Forrest Lucas spent the weeks before last night’s Super Bowl daydreaming about the images from Indianapolis that would appear on TV screens across America.

Lucas was in the midst of one such reverie two weeks ago during a trip to Charlotte. As he let his imagination roam, he leaned back in a swivel chair, closed his eyes and described a blimp shot of the brick-and-steel stadium, with the red-and-white light of a 25-foot-by-60-foot Lucas Oil sign illuminating the night.

“We got growing real fast with the NHRA — 40 percent a year for several years,” Lucas said. Photo by: EDDIE SANDERSON / LUCAS OIL

“That makes us look like a major corporation of the world,” the 69-year-old founder and owner of Lucas Oil Products said as he opened his eyes and leaned forward with a grin. “It’s the nicest, arguably, stadium in the world right there in Indianapolis with our name on it. That’s a world of attention. That’s selling.”

Lucas has always been a sales guy, and over the last two decades, his sales vision has taken a small automotive lubricant company with three employees and turned it into a multimillion-dollar operation with annual revenue that Forbes has estimated at more than $150 million. And last night was Lucas’ signature sales moment.

An audience of more than 100 million tuned in to see a game played in a stadium with his company’s name on it. Not Castrol. Not Mobil 1. Not Valvoline. But Lucas Oil.

Not bad for a former truck driver with a knack for selling and a penchant for big dreams.


Sports marketing has been central to Lucas Oil’s growth since it was first incorporated in 1989. Lucas started by buying tires and providing oil to a sprint car driver in Arkansas. He added deals with the NHRA, PBR, Indiana Pacers and others along the way, eventually cobbling together a sports sponsorship portfolio that costs more than $30 million a year (see chart). It also owns, sells sponsorships to and produces TV for seven auto and boat racing series.

“We’ve come a long way from $500 for tires,” said Bob Patison, Lucas Oil’s vice president and head of its sports marketing efforts. “We all realized the potential, but to look into a crystal ball and say this is where we’ll be 20 years from now — no one had a clue.”

At a time when the country is awash in talk of whether people can still climb the ladder from poor to rich, Lucas is one example that such a rise is possible. He grew up in central Indiana, the son of a father who struggled holding a job and a mother who worked in a textile factory. He never attended college and worked in factories until he saved enough money to attend truck-driving school and buy a tractor-trailer contract with Mayflower Transit. He eventually saved enough money to buy several trucks and create a small trucking business called Lucas Lines.

Most of the company’s work was moving freight in and out of California, and the trucks regularly broke down. Lucas wanted to find a way to make the engines last longer, so he started scouring junk yards looking for discarded oils that he would use to create engine additives. He said he eventually found an old rusty barrel that had synthetic oil that he mixed to create an additive that helped his trucks get a half-mile more gas per gallon.

Lucas, his wife, Charlotte, along with Patison, who was his attorney at the time, and a few warehouse workers mixed the additives and sold them at truck stops. After incorporating in 1989, he began looking for ways to expand Lucas Oil’s distribution. The key, he and Patison believed, was sports, so they signed their first sponsorship with an Arkansas sprint car driver named Ricky Logan. They gave Logan oil and some tires.

“That was about all we could afford,” Patison said. “When we walked into retailers in that area (of Arkansas), they were at least aware of that product name.”

From there, they added sponsorships with a monster truck driver out of Tennessee, a NASCAR modified driver and two NHRA teams. Everything changed when the NHRA needed a title sponsor for a race outside Chicago in 2001.

A month before the race, Lucas bought the race sponsorship for $150,000. It was the company’s first national sponsorship, and Lucas credits it with opening the door to conversations with key auto retailers like Auto Zone and O’Reilly Auto Parts. He later talked to the NHRA about expanding the relationship and entitling the NHRA’s second-tier drag racing series.

