Paramount+ got the green light for its F1 activation three weeks out, and shipping ate into that. We reused the hardware build from the Mission: Impossible activation at Silverstone and ran it in Austin and Mexico City.
Client: Paramount+
Agency: Velocity Experience
Locations: Austin, Texas, USA and Mexico City, Mexico
Date: October 2023
The challenge: three weeks, and Texas sun
Velocity came to us after the Silverstone turnaround and we worked through several options together: a generative AI booth, face mapping, digital reaction games. What the activation actually needed was the simplest of them, a background-removal booth. Uncomplicated, and it holds a queue.
The timeline was the real constraint. Final approval landed three weeks before the race, and shipping took a chunk out of that, so we reused the hardware configuration from Silverstone instead of building a new one. Austin added its own problem: direct Texas sunlight on a touchscreen. We raised the screen brightness to 1000 nits, which caused a few headaches during setup and then held up fine in full sun.
The solution: a background-removal booth with a race seat
Velocity's creative team produced the overlay artwork to the brand team's specification. Our AI photo booth handled background removal to place the guest into the scene, with an on-screen overlay to help people line themselves up. A sim racing chair did the rest of that job: it put every guest in the same position relative to the camera without anyone having to direct them. A film grain filter blended the captured photo into the background so the composite held together. Guests scanned a QR code for their digital copy.
The results
Both stops ran busy, with queues in Austin and Mexico City and heavy sharing and downloading afterwards. Velocity's Zoe N put it plainly: the engagement numbers were strong and the client was happy on both legs.
Why it worked
Choosing the least clever option was the right call. A background-removal booth has fewer failure modes than a generative one, which matters when you have three weeks and two countries. Reusing a proven hardware build removed most of the remaining risk, and the race seat solved guest positioning without staffing it. The only genuinely new problem was the sunlight, and that was a brightness spec rather than a redesign.
We have run F1 activations either side of this one, including Lenovo's F1 Fan Zone and, with Velocity again, Aston Martin x Puma on Oxford Street.
