NASCAR roared off its 2020 season start line with a new brand platform – “I Am NASCAR” – which aims to reclaim its sense of purpose and draw new fans to the sport by celebrating the things which have made it popular for the last 72 years.
This bold statement of a brand platform sought to build on the property’s positive forward momentum from 2019 (after a few fallow years) and celebrate the sport and the things that make NASCAR unique – the soul, the grit and the emotion.
‘I Am Nascar’ will run throughout 2020 across its advertising and through its content, activations and other touchpoints.
The campaign isn’t just about the racing cars or driver rivalries, but it also leans in to the uniqueness of Daytona, of Kyle Busch and other things fans love about the sport.
The initiative took to the start line for the first race season – the Daytona 500 (15/16 February) – and launched with a pair of action and racing personality-filled spots.
A hero 30-second spot first posted socially on 13 February called ‘Sunday: I am the Daytona 500′ spot features action from the recent and distant past with a voice-over stating: “I am wide open, faster than fast, predictably unpredictable…I am the Daytona 500, I am Nascar.”
The ‘I Am The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series’ spot followed in a similar tone with copy lines like “I am a year-long, furious journey…I am the Nacsar 2020 Cup Series”.
As the campaign evolves it will span further video and photo executions, as well as social posts, interviews and individual track promos.
The aim is to develop intriguing, exciting and engaging content every day and the campaign includes a focus on the drivers – emerging talents and veteran stars – and on telling driver led stories which pull out their personalities and give fans a reason to follow them.
The creative, developed in harness with agency 77 Ventures, is also informed through insights developed via the 20,000-strong ‘NASCAR Fan Council’ which is used for ideation and testing.
Daytona itself simultaneously launched a race-specific social spot called ‘Speed Was Born Here’.
Speed was born here. This is the #DAYTONA500! pic.twitter.com/iAZf2PsCHh
— Daytona International Speedway (@DISupdates) February 14, 2020
After 12 years of Sprint and then the end of Monster Energy’s three-year series naming rights deal, the 2020 season will feature four cornerstone premium partners; Busch Beer, Coca-Cola, Geico and Xfinity.
The new campaign launch was timed to leveraged the first (six week) part of the season which is sponsored by Geico and is called ‘NASCAR Returns’ and which reintroduces the sport after its winter layoff.
This will be followed by the ‘NASCAR Salutes’ portion of the season which begins on Talladega race weekend in April and sees Coca-Cola as the presenting sponsor and will culminate at the Coca-Cola 600 in May.
In terms of some of its other major partners, Busch continues to sponsor the Busch Pole Awards, while Xfinity will keep its sponsorship of its own cup series and each race has its own sponsor as well.
According to NASCAR’s Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Jill Gregory, the ‘I Am NASCAR’ campaign is a celebration of the elements that make NASCAR kind of “who we are” and thus also of “what makes us attractive to potential brand sponsors” so it is a rights-holder platform that Gregory believes brand partners can lean into whilst still feeling natural.
“There have been a lot of changes happening in the sport, and as a result, we have a more unified strategy across the board,” explained Gregory. “We think this campaign can extend to multiple partners and stakeholders.”
“Whilst we are still on television, we are also making sure we’re cutting our content into bite-sized pieces where fans can consume it on other platforms,” Gregory continues.
“It’s also important that we’re putting NASCAR in new and meaningful places through content partnerships and social channels. Whether that is investing in our eSports platform, growing our existing YouTube channel and embracing TikTok, or extending in to sports betting which is, ultimately, a fan engagement tool.”
“We thought this was a really good time to talk about the swagger of the brand and really sort of beat our chests a little bit and really take pride in all that is NASCAR and what is unique about it,” added Pete Jung, senior vice-president of marketing at NASCAR.
“We felt that this was a good moment in time for us to have a more defined rallying cry, ultimately for fans and consumers, but also for the industry and all of our stakeholder groups. For the first time in a few years, we have really positive momentum around the sentiment, the racing has gotten to a much better place and a lot of our business metrics have been really favorable.”
The campaign comes soon after the implementation of a three-year branding effort led by agency Rare which sought to ‘get to the heart of what the NASCAR brand really is and what it means to fans and the company’.
This resulted in an extensive brand book, which includeed the ‘We Are Racing’ motto, created by Rare which NASCAR shared with ad agency collective 77 Ventures to create the I Am NASCAR campaign.
Comment:
Anyone who has watched any footage of a NASCAR race knows that sponsorship has long been a major part of the series as the cars are smeared with logos, the track walls are adorned with assorted brands and every race is titled after an endless list of partners.
Clean venues these are not.
Perhaps it’s not so surprising that amidst this sea of competing branding that NASCAR seemed to lose itself a few years back.
But now NASCAR is seeking to stand on its own with a comprehensive new branding programme and a fresh campaign.
We think this work gets closer to the root and soul of the brand than its previous creative and that it looks set to cut through amongst the stick and ball sports and other entertainment properties and bring some swagger back to NASCAR’s marketing.
And what better time to do that than the first big race of the year after a 2019 which saw NASCAR make significant strides forward?
Last year saw NASCAR not only complete its merger with ISC thus further unify the sport and bringing many of the tracks (including Daytona) under its wing, but also launch a new sponsorship model that removed the naming rights entitlement from the NASCAR Cup Series and roll out a new direct-to-consumer offering with NBC.
Viewership saw a 2% increase in 2019, which might seem fairly small to some but does come amidst general declines for many other sports properties.
2019 also happened to be the first full year of CEO Jim France being at the helm and he seems to be steering NASCAR back on track after recent years of instability and
Links:
Nascar
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOfficialNASCAR
https://www.facebook.com/NASCAR
https://www.instagram.com/nascar/
77 Ventures
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