“They were a small company and we weren’t sure how long they would last,” said NHRA President Tom Compton. “It didn’t take long to realize they were the real deal. Long before the end of the first term, we did an extension. Each time, Forrest took on more assets and expanded the relationship. His company was growing.”

The NHRA deal propelled Lucas Oil onto the national stage and helped expand its distribution at national auto part chains.

Lucas Oil has used a variety of motorsports associations, such as with off-road racing (top) and the NHRA (above), to help establish its footprint in sports. Photos by: EDDIE SANDERSON / LUCAS OIL

“We got growing real fast with the NHRA — 40 percent a year for several years,” Lucas said. “It was real fast growth for a while.”

Lucas saw the opportunity for more growth. When the Indianapolis Colts began looking for a naming-rights sponsor in 2005 for their new stadium, Lucas was one of the first people the sales team called. Lucas Oil was a minor team sponsor and one of the few large companies in the region.

Tom Zupancic, the Colts’ former head of sales and marketing, said the team didn’t think Lucas would be interested in buying stadium naming rights and believed the initial pitch to Lucas for a 15-year deal would be a trial run for later presentations. But when the Colts’ four-hour presentation ended, Lucas piped up with a question.
“What if I want 20 years?” he asked.

Zupancic said he nearly fell out of his chair. In March 2006, Lucas signed a 20-year deal worth $122 million.

Patison described the deal as a financial stretch for Lucas Oil at the time and said he initially opposed it. The company carries no debt, he said, and he believed the money would be better spent on capital investments to improve its production capabilities.

“But the more we studied it and evaluated the potential to take Lucas Oil to the next level, it made more sense,” Patison said. “I’m glad we did. It’s proved to be a very worthwhile investment.”

Lucas took a hands-on approach to the stadium’s construction process. He often showed up at the stadium while it was being built, and he helped conceptualize the stadium’s Lucas Oil Plaza entrance: a 30,000-square-foot space that features an archway formed by two dragsters, a counter with oil products on display and an engine pulled apart and suspended on strings.

Forrest Lucas discusses his company’s purchase of the Colts’ stadium naming rights in 2006. Photo by: AP IMAGES

“It’s probably one of the most unique areas of any stadium in the world,” Zupancic said.

As its footprint in sports expanded, Lucas Oil began buying and developing motorsports properties of its own. Beginning in 2004, it added a late model dirt series, a modified series, a drag boat racing series, a sprint car series, an off-road series and pro-pulling series. In many instances, Lucas had begun by sponsoring the respective series and then decided to replace each after they fell into financial duress and went out of existence. The investments started because Lucas wanted to keep grassroots racing alive and reach small-time racers and their fans, who he sees as the company’s core consumer.

“For the most part, it would have died without us,” Lucas said. “We propped up a lot of these series, cleaned them off, made them look nice enough on television where the channels will take them. That kept a lot of racing alive.”

Along the way, Lucas acquired a production company that began filming the events the company owned for television. Lucas believed that owning and producing TV shows would give the company more control over how its product was seen and guarantee that Lucas Oil would be featured on TV at a time when people were tuning commercials out.

His approach isn’t that different from Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz’s strategy with his energy drink. Like Red Bull, Lucas Oil puts on the events, films them, repackages the content and distributes it. It also sells sponsorships to companies like Geico and Rockstar Energy, which receive signage at events and commercials on the TV broadcasts.

Last year, it bought more than 280 hours of programming across CBS, NBC, Speed and Versus (now NBC Sports Network). It also bought a small cable television channel called MAVTV for $15 million. Lucas said he did that because he was worried that there might not be a place for the company’s motorsports programming in the future.

“I think in a few years, if we can do it right with MAV, it can be making as much money as the oil does,” Lucas said. “The vision is to keep building the show until it’s good enough to get into all these (distributors). Make better shows. This is a new project for us. It will take a while.”

Today, Lucas Oil is in the process of signing international sponsorships in drag racing, power boat racing and motorcycle racing in Europe and Australia. In every deal Lucas signs, he looks for the same thing.

