEMIS & Aston Martin announced the launch of an exclusive, collaboratively-created limited edition skincare collection. The product range is perfect for crew members or fans on the go, travelling to races and packing light. But it also appeals to those who simply want a pit stop-quick skincare routine that’s compact & convenient. Again, the messaging and rationale behind the collection release just feels genuine, well-thought out and like another really clever play by ELEMIS in this partnership. The co-branded travel bags exude the sleekness and sophistication that Aston Martin prides itself on, always reinforcing their heritage as a luxury British brand.
Rooted in Female Empowerment
As has been touched on throughout this post, this partnership has done a sublime job at identifying who it’s core audience are, how to reach them and want they want from a partnership - and that all comes back to female fans. One of the wonderful things about this partnership is that it is also female-led, with ELEMIS Director of Global Partnerships Amy Mansall overseeing the project. But Amy’s role doesn’t just extend itself to the logistics and behind-the-scenes management of the collaboration, Amy herself has now become an advocate of women in sports, business and leadership. Through ELEMIS’ collaboration with the Female Quotient, Amy has featured on panel discussions at Grand Prix events speaking on the sponsorship, female representation in leadership and how ELEMIS hope to accelerate change through their involvement with Aston Martin and The Female Quotient.
Additionally, instead of engaging Alonso or Stroll as Brand Ambassadors which would typically be expected when a brand partners with a team, ELEMIS instead opted for Jessica Hawkins, Driver Ambassador and Head of F1 Academy for Aston Martin and another champion of women in motorsports. A much more genuine collaboration that makes sense in the broader context of all of the campaign’s various elements & their overall mission.
While we’re only 9 races into a 24 race season, it can undoubtedly be said that ELEMIS and Aston Martin have hit the ground running with this partnership, and have laid the foundations of what a successful partnership crafted with the sport’s females fans in mind can look like.
Content that Informed & Inspired this Post
🔗 ELEMIS and Aston Martin partnership information.
🔗 Forbes article: ‘Data From Nielsen Sports Shows F1 Fandom Surging As 2025 Season Gets Underway’
🔗 Aston Martin and ELEMIS press release.
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