Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber

In 2024, Sauber transitioned its Formula 1 team from Alfa Romeo to Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber (SF1TKS) ahead of the new season, following its groundbreaking title partnership agreement with the world’s leading betting, entertainment, and lifestyle brand. Having brokered this major deal, SMG was subsequently appointed as the rebranded team’s social media agency with a brief to develop a brand new strategic and creative direction for its digital presence, reflecting the fun and fresh characteristics of this exciting new Partnership.

 In line with the rebrand, our multifaceted social & digital team set out to create a unique persona and social media personality to match the nature of the team’s new identity, conceptualising and ideating original, innovative and engaging content and messaging for SF1TKS team’s social media channels. SMG’s aim was to surprise, subvert, and entertain SF1TKS’s audience while standing out from the crowd with content that consistently differed from other Formula 1 teams.

With authenticity and entertainment always front of mind, SMG has consistently created and tailored platform-specific content designed to appeal to SF1TKS’s vast and varied audience across its different social channels. 

In line with this goal, SMG prioritised forging a strong working relationship with the team’s drivers, forging unique online personas. By understanding what content the drivers enjoy making and, in turn, catering the content to their respective personalities, SMG succeeded in maintaining a level of authenticity that has helped generate a more genuine bond between the team and its Followers.

This is demonstrated perfectly with posts such as ‘The Lifeguard’ – an amusing edit filmed at the Australian Grand Prix in 2024, which was designed to appeal to F1’s increasingly younger, more entertainment-focused fan demographic through the use of humour and bold visuals. The video plays into former SF1TKS’s driver Valtteri Bottas’ humorous personality and recent ‘Aussie-bloke’ image rebrand, generating over 3.55million views on SF1TKS’s TikTok Platform.

SMG’s Social & Digital team have also been quick to start trends that appeal to the broader F1 audience, showcased with SF1TKS’s ‘Paddock Pets’ post that featured Zhou Guanyu’s cat, Sweetcorn, who quickly became a popular character on the team’s channels. This post alone generated a reach of over 2.24 million with over 473,000 engagements.

 

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SMG’s in-house 3D design capacity has also allowed our team to add an extra layer of creativity to our services, creating novel, animated video content that has delighted SF1TKS’s followers and produced high engagement across all platforms. SMG’s 3D-generated posts, such as the ‘Christmas Garage’ and ‘Twerking Car’, have generated a reach of over 1.3 million. 

 

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SMG will continue to work with the team throughout the remainder of the 2025 season.  To read more about our work with Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber from our Digital & Brand Lead and Senior Social Media Manager, click HERE.

In addition to running Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber’s (SF1TKS) social media accounts, SMG’s social & digital team worked closely with our activations team to ideate, facilitate, and manage multiple strategic and impactful activations for the SF1TKS team across the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

The client’s primary objective surrounding their activation campaign was to create digital ‘noise’ and breakthrough traditional F1 audiences. Through carefully planned and executed activation and content campaigns that SMG’s team helped develop and implement, Stake grew their digital engagements & following and subsequently became established for communicating in unconventional but impactful ways.

The F1 British Grand Prix was one example of this where SMG assisted the Sauber F1 team with inviting Stake Ambassador, comedian and influencer JustSul to The British Grand Prix.

Our team helped organise the talent’s race weekend and filming schedule as well as the logistics of his travel to and from the Silverstone circuit. Our activation and social & digital teams collaborated to ideate and edit highly engaging content about JustSul’s experience at the race, with the content generating 7.8 million views overall. SMG team members also remained on site with its Guest Management Service to ensure JustSul had an enjoyable, stress-free and unforgettable race weekend.

Another notable activation involved UFC fighters Alex Pereira, and Alexa Grasso who were invited by Stake and Sauber to attend the F1 Mexican Grand Prix and create collaborative content across his personal and UFC channels. SMG ideated the social media concepts that involved collaborating with F1 drivers & team members and assisted in the filming of Pereira’s trackside content. Overall, the activation generated over 8.4 million views across all social media platforms and received over 587,000 likes. Our team also managed Pereira across the race weekend as part of our Guest Management Service, ensuring all his needs were met and was transported to and from the track.