“He’s not into a PowerPoint presentation,” said Frank Kelleher, International Speedway Corp.’s senior director of partnership marketing, who brought on Lucas Oil as a race sponsor in 2009. “He wants to know he can move product. It’s about making the brand appear big and in a massive way.”


Despite all his success and wealth, people who work with Lucas say he remains as unassuming and modest as he was when he drove an 18-wheeler in the 1980s. He’s a man more comfortable on his cattle ranch in Missouri than walking the grounds of his estate in Indianapolis.

Photo by: TOM STRATTMAN

When he started a landscaping project outside Indianapolis at the 27,000-square-foot Conseco mansion that he bought for $3.5 million in 2010, his wife said he got down on his knees and laid sod with some of the workers. Part of that is because he’s a perfectionist, he didn’t want them to miss spots; part of it is because he feels more comfortable working than watching.

The day that Lucas Oil Stadium opened, he spent 14 hours standing in Lucas Oil Plaza shaking people’s hands and welcoming them to the stadium. He came back and spent 12 hours the next day.

“More than 100,000 people came to see the stadium before it opened and he wanted to put a face with a name,” Zupancic said.

Lucas’ down-home style permeates the culture of Lucas Oil. The company has a number of employees, like Patison, who have multiple family members who work for it, and every year Lucas hosts a company picnic for more than 2,000 people at its corporate headquarters in Corona, Calif.

“It’s a very family-oriented organization and they run a tight ship,” Kelleher said. “People work a lot of hours, but they all truly get along and enjoy working with the Lucas family.”

Lucas estimated he spends 40 out of 52 weekends a year at sporting events, and last night was no exception. He spent Super Bowl Sunday in his suite with about 60 guests. Many were existing clients, but there were a few potential clients with whom he discussed new business.

After all, Lucas has always been a sales guy … and a dreamer. It’s the combination that got him there in the first place, and one he plans to continue.

“We are prepared for a lot of growth,” Lucas said. “We’ll probably be doing a lot more business overseas. The last three years, I’ve done a lot of work. We’ve doubled the size of our plant (in Indiana). We can grow a lot right there. I think we will. We have the place for it. We’re ready for it when it comes.”

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Lucas Oil this week is expected to announce a renewal of its longtime title sponsorship of the NHRA’s sportsman series through 2015.

The deal will see Lucas Oil retain its position as the NHRA’s official oil, its naming rights at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, title rights to the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minn., and its title sponsorship of the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series, the NHRA’s second-tier series and the equivalent of NASCAR’s Nationwide Series. The agreement also gives the company branded broadcast elements during races on ESPN, on-site display rights, signage at races and the right to use the NHRA logo on products.

Financial terms of the agreement weren’t available, but the deal is valued in the mid-seven-figure range annually.

Lucas Oil founder Forrest Lucas said the company spends more on the NHRA than on any other sport it funds. It sponsors more than 15 sports properties and spends more than $30 million a year on sports sponsorships.

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From the booth featuring the new line of Arnie golf apparel at the PGA Merchandise Show, designers Geoff Tait and Bobby Pasternak could easily see the banners representing Tommy Hilfiger, Antigua, Under Armour, Cutter & Buck and Greg Norman.

It wasn’t that long ago that Tait and Pasternak were selling their own designs out of the trunk of their car around Toronto. Now they were shoulder to shoulder with some of the giant brands in golf at the sport’s biggest gathering in Orlando.

Arnold Palmer (right) with (from left) Bobby Pasternak, Cori Britt and Geoff Tait show off some apparel from the Arnie line. Photo by: ARNOLD PALMER ENTERPRISES

Tait and Pasternak introduced Arnie apparel at the PGA Show last month, putting a retro twist and a stylish new logo on the venerable Arnold Palmer brand, which was in need of resuscitation.

They call it golf and lifestyle clothing, with shirts, pants and sweaters that replicate Palmer’s look from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when he was considered one of the country’s trendsetters and the game’s iconic figure.

