How Formula E Used #ChangeAccelerated to Reframe Electric Racing
Formula E's #ChangeAccelerated campaign is a 2021 manifesto film created by Uncommon Creative Studio for the FIA Formula E World Championship, launched in the United Kingdom and distributed globally across TV, digital, social, and broadcast channels, positioning electric street racing as a catalyst for sustainable technological and social progress.
The campaign arrived at a pivotal moment. As reported by LBBOnline, 2021 marked Formula E's first season as an official FIA World Championship, elevating the series from an alternative motorsport experiment to a fully sanctioned global competition. The film builds its entire proposition on an archival speech by science-fiction writer and futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke, delivered at the New York World's Fair in 1964. Clarke's words — forecasting an absolutely fantastic future — are set against images of Formula E's electric cars racing through the streets of the world's most progressive cities, creating a bridge between mid-twentieth-century optimism and twenty-first-century electric performance.
In the United Kingdom, where the campaign originated and where Uncommon Creative Studio is based, the work debuted publicly in February 2021 to coincide with the opening of Formula E's seventh season, according to reporting by The Drum. The campaign film itself was released on 29 April 2021, per LBBOnline. Its hashtag, #ChangeAccelerated, functioned as both a brand platform and a social rallying point, inviting audiences to connect electric racing with broader ideas about environmental responsibility and technological ambition. The campaign's stated objective was to attract a younger, digitally oriented sports audience that sees performance and purpose as inseparable — a strategic positioning that distinguished Formula E from incumbent motorsport properties. Clapboard Score: 74/100.
Formula E identified a strategic gap that conventional motorsport had left open. The series competes in a UK sports market — and a global one — where audiences, particularly younger fans, increasingly expect the institutions they follow to reflect values beyond pure competition. The #ChangeAccelerated campaign was designed to occupy that space explicitly, framing electric racing not as a niche alternative to Formula 1 but as the frontier of the sport's future.
The competitive context matters. Formula 1, under Liberty Media's stewardship, had already invested heavily in audience expansion through documentary content and social media, as widely reported by outlets including The Race and Motorsport Week. Formula E's strategic response was differentiation through ideology rather than spectacle: where Formula 1 traded on heritage and glamour, Formula E would trade on urgency and innovation. Nils Leonard, Co-founder of Uncommon Creative Studio, articulated this directly, as quoted by The Drum: he argued that sport has always played a role in moving the world forward and that it can hold a mirror to problems in society and raise the attention needed to create real change. That conviction shaped every creative decision in the campaign.
The market data supports the ambition. According to Sponsorship.SportBusiness, Formula E's cumulative audience reached a growing global figure across the 2021 season, reflecting year-over-year expansion. In the United Kingdom specifically, the electric vehicle conversation was accelerating alongside the campaign: the UK government had already committed to ending sales of new petrol and diesel cars, making Formula E's proposition culturally timely in its home market. The campaign gave the series a brand language capable of speaking to performance enthusiasts and sustainability advocates simultaneously, a dual audience that competitors in the motorsport category had not yet addressed with comparable creative clarity.
The creative execution of #ChangeAccelerated rests on a single, audacious structural choice. Rather than commission a contemporary voiceover or a celebrity endorsement, Uncommon Creative Studio built the film around archival audio of Sir Arthur C. Clarke speaking at the New York World's Fair in 1964. Clarke's words — predicting a future of boundless possibility — recontextualise the images of electric racing cars navigating tight urban circuits, making the sport feel not like a product launch but like the fulfillment of a decades-old promise.
The film was directed by Marcus Söderlund through Academy Films, as confirmed by LBBOnline. Söderlund's direction treats Formula E's street circuits as genuinely cinematic environments: the unforgiving concrete barriers, the tighter turns, the proximity of wheel-to-wheel combat all read as visual metaphors for the difficulty of pioneering. The production does not soften the sport's aggression. Instead, it uses that intensity to reinforce the campaign's core argument — that accelerating change is neither comfortable nor safe, but it is necessary.
