A-B Pushing Busch Within NASCAR Instead Of Bud One Way Sponsors Listen To Fans
OPEN FOR BUSINESS: Fox Sports Exec VP/Marketing Robert Gottlieb described NASCAR as "the best partner of a league we've worked in last 15-20 years" in terms of collaboration and being open to new ideas. He said NASCAR's answer to new ideas is typically "yes, yes, yes," while other partners are more apt to say, "No, no, no." Gottlieb relayed a story of former Fox Sports Chair David Hill chiding MLB years ago for not accepting one particular new idea. Hill told MLB it did not seem to make sense that Dale Earnhardt allowed a camera in his car while racing, but MLB would not let a camera follow a pitcher as he walks to the mound. However, when Gottlieb was asked the issue he is looking to address the most, he added, "An aging audience and shrinking audience. That's the hard reality with NASCAR; it's graying, getting older and shrinking. So we have to be very aggressive as finding ways to stem that tide and broaden the fanbase. And the trick is to not alienate or polarize the avid (fans at the same time), you have to work from the core out." He cited the work NBC has done with rejuvenating the Kentucky Derby into an event that young people enjoy because of the ritzy social aspect as a potential model to follow.
SCIENCE PROJECT: Dow Chemical Dir of Sales & Global Partnerships, Olympics & Sports Solutions Rick Penn, whose company is mainly business-to-business focused as opposed to consumer facing, touched on how Dow almost solely uses B2B deals as the metric for whether its deal is successful. Dow sponsors Richard Childress Racing, and Penn said, "It's critical for us. A company like Dow is based on science; we're full of with 50,000 people who — minus me — are all chemical engineers, and they're operational excellence-focused, so everything is about, 'What does it cost to get that, and can you do it for less?' So for us, if we're not driving B2B opportunities that exceed what a Dow business internally can go get on their own, then we're failing. So for us that's the most critical part."
ALWAYS ON THE RUN: Verizon Manager of Sports & Entertainment Marketing Steve Williams touched on how the IndyCar Series title sponsor works to avoid brand fatigue. He said, "We have some elements of our program called 'always-on' that we do every weekend. And then we focus some bigger activation at the four or five hotspots throughout the year, so we can avoid some of that fatigue. Digital and social are some things we can change up at a minute's notice. There is some fatigue; after banner ads, you've seen them three times, four times, you stop getting the clicks, so refreshing throughout the year is important."
THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD: Bridgestone Dir of Motorsports Lisa Boggs, whose company is the official tire supplier of IndyCar with its Firestone brand, said officials "work very closely with IndyCar" at the track. She noted Bridgestone runs a "fan experience area" that fans can enjoy. Boggs: "For this year's Indy 500, we had a special sidewall tire that had the name of every winner who had won on Firestone tires. So we physically could tell our winner performance story on the tires, then translate into the fan experience, where you could get your name put on the tire as well and get a photo of it. So what was very special and tire-related, we were able to do that and tell the story. I can't do that anywhere else; there's no other marketing platform where tires are cool and I want to take my picture with them. People are not going to a retail store once every "X" years to buy tires (and want to get a photo taken of them with tires.) Whereas at a racetrack, they pick them up and are taking photos." Adam Stern/SprostsbusinessDaily.com