But Arnie’s debut in Orlando represented more than hip, cool clothes and unconventional designs. (In fact, conventional got thrown out of the window somewhere along International Drive.)

The new collection signifies a completely new direction for an Arnold Palmer brand that was growing tired and losing its relevance. The new direction — engineered by these two Canadian designers and Palmer’s representatives at IMG — is intended to reinvigorate the brand by reaching younger and more diverse consumers with Arnie’s retro look.

In the long-term, Arnie is the first step in breathing new life into the Palmer brand to make sure it’s just as relevant 50 years from now as it was when Palmer still played.

“Up until a few years ago, I don’t think anyone gave it that much thought,” said Cori Britt, vice president of Arnold Palmer Enterprises. “The brand was always successful. But as Mr. Palmer stopped competing (in 2006) and began to move away from the spotlight, internally we started thinking about what we needed to do with the brand to make sure it sustains beyond Mr. Palmer’s lifetime.”

In other words, how do they make sure the Palmer brand is around long after “The King” is gone? The Arnie collection is the first step.


For nearly 50 years, Palmer’s brand and his businesses — apparel, golf course design and Arizona Tea — have been represented by the signature of his full name and the four-color umbrella. It’s a classic, conservative look that was suitable for Palmer’s business and the golf shirts that sported the colorful umbrella.

But sales of Palmer’s licensed wear lagged with the last apparel partner and there was a growing sense that the brand’s place in the golf apparel landscape had receded as Palmer, now 82, slipped from his very public life into retirement.

He still made $36 million in 2011 in golf-related income from endorsements and licensing, according to Golf Digest, behind only Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, but Britt’s sense was that the brand didn’t have the same energy. And when it came time last year to find a new apparel partner, he didn’t want to repeat the same old licensing deals that had manufacturers slapping a colorful umbrella on a shirt.

“The last apparel contract just wasn’t very successful,” Britt said. “There was nothing distinctive about the product. Anybody can slap a label on a golf shirt. It really made us think, ‘What do we want to do with this brand?’”

Palmer was more than a golf icon in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. His brand stood for fashion and lifestyle. He flew airplanes and was one of the first golfers to play all over the world. His swashbuckling, charging style of golf fit those attributes.

His journey from fiery competitor to elder statesman helped Palmer create a long-lasting apparel brand, but the sense was that it was starting to tire. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

He was also familiar and flexible, the kind of star who could pitch Pennzoil to the blue-collar crowd or Rolex to the high rollers.

As Britt and IMG, which has represented Palmer since his famous handshake agreement with Mark McCormack in 1960, began to think about the brand’s next apparel partner, there was a thought that a nontraditional approach was needed to grab the attention of the North American consumer.

“This was our chance to do something unconventional with an iconic name and brand,” said Jim Neish, vice president of IMG licensing in the Toronto office who made the first outreach to Tait and Pasternak. “This represented a whole new consumer proposition for the younger crowd. Really, the brand had become a little stagnant. We needed to make a significant step change.”

The two designers, who went into business together in 2005 when they formed Quagmire Golf, won the apparel license against competition from several larger companies. IMG said that other companies bid more for the license, but Quagmire “seemed to ‘get it’ more than the others,” Neish said.

They jointly agreed to call the new line Arnie rather than using Palmer’s full name, and they went with a new black-and-white umbrella instead of the more colorful one.

Photo by: AP IMAGES

The clothes feature a throwback look that replicates the golf wear Palmer wore in decades when he was most dominant in the performance fabrics of today. The polo shirts will run $75 to $80, sweaters and outerwear around $100, which puts it on a price plane with other high-end golf brands.

They’ve targeted golf clubs and resorts for distribution, as well as golf specialty stores, with an eye on trying to get into a high-end department store, such as Nordstrom.

