Toyota Honored With 2011 NASCAR Marketing Achievement Award
Each year, NASCAR recognizes an industry partner who has exemplified the spirit of NASCAR through integrated marketing campaigns for all racing fans, consumers and employees.
“In its eighth year as an official partner, Toyota is executing multiple NASCAR branded advertising and social media campaigns to complement their at-track activation programs that allow them to engage fans throughout the season," said Jim O'Connell, vice president and chief sales officer for NASCAR. “Toyota is raising the bar for fan activation with its Sponsafier and PitPass program, not only in NASCAR but in all of sports."
“Toyota is honored to receive the NASCAR Marketing Achievement Award," said Ed Laukes, vice president of marketing communications and motorsports for Toyota. “Our commitment to becoming a champion of the fans by providing the best fan experience possible has truly paid off. Our in-vehicle experiences and opt-in rates are more successful at NASCAR events than any other ride and drive deployment we execute all year. We thank NASCAR for its continued support, and look forward to increasing fan interaction and excitement even more during the 2012 season."
Toyota’s online consumer engagement contest, Sponsafier, returned in 2011 with a new website, as well as TV, print, radio and online advertisements that featured Toyota NASCAR drivers Kyle Busch, Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin. Sponsafier allowed fans to create a custom Toyota Camry NASCAR Sprint Cup Series car and enter for a chance to spend time with their favorite Toyota NASCAR driver. The campaign generated 220,000 registered users and three million page views to go along with 63,000 designs submitted and more than 400,000 fan votes gathered. The Sponsafier 3 winning design incorporated the “Chelsea’s Hope Foundation" logo in hopes of raising awareness about Lafora Disease. A charity event was held shortly after the selection in Sonoma, Calif. during the Infineon Raceway race weekend to help raise funding for Lafora Disease research.
Toyota’s PitPass program featured 20,000 square feet of fan activations that included a NASCAR technical garage, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Camry cutaway car, NASCAR photo booth, Toyota driver appearances and a full range of Toyota vehicles on display. Toyota captured the data and established an ongoing dialogue with fans after each event by registering more than 40,000 fans at their 2011 PitPass exhibit.
Toyota executed several additional NASCAR marketing initiatives in 2011, including:
- More than 5,500 fans participated in Toyota’s Ride and Drive program at an onsite opt-in rate of 75%.
- Over 13,000 race fans took advantage of Owner’s Hospitality, which was an exclusive, pre-race hospitality experience for Toyota, Lexus and Scion owners located in the vendor midway
- Toyota provided more than 300 vehicles for use at NASCAR events in the form of pace cars, driver introduction vehicles, grand marshal vehicles, and fire and safety vehicles.
- Launched the completely redesigned 2012 Camry via live webcast and included the unveiling of the 2012 Daytona 500 pace car with special guest, Denny Hamlin.
- Toyota’s Daytona 500 partnership and position as 2012 Official Pace Car was communicated in over 500 million paid media impressions.
- Toyota has run its NASCAR Daytona 500 Camry ad almost 1,000 times in non-NASCAR related programming, including the World Series.
- Toyota Racing’s website reached more than one million unique visitors in 2011 thanks to the creation of unique content that can only be found at ToyotaRacing.com
Previous winners of the NASCAR Marketing Achievement Award include: Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, ESPN, FOX/TNT/NBC, Gillette, K-mart, Office Depot, Sprint, Nationwide Insurance and The Home Depot.