Just saw this today on ESPN ....
Where is the Indycar Marketing Department and why hasn't it done something like this in conjunction with NBCSN ????
Ad nails all the things they are trying to sell .... ESPN ... a popular driver looking even more appealing (especially to kids and women) ... and sells the competitive nature of NASCAR.
Indycar Marketing should all be shown this video .... then fired ...
Why would abc/espn want to do an ad like that featuring an IndyCar driver?
....and besides, that ad is just plain stupid.
Read it again. He says NBCSN, not ABC/ESPN. Also, stupid or not, its an ad period. The point is, get something, anything, on the air as an ad, promo or whatever. No wonder the COO just got canned.
[snicker]Hey, original title for this thread.[/snicker]
I believe Randy Bernard is a natural born marketer trying to do that job with his hands tied behind his back. Jeff Belskus, actually in charge, preserves the values of the family whose enterprise he leads; i.e., the notion of effective external marketing remains a foreign concept. Wading through those politics, complete with nepotism, ignorance and a view that they are the center of the racing universe despite the fact the entire world has evolved is fraught with landmines. That is one reason why so many otherwise qualified people come and go with such alarming frequency.
-The Wishes He Would Blow His Stack Disciple of INDYCAR
There's a shortage of Conniption Fits Over Lack of Indycar Marketing?? srsly?
But not here, you mean. Surely not
That would be a good name for this particular sub-forum, though: Disciple's and BadazzZ06's Conniption Fits Over Lack of Indycar Marketing
"Each day well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this one day for it, and it alone, is life"
~ Sanskrit poem attributed to Kalidasa, "Salutation to the Dawn"
Brian's Wish
YOU try selling EJ Viso.
Is there really any point to starting a complaint thread about the lack of marketing originating from INDYCAR? Just go back and read the decade of complaints about the lack of marketing originating from the IRL and make the monumental name change. The only reason I bother is to respond to someone who tries to act like on those rare occasions when some sponsor does something they try to give INDYCAR and Randy Bernard credit for the ad.
"You can't arrest those guys, they're folk heroes"
"They're criminals"
"Well most folk heroes started out as criminals"
OK that's a tough oneOriginally Posted by lkchris
but darn it Castroneves won the DWTS and that friggin show has 10 million people watching the reruns......
"Turn right to go left" Doc Hudson
The networks push these sorts of things. It's a TV commercial, someone has to pay for it.
It's not like Indycar, or any marketing people, aren't aware of these things.
Marketing can only do so much. The series is a spec series with a bunch of drivers who are relatively unknown.
You clearly don't understand marketing at the level NASCAR (and other organizations with even barely competant marketing groups) plays at ....
The kind of ad in my OP, and there are many more like it, are "brand awareness" ads.
NASCAR probably went to ESPN and said "Hey, let's do some joint brand advertising ... we'll cover this part of the cost of the ads, and you cover that part ...." ESPN obviously said "OK" ...
Smart companies do this all the time ... look for instance at Intel (the computer processor maker) .... they have run various ad campaigns to promote the "brand" .... like this one ...
Notice I picked one with a French soundtrack ... it doesn't matter ... the point of the ad is to get the Intel name (and that boing-boing-boing sound) recognized. Once the ads have accomplished their purpose (name recognition ... and it works .. almost EVERYONE can name Intel as a processor maker, but who recognizes Texas Instruments, or ARM as players in the market ??) then Intel can take the next step .... they go to their customers (such as Dell or HP or Sony) and say "Let's do joint advertising, we'll pay part of the cost of your marketing campaign if you include a reference to Intel chips being in your product".
The customers see that Intel has name recognition, and realize that joint advertising will help them possibly sell more units than competitors who use another processor. The "average" customer goes in to buy a PC and more often than not sees the Intel machine as a better choice than other machines using another brand of chip, not because the Intel chip is neccesarily better, but because they are "comfortable" with the Intel name.
