How do you distill the anticipation, atmosphere, and experience of a headline event into a single piece of media?
In 2022, The Ritz-Carlton captured its partnership with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team through a season-spanning series of custom travel posters that created an immersive visual experience for users.
Overall Objectives:
Create assets that artfully capture multiple aspects of each Grand Prix, that could easily and effectively be shared by The Ritz-Carlton and its partners.
Generate engagement and excitement through a unique way of visual storytelling in the lead-up to races and race-week hotel experiences.
For select race weeks during the 2022 Formula One season, The Ritz-Carlton commissioned Artist Partner Louis-Nicolas Darbon to create standalone, tentpole posters that would generate excitement for its Grand Prix events and activations.
Painted and animated by Darbon, each of the seven posters took inspiration from travel and the track to create an engaging perspective on thrilling races from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi.
By choosing a style inspired by vintage illustration, the campaign was free to play to each of the partners’ strengths and lean into adventure and creativity, showcasing an aesthetic perfectly suited to the social channels of Darbon, Mercedes, and The Ritz-Carlton without disrupting their individual content strategies.
Highlighting destination and hotel details, and iconic imagery and personalities from the sport—drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, the aggressive lines of the W13 car, and racing kit like helmets and uniforms—the Travel Poster Series bridges the divide between discerning travelers and die-hard Formula One fans.
This approach shows itself perfectly in the poster Darbon crafted for the Miami Grand Prix. Drawing on Miami’s history of Art Deco and Miami Modern design, it incorporates the facade of The Ritz-Carlton, South Beach—the property at the center of the brand’s experiences for the Miami Grand Prix—and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas W13 car.
The pairing of travel and sport also shines in the poster for the Budapest Grand Prix, where the instantly recognizable profiles of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton overlook a stylized Hungarian Parliament and the rushing waters of the Danube.
In sum, each of the finished posters presents an engaging introduction to race week content, clearly presenting the collaboration between The Ritz-Carlton and Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One, elevated by a spark of something different through the talent of Louis-Nicolas.
During race weeks, each poster appeared on The Ritz-Carlton’s owned social channels amplified with paid social across — Instagram, Instagram Stories, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as by the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
Beyond the typical audience of luxury travel consumers, the campaign leveraged the interest of Formula One enthusiasts as well — by sharing the posters on the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s Facebook and Twitter channels, The Ritz-Carlton tapped into their fervent fanbase’s love of the sport to highlight its involvement in the race experience.
Across the 2022 season, the Travel Poster Series generated impressive results:
From poster content shared on The RItz-Carlton’s owned channels and Mercedes’ whitelisted channels, the campaign generated 12 million impressions and 3.3 million engagements.
