SEGA

SONIC SPEEDTRAP: DESIGNING FOR
CO-CREATION IN THE AGE OF FANDOM

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How can Sonic hack a noise chamber?
Miami F1 is one of the most crowded brand environments in the world. Tens of thousands of fans, limitless activation budgets, and a landscape of luxury experiences competing for every second of attention. For SEGA and McLaren Racing, the challenge at McLaren Racing Live: Miami was not simply to show up. It was to show up in a way that felt unexpected, earned, and impossible to ignore. 
The partnership between Sonic the Hedgehog and McLaren Racing runs deeper than a shared love of speed. It is a strategic union built on brand value alignment, rich storytelling, and a history that stretches back to the 1993 European Grand Prix, where McLaren driver Ayrton Senna was awarded a Sonic the Hedgehog trophy on the podium. In 2026, as Sonic celebrated its 35th Anniversary and McLaren marked its 1000th Grand Prix, the stakes for the activation were higher than ever. 
The ask was to make as much noise as possible without appearing to have simply paid to play. Sonic needed to authentically imprint its DNA into the McLaren F1 environment and pump the atmosphere with the energy of everyone’s favourite supersonic blue hero. 

Two iconic brands. Two distinct fanbases. One sweet spot. 
To start, we had to find the intersection of Sonic and McLaren trend fans, core fans, and Formula 1 crowd pleasers. On one side, a younger Gen Alpha and Gen Z audience drawn in by the Sonic films and Formula 1 through Drive to Survive, with little awareness of the historic connection between the two brands. On the other, an older core fan audience who grew up watching McLaren and playing Sonic, and who still remember Ayrton Senna lifting that trophy in 1993. 
 The answer sat at the centre of both worlds. Speed. It is Sonic’s defining characteristic. It is the emotional heartbeat of motorsport. It is universal, instantly understood, and naturally performative. The creative idea was a no-brainer. The challenge was to find a mechanic that would allow us to fully express it. 
Traditional sponsorship is passive. Standing still in front of a logo does not capture the energy of the sport or the Blue Blur. As fans move from spectatorship to participation, only brands that offer agency and play can break through. 

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Enter Sonic Speedtrap: a memento machine built for the world's fastest fans.

The HAUS OF PARK team designed Sonic Speedtrap around a familiar mechanic reimagined for a new generation. Photo booths have been one of experiential marketing’s most enduring co-creation tools. They create memories, generate shareable content, and give guests a branded keepsake. The interaction is quick, intuitive, and effective. The most powerful thing about a photo booth is that it is an immediate and highly visible call to action. People instinctively know what they are being invited to do. 
Meanwhile, F1 is about speed, but fan photos are static. So we rebuilt the format around slit-scan photography, the same technology used to determine photo finishes in real racing. Rather than capturing a single frozen instant, a slit-scan camera records a narrow vertical slice of the frame continuously over time, so a fan sprinting through that slice gets captured in motion.  
The output is unlike anything a standard photo booth produces. Each fan’s body stretches and warps into a supersonic blur against a Sonic x McLaren backdrop, a literal visual record of how fast they were moving, set inside the world of the brands they came to see. 

A five-minute journey into the Sonic x McLaren universe.

Sonic Speedtrap was designed as a five-minute co-creation journey that gradually pulled fans deeper into the world of Sonic and McLaren Racing. Guests first encountered the activation as spectators, watching others race down the track while surrounded by the sights, sounds, and energy of race day. While waiting in line, they registered through a custom web application, selected the Sonic character they wanted to race alongside, and received a unique racer code.

Much like selecting a character in a game, choosing Sonic, Shadow, Amy, Tails, Knuckles, or Eggman primed the imagination and gave each participant a role to play before they entered the race lane. Guests then sprinted toward the finish line while the custom slit-scan system captured the action. Moments later, they received a personalized image showing themselves racing alongside their chosen character at supersonic speed.

After clearing the finish line, fans received a collectible Sonic racer card and were invited to explore an exclusive merchandise collection inspired by the collaboration. From character selection to the final photo, guests were constantly making creative decisions about how they wanted to show up, what role they wanted to play, and how they wanted to be remembered.

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109 hours of attention and active engagement

Across five days in downtown Miami, Sonic Speedtrap generated over 6,500 minutes of active participation, the equivalent of nearly 109 hours of fan engagement. In an industry where a conventional photo booth interaction often lasts less than a minute, Sonic Speedtrap demonstrated how a familiar experiential tactic can be redesigned to create deeper engagement, longer dwell times, and stronger connections between fans and the brands they love.

Participants instinctively began performing for the camera. Children mimicked Sonic’s running style. Friends challenged one another. Families coordinated poses. Guests experimented with facial expressions, gestures, and exaggerated movements in an effort to capture the feeling of speed. The experience provided the framework, but the final image was shaped by the imagination and personality of each participant. The memento they left with was genuinely theirs.

Why it matters.

Fandom grows when people invest something of themselves into the things they love. Their time. Their attention. Their creativity. Their participation. Sonic Speedtrap demonstrates that creating those opportunities does not always require an entirely new platform or a large-scale immersive environment. Sometimes it begins by looking at a familiar mechanic through a different lens, finding the intersection of two powerful brands, and giving fans a role to play in the story.

For Sonic and McLaren, the activation proved that when two iconic brands share DNA as powerful as speed, the most effective approach is to put that energy directly in the hands of the fans. To let them feel it. To let them race.

SONIC SPEEDTRAP: DESIGNING FOR CO-CREATION IN THE AGE OF FANDOM

How can Sonic hack a noise chamber?

Two iconic brands. Two distinct fanbases. One sweet spot.

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