Ryan Moore, who will wear the clothes on the PGA Tour, represents the thrust of the marketing for Arnie. It’s uncertain if there will be an ad spend on TV or print — none is currently planned — or if the brand will live off social media for its first year.


It didn’t take long for Tait and Pasternak to learn the power of the Palmer brand. In the first two hours of the PGA show last month, more people had visited the Arnie booth than the two designers had ever hosted as Quagmire Golf.

“This is incredible,” said Tait, surrounded by cut-outs of Palmer playing golf in the ’60s, an old Ryder Cup golf bag and stacks of the Palmer-licensed Arizona Tea product, all of which added Palmer flair to the booth.

“We used to sit in the Quagmire booth all day and just hope that somebody would stop in,” Tait added. “Now look at this. This really tells you the power of Mr. Palmer’s name.”

It’s a legitimate question to wonder how a pair of young Canadian designers who have specialized in self-described “fun and funky” golf wear wound up with the license to produce Arnie apparel and create the new black and white umbrella logo that will drive the brand into the next 50 years.

The selection of the apparel partner was led by Britt, along with Palmer’s daughter, Amy Saunders, on the Arnold Palmer Enterprises side. IMG’s Alastair Johnston, a longtime Palmer business confidant and manager, and the licensing team collaborated with Britt and Saunders. Neish, who had followed Quagmire’s progress in Toronto and throughout Canada, brought Tait and Pasternak to the table as an alternative option.

“I thought it was a prank phone call,” Tait said of the first call from Neish. “But the more we talked about how we could revamp a brand that was falling off, we saw a clear need for what we could bring.”

The two designers formed Quagmire seven years ago by borrowing money from their parents and selling out of the trunk of their car. In its first year, Quagmire Golf sold $72,000 worth of its colorful golf apparel. A Financial Post story in 2008 reported that Quagmire’s sales were approaching $1 million a year, and sales have doubled annually since.

Tait, who used to teach golf on cruise ships, describes Quagmire as a small-to-mid-sized clothing company that now has product in more than 250 stores.

The from-the-ground-up story resonated with Britt, who knows a thing or two about starting from scratch and working your way up. He first met Palmer when he was 12, caddied for him and eventually worked in all of the Arnold Palmer Enterprises business units before ascending to vice president of the company.

“Those guys just weren’t going to give up and that’s a big part of their story,” Britt said of Quagmire. “They put this together themselves.”

Through its local successes, Quagmire drew the attention of the Jaytex group, a major distributor that also moves Tommy Bahama, Kenneth Cole, Gant and Ben Sherman brands. With Jaytex pushing Quagmire into more mainstream retailers, the efforts of Tait and Pasternak were legitimized and they had the backing to go after a business like Arnie.

Johnston, who has helped manage Palmer’s brand for nearly 40 years at IMG, said, “Arnie’s name has maintained a relevance through many cycles of culture, fashion and taste. This represents something groundbreaking in many ways. Arnie is 82. He’s not retired, but he’s a dormant athlete now,” which changes the game and calls for the kind of adjustment that the Arnie line delivers.


When Tait and Pasternak won the license, they visited Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pa., where they hoped to find some old shirts and sweaters from his playing days. What they discovered was an old barn filled with golf balls, pictures, old licensed products, tractors and golf shoes — a veritable Palmer museum.

“We came across this old cedar chest that was full of old sweaters and cardigans,” said Tait, who took three shirts and a sweater with him back to Toronto for inspiration.

The Arnie line that resulted is targeted for distribution in North America, but the designers were encouraged by the feedback they got from buyers in Europe, making them think that international distribution is a realistic goal. For now, though, Arnie will be sold in the high-end clubs and resorts, such as Doral and Bay Hill, as well as Golfsmith and Golf Galaxy.

Whether the new Arnie marks make their way into other aspects of Palmer’s business remains to be seen. He’s still very strong in Asia, where there are 320 freestanding Arnold Palmer stores, but in some ways the more mature U.S. market has been a little more of a challenge.