Racing is part of the entertainment business, and NASCAR and others figured out long ago that brand awareness is a key part of building an audience. Look at an F1 broadcast .... professionally done logos are shown consistently. After the race, when the driver interviews are conducted, even the drink glasses and dispenser in front of the drivers have the F1 logo prominently displayed. F1 "GETS IT" .... NASCAR "GETS IT" ...
Then there's Indycar .... ever thought about this logo ....
What jumps out at you .... The word Indycar ??? A word indicating speed, excitement, bravery, or skill ???? Anything other than the name of a second tier shirt maker ???
Indycar is a gigantic FAIL when it comes to marketing, and for a guy like Randy to have not cleaned house in Marketing and fixed this by now is a stain on his ability to lead the series.
Indycar marketing needs to be more than "aware" of these things ... they need to actually do their jobs and start some real MARKETING. You can have the best product on the planet and if no one knows about it, it will DIE, and that is what Indycar is doing right now.
NASCAR doesn't seem to have a problem with selling what is also basically a "spec" series, and until NASCAR turned on their marketing machine, who had ever heard of Richard Petty ??
Who in the US today doesn't recognize a picture of "The King" in his classic cowboy hat and sunglasses... sure, Mr. Petty is a smart businessman and did some of his own marketing, but NASCAR built his name, and still hauls him out when they need to because they have "marketed" him around the country. He is one of the "faces" of NASCAR ... when you see his picture you think "NASCAR champion". Do you think there would be half the interest in Dale Jr. if NASCAR hadn't built up the concept of "Junior Nation" ???? Hell, in some places a reference to "Junior" is all it takes for someone to know who you're talking about.
Compare the names of two "up and coming" drivers ... Keselowski versus Newgarden ... Google returns a hit count of about 2.5 MILLION internet references for "Keselowski NASCAR" ... a search on "Newgarden Indycar" returns one tenth of that ... about 250,000 hits. Try "Ambrose NASCAR" ... over 2 MILLION hits for a non-American driver ....
THAT's the power of MARKETING
Last edited by BadazzZ06; 07-15-2012 at 04:04 PM.
Thanks Francis, I know how marketing works actually. But thank god you're here just in case. Would you like the front desk number at Indycar? Maybe you could get a job there since you're so far ahead of the curve. (btw how are you going to pay for all this marketing you want to do?)
NASCAR has *a lot* more money than Indycar to spend on this sort of thing. So does ESPN. Who btw, like the rest of the networks, need to try to get back all the money they spent on NASCAR. So they really really need people to watch the races and bump the ad rates up.
A lot of people heard of Richard Petty before modern NASCAR marketing. Before there was CART even. I remember going to MIS in the 70s as a kid and Richard Petty was extremely popular. NASCAR was not a spec series back then either and the place was packed.
Having something like 200 race wins also helps.
INDYCAR marketing is good enough to convince a certain media professional into believing that there were 69,000 in attendance at Texas this year. If they could do that, then I have no problem with their marketing skills.
Actually a unicycling, bike horn blowing Venezuelan with a snake around his neck wasn't bad for starters....why didn't they stick with it?
43 -- Joe Gosek -- ALTA Team Scandia -- Lola/Ford
The corporate dollars funding ads is a symptom of the rest of the promotion/marketing being good (or inertia from the sport already being popular), not the direct cause of athletes becoming popular.
I think people are aware that some sort of series exists beyond the Indy 500, but are clueless as to where it races at besides there, and why they should care about the other races. That's the issue that needs to be addressed by "outside the box" thinking to build stars.
Some of us are NOT clueless about the races outside the Indy 500 but that doesn't mean they aren't boring crashfests among a bunch of rich kid ride buyers that have nothing in common with the average American. Few of the nonridebuyers do either.
First principle of marketing is to not treat your potential customers as stupid. That is, you have to have a viable product before you can market it to them. There's no chicken/egg question--the product for sure has to come first.
Their behavior would suggest otherwise.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks