With an emphasis on positioning its drivers as celebrities and underscoring the heightened speeds its cars reach, the Verizon IndyCar Series today embarked on its ’15 marketing campaign that builds off of last year’s “Rivals” effort. Starting with a new national TV spot and eventually incorporating digital, social, radio and print elements, IndyCar will leverage drivers including defending champion Will Power to push the notion that they are rivals who race at mind-numbing speeds. The IndyCar season starts Sunday in St. Petersburg, Fla. In the new spot, which initially will run just during IndyCar programming and was created in conjunction with Johnson & Wolverton, N.Y., drivers including Power, Helio Castroneves and Ryan Hunter-Reay are seen careening around a course as a voice-over states, “Do these rivals chase speed because they can, or because they can’t help it?” The new campaign also was formulated to show off the new aero kit chassis that Chevrolet and Honda introduced to the sport this season. IndyCar is starting with just one iteration of the TV spot, but eventually will expand that and incorporate fresh footage that shows off the new car designs. In time, it also will update its print and digital advertising to reflect the new aero kits, which at this point have only been used during testing.
CHAMPION HEROES: IndyCar CMO C.J. O’Donnell said, “There’s no change in our strategy this year, and we really summed that strategy up in two points: Thrill our fans and champion our heroes, and the ‘Rivals’ campaign clearly focuses on that last element. … The campaign sort of picks up on the back of the aero kit story: Speed is good, it’s a core pillar of our sport versus any other motorsport, and we want to make sure we amplify that. In my mind, our goal of championing our heroes gets easier when the cars get faster.” Other elements of the new campaign include a special-edition issue of Racer magazine previewing the IndyCar season, which is being released digitally to subscribers today, and an effort to get the word out about the sanctioning body’s new IndyRivals Fantasy Challenge game that is being introduced this season. O’Donnell said that the new marketing push comes on the heels of a strong start to the “Rivals” campaign, which was developed with Nielsen and digital-ad shop Rocket Fuel and which he credited as being partially responsible for sparking a 25% TV viewership increase last season for race broadcasts on ABC and NBC Sports Network. O’Donnell: “Our data shows -- and this is common across many sports -- the more engaged the fan is with us on social media and our online content, the stronger the relationship is and it improves our loyalty to us weekend in, weekend out. We increased TV viewership because they’re now fully engaged in the sport.”