“We just didn’t feel like we could continue down the conventional path,” IMG’s Neish said. “Sometimes you have to take two steps back to move forward, and we actually made the very tough decision to remove the brand for 18-24 months while we re-introduced this new concept. Now we have something different, something that will redefine the Arnold Palmer brand.”

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IMG College has dipped into the pro ranks to hire new sales hands to beef up its recently reorganized sponsorship sales team.

White

Tracy White, formerly in charge of revenue streams for the Atlanta Hawks and Spirit, as well as Philips Arena, has joined IMG College as regional vice president of the Southeast. That puts White in charge of the largest region with 21 schools and the Southeastern Conference.

He’s one of five regional vice presidents who now report to Roger VanDerSnick, IMG College’s chief sales and marketing officer. The other regions represented are the West, Southwest, East and Midwest.

The realignment of the 350-person sales staff into five geographic regions will have each group focused on specific markets rather than a list of schools. VanDerSnick said the feedback from buyers is that they’d rather buy markets than schools.

“We went from eight conference vice presidents to five regional vice presidents, so these are large, meaty jobs,” VanDerSnick said.

Joining White as regional vice presidents will be: Rex Hough (East), who came over to IMG from its acquisition of ISP Sports; and Scott Mackenzie (Southwest), a former administrator at the University of Arizona. IMG College is interviewing for the West and Midwest regional chiefs.

Mariani

In addition, IMG College brought in Joe Mariani, formerly the director of corporate sales for the New England Patriots, to be vice president of sales in the East region. Jeff Huffman, who ran the University of Georgia property, has been added as a vice president of sales in the Southeast.

IMG College now has three ways to go to market, VanDerSnick said. “We’ve got the local sales teams at each school, the new regional teams, and the national team led by [senior vice president] Lawton Logan.”

VanDerSnick said the focus has been to draw salespeople “who are accustomed to selling sponsorships conceptually based on the value of the intellectual property and less on traditional media valuations.”

Logan’s national sales unit also hired Mike Pine as vice president, national sales. Pine comes from World Triathlon Corp., owner of the Ironman brand, and he has sold for the UFC.

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Tom Stultz, who helped build IMG College and rebuild Host Communications, is taking his college marketing and media expertise to San Diego-based JMI Sports.

Stultz

Stultz will direct JMI’s newly formed capital and media division, which will find funding solutions for capital projects, such as stadiums and arenas. While the company will seek opportunities across teams, leagues and municipalities, JMI expects to find most of its business on college campuses.

“Predominantly, we’re going to be looking at college facilities,” said Erik Judson, a co-founder of JMI along with San Diego Padres Chairman John Moores. “There are a lot more projects and a lot more opportunity in the college space. That’s where we envision bringing our expertise.”

The creation of the capital and media division gives JMI three distinct yet complementary divisions: stadium development, colleges, and capital and media.

“It’s gotten to a point where it’s hard for schools to say that they’re going to put a bunch of money into facilities when funds are being cut so much to the rest of campus,” Stultz said. “We can come in and show schools all of the different funding models and where revenues can be maximized.”

JMI made its first mark in stadium development when Judson oversaw the Petco Park project in San Diego.

Last year, JMI said it would push more of its resources and energy into building a college-focused business. The firm planted a flag in the college ground in September by launching a new college division, spearheaded by former San Diego State Athletic Director Jeff Schemmel.

JMI’s first college client, the University of Houston, used Schemmel to aid its search for a football coach.

Now Stultz will help clients determine how to pay for their facilities. It was a growing part of his responsibility at IMG College before he left the company in September. He specifically had worked on a project to privately finance multiple projects at the University of Kentucky, including city-owned Rupp Arena. Goldman Sachs had signed on to be IMG College’s financing partner for such projects.

The rough idea was that revenue from the new building would be used to repay the funding partner.

