SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Earlier this week I came across an observation about Formula 1 that I've been thinking about for the last few days.
It argued that the sport everyone insists is about engineering has quietly become one of the most sophisticated storytelling machines in culture. The cars matter, of course, but they are no longer the primary attraction. Millions of new fans have arrived because they found something much larger than racing. They found rivalries that unfold over months, radio calls that become folklore, paddocks that feel like political dramas, and drivers whose victories and failures accumulate into something resembling mythology.
Formula 1 didn't simply build an audience. It built a world. The observation ended with a question I haven't been able to shake.
If the value lives inside the world, why do so many brands still spend their money buying the wallpaper?
Every race weekend, sponsors compete for another patch on a firesuit, another decal on a sidepod, another logo moving past at two hundred miles an hour. The assumption seems to be that enough visibility eventually becomes meaningful. But mythology has never worked that way.
That thought followed me into this week, so here I am writing about it.
The World Cup was on. Brazil and Norway. England and Mexico. One of the few sporting events that still commands the attention of almost the entire planet. Yet between the whistles, the advertising felt strangely familiar. Brand after brand reached for the same move. Borrow a famous athlete. Stand them beside the logo. Let recognition do the work.
Formula 1 rents the machine. The World Cup rents the face.
They're different executions of the same instinct. Both confuse proximity with authorship. Because that's what logos and celebrity partnerships often buy: access to someone else's mythology.
Not mythology of your own.
That distinction matters because mythology has always demanded something far more expensive than visibility.
It demands sacrifice.
Anthropologists have understood this for generations. Every enduring mythology is reinforced through ritual, and every meaningful ritual asks participants to incur a cost. Time. Comfort. Status. Resources. Sacrifice is what transforms belief from an idea into something observable.
Marketing, by contrast, has spent decades trying to eliminate cost. We optimize campaigns. We reduce friction. We minimize risk. We celebrate efficiency. Then we wonder why so few brands inspire genuine belief. Perhaps that is because belief has never been built through efficiency. It has always been built through evidence.
The story of Air Jordan illustrates this better than almost any campaign ever could. We usually tell it as a story about disruption: the black-and-red sneaker that violated NBA uniform rules and became an icon.
I think we've been telling the wrong story. The remarkable part wasn't the shoe.
It was Nike's willingness to absorb the consequences.
The company could have redesigned the sneaker. It could have complied. Instead, it accepted the fines and, in doing so, demonstrated something far more valuable than confidence. It demonstrated conviction. Long before consumers believed Air Jordan would redefine basketball culture, Nike behaved as though that future already existed.
The fines weren't a marketing expense, they were evidence that the company believed in its own mythology enough to incur a real cost on its behalf.
I find myself wondering why that instinct feels almost absent from modern sponsorship.
LA28 is coming. The Olympics come to my adopted city in 2028, and with them the largest brand stage this country has offered in a generation. Every category will be there. Every budget will be there. The media plans are being drawn right now.
So the question is not academic. It is a deadline. Every surface will be available for purchase.
Very few brands will ask the more interesting question. What could we contribute that the Games don't already have?
We have until 2028.
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