The soundtrack reinforces the film's emotional architecture. The campaign uses 'Singularity' by Jon Hopkins, a piece of music that carries connotations of technological transformation and the threshold between states. The choice is precise rather than decorative: Hopkins's work is associated with a culturally literate, forward-thinking audience in the United Kingdom and beyond — exactly the demographic Formula E was targeting with this campaign. Together, the Clarke narration, Söderlund's direction, and the Hopkins score create a film that functions more like a short documentary or an art film than a conventional sports advertisement, which was the point. As reported by The Drum, the intended effect was to make Formula E feel simultaneously cool, dangerous, and ethical — a combination that traditional motorsport marketing had rarely attempted.
The #ChangeAccelerated campaign delivered measurable recognition within the UK creative industry. According to Campaign Big Awards, the work won in the Automotive category at the 2021 Campaign Big Awards — a significant validation for a campaign that chose cultural ambition over conventional sports advertising mechanics. No verified wins at Cannes Lions, the D&AD Awards, the Clio Awards, The One Show, or the Effies are publicly documented for this campaign.
On owned channels, the campaign film accumulated over 40,500 views and 856 likes, with 66 comments recorded against the YouTube distribution, per the campaign's own published data. These figures reflect the film's role as a brand-building asset rather than a performance-media vehicle: the primary metric was brand repositioning, not click-through volume.
The broader Formula E business context provides structural evidence of the campaign's strategic value. According to Sponsorship.SportBusiness, Formula E's central sponsorship portfolio was valued at between approximately ninety-four and one hundred and two million US dollars in 2021. Maintaining a sponsorship base of that scale in a competitive sports market required the series to present a compelling brand identity to partners — precisely what #ChangeAccelerated delivered. In the United Kingdom, where the campaign was produced and first distributed, the film's positioning as a purpose-led sports property aligned Formula E with the cultural direction of travel in both the automotive sector and the broader sports industry. The Clapboard Score of 74/100 reflects a campaign of genuine creative distinction, one whose structural effectiveness — the archival narration, the cinematic direction, the deliberate soundtrack — outweighs any limitations in raw reach metrics.
#ChangeAccelerated is a 2021 brand film created by Uncommon Creative Studio for Formula E in the United Kingdom. The film uses archival audio of futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke to position electric street racing as a catalyst for sustainable technological and social progress, targeting younger, digitally oriented sports audiences globally.
Uncommon Creative Studio created the campaign. Director Marcus Söderlund shot the film through Academy Films. Nils Leonard, Co-founder of Uncommon Creative Studio, served as a creative lead, as reported by The Drum. The film's soundtrack was Jon Hopkins's 'Singularity', selected for its associations with technological transformation and cultural forward-thinking.
The campaign launched publicly in February 2021, timed with Formula E's seventh season opening, according to The Drum. The campaign film was released on 29 April 2021, per LBBOnline. The 2021 season was also Formula E's first as an official FIA World Championship, adding significance to the campaign's timing.
The campaign won in the Automotive category at the 2021 Campaign Big Awards, according to Campaign Big Awards. No verified wins at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the Clio Awards, The One Show, or the Effies are publicly documented. The win confirmed recognition within the UK creative industry for the campaign's strategic ambition.
Formula E used #ChangeAccelerated to differentiate from Formula 1 through ideology rather than spectacle. Where Formula 1 trades on heritage and glamour, Formula E claimed urgency and innovation. Nils Leonard of Uncommon Creative Studio stated, as reported by The Drum, that sport can hold a mirror to societal problems and raise the attention needed for real change.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke's 1964 New York World's Fair speech provides the film's narration. Uncommon Creative Studio used the archival audio to connect mid-twentieth-century technological optimism with Formula E's electric racing present. As confirmed by LBBOnline, the speech anchors the campaign's core argument that electric racing represents the fulfilment of a long-promised human future.
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