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Companies selling parity products depend on marketing to achieve marketplace distinction, however scant. Can there be a more difficult product or service to differentiate than electric power? Consumers notice it only when it isn’t working, and, while it may be indispensable, it isn’t exactly a sexy market. Shoelaces generate more consumer interest.

For the last two decades, sports marketing pros have been assaying the energy market to see whether it would grow into one of the larger sponsorship categories, but deregulation has been slower than expected. While there is an energy deal at most teams and venues, and a handful of naming-rights deals, we haven’t seen the category grow enough to rival beverages, cars or fast food.

Nonetheless, Reliant, one of the country’s largest providers and an early mover in the category when it comes to using sports assets, has lately built up the most potent collection of sports IP in the category. With the state of Texas deregulated before most markets, Reliant put its name on the Houston Texans’ home stadium in 2000 for a then-record $300 million.

More recently, with the emergence of NRG as its parent brand and the slow unfolding of deregulation across the country, the company has fashioned an unwired network of NFL deals with some of the league’s most high-profile teams: the Dallas Cowboys, Washington Redskins, New York Giants and Jets and their new stadium, the New England Patriots, and a 20-year deal with the Philadelphia Eagles that we’re told will be

NRG’s presence at FedEx Field includes solar panels and the “Solar Man” sculpture (top) and vehicle charging stations. Photos by: NRG

completed soon. If you are keeping score in football terms, that’s all of the NFC East, half of the AFC East, and both participants in Super Bowl XLVI.

With NRG as a new corporate moniker, the NFL team deals help with branding, even with Reliant and its other brands, like Green Mountain Energy, still in the market. What’s also fascinating about the deals is that they are or will be an amalgam of traditional sponsorship assets and physical build-outs, including solar-powered electric-vehicle charging stations, thousands of solar panels and, eventually, wind turbines.

“Everyone knows the NFL is phenomenally popular among American consumers and senior management,” said Jason Few, Reliant president and NRG’s executive vice president and chief customer officer. “We’re trying to use that affinity beyond just a branding play to get people to think about energy differently.”

It is a rare sponsorship that can attract both consumer and business-to-business customers, but that’s the goal here. Every brand is looking to burnish its green side, so NRG/Reliant is taking a page out of IBM’s sponsorship manual, using NFL venues as a demonstration platform for solar and wind efforts.

The infrastructure investments are another thing that makes these deals interesting. And the energy market is big enough that any new marketing effort bears observation.

“It’s an intriguing play, but the market is still young enough that we don’t know for sure if sports affinities move the needle yet,” said veteran marketer Larry Weil, who recently left his position with Branded Retail Energy, which pioneered energy frequency/loyalty programs with universities as large as Texas and Illinois. “It changes market by market, whether it’s a better play to target b-to-b or consumers and what activation is most effective. But I applaud anyone investing to figure it all out.”

“There are a lot of companies interested in having a more sustainable approach to how they conduct their businesses,” said Reliant Chief Marketing Officer Karen Jones. “But no one had really figured out how to physically represent what they were doing from a sustainability and environmental standpoint. We think that being able to paint that canvas at these NFL stadiums is a real opportunity.”

It was a big enough opportunity that it required two agencies. IMG did strategic consulting and negotiations, while Paragon Marketing has been handling activation and on-the-ground execution. Few said the Cowboys and Redskins deals have already yielded new business, and there’s also been some elevation in brand equity measures within those markets. Most of the build-outs will be apparent next season, however. Reliant/NRG got traditional sports marketing assets as well and activated with things like signs, hospitality, TV ads with Troy Aikman and sales kiosks at stadiums.

Reliant’s, er, reliability also appealed to NFL club marketers, some of whom were wary of the fly-by-night nature of some alternative-energy companies.

“We didn’t have to worry about whether Reliant was solid. They are public, and they were investing across some of the league’s biggest teams,” said Giants Chief Marketing Officer Mike Stevens, adding that Reliant/NRG is in the permit-and-design phase of building a ring of solar panels around the top of MetLife Stadium.

“Our mission is to change a low-interest category to high interest, not just by tapping into that NFL affinity, but by really becoming part of the game, part of the buildings the game is played in,” said Few. That’s a lofty goal and a work in progress, but one we’ll be watching with interest that could best be described as high-voltage.

MARKETING TO MOMS: Add Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’ mother, Debbie, to Subway’s roster of Famous Fans. Subway’s director of sports marketing, Paul Bamundo, said that beyond being the mother of one of the world’s most famous athletes, Phelps’ background in food science and education were appealing.

Full plans for Debbie Phelps’ use have not been completed, but she will appear in Fashion Week’s Heart Truth Fashion show on behalf of Subway. She previously did marketing work for Visa and Concerta, a drug used to treat ADHD.

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5-hour Energy is projecting it will do $13 million more in business this season by moving from sponsorship of a NASCAR Nationwide Series team to a Sprint Cup team.

The company, which late last year signed a 24-race primary sponsorship deal with Michael Waltrip Racing to sponsor the No. 15 car driven by Clint Bowyer, expects to generate $30 million of sales from its $10 million spend on the car. It will do so through a multifaceted marketing strategy that includes TV advertising, retail promotions and hospitality at the track.

“We learned what worked for us [in Nationwide] and what didn’t,” said Scott Henderson, president of 5-hour Energy. “A lot of what we’re doing in Sprint is the big brother of what we did in Nationwide.”

Clint Bowyer drives the 5-Hour Energy-sponsored Michael Waltrip Racing entry during testing. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

The marketing efforts are built on 5-hour Energy’s belief that it needs to win at retail. It plans to offer convenience stores like Circle K and national retailers like Family Dollar and Walgreens space on the back of the No. 15 car in exchange for favorable placement and promotions at retail. Such swaps were central to the company’s retail success against its Nationwide Series sponsorship in 2011, when it sponsored Rusty Wallace Racing’s No. 66 car in a deal valued at $6 million a year.

In addition to partnering with stores, 5-hour Energy executives are looking for consumer packaged goods companies that would be interested in partnering. It hopes to find a CPG company that’s equally strong in convenience store sales, put its logo on the back of the car, and bundle 5-hour Energy with its products at retail. The idea is modeled after the “Power of Pepsi” approach, which sees PepsiCo create a display in stores that showcases both its soft drink and Frito-Lay chips. Such displays can help drive sales of both products, Henderson said.

5-hour Energy already has begun to see the benefit of moving up to Sprint Cup at retail. The company is being featured in Wal-Mart stores nationwide alongside other major NASCAR sponsors in a special “Race Time” program. Henderson said that prominent displays alongside participating brands like Coca-Cola and Clorox will strengthen 5-hour Energy’s credibility and fuel more sales.

“That’s a great thing and is something we could not have done if we didn’t move up to this level,” Henderson said.

5-hour Energy also plans to drive people to retail with TV advertising. It historically advertises on weekday nights, but the Sprint Cup race schedule will see it become a daytime advertiser for the first time as it buys spots on Fox, Turner and ESPN.

“Moving up to the Sprint level and being about as mainstream Americana as you can get will really add to the brand’s credibility,” Henderson said. “TV’s a big part of that because we’ll be on Saturdays and Sundays where we weren’t before.”

The company plans to entertain customers at 29 races during the season. It built a mobile sports bar that it will put in the infield at tracks and host about 60 guests per race. Henderson said the approach allows 5-hour Energy to put key executives in the middle of the action at the track and gives the company’s sales force a chance to strengthen relationships with key clients.

Henderson said the combination of retail activation, TV advertising and hospitality should allow 5-hour Energy to hit its sales projections on the sponsorship, making any success Bowyer has on the track a bonus.

“In the past, hard dollars have paid for the whole sponsorship,” Henderson said. “If we can hit the hard dollar, the rest is gravy.”

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