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February 15, 2008
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NASCAR Season Preview

Accelerating: NASCAR Marketers Changing Advertising Landscape

Sprint Heavily Promoting Its First Year As
Title Sponsor Of NASCAR's Top Series
For years, NASCAR sponsors "concentrated their considerable ad spend in mainstay media like television, radio, print and billboards,” but that is “changing rapidly as campaigns featuring NASCAR drivers and cars proliferate on Web sites, cellphones, digital video recorders, satellite TV and radio, video game consoles and mobile devices," according to Stuart Elliott of the N.Y. TIMES. The shift "parallels the increasing appearance in the new media of ads celebrating sports." NASCAR CMO Steve Phelps: "Television is still very important to us. But as media becomes more fractionalized, we need to make sure we're finding the places where the fans are." Sprint, in its first year as title sponsor of NASCAR's top series, is sponsoring an "elaborate multimedia campaign carrying the theme 'Speed is Beautiful,'" via Goodby Silverstein & Partners, S.F. The campaign includes a special section of the Sprint Web site where users can download wallpaper, send customized e-mails and design their own burnouts. There also will be a NASCAR Sprint Cup application for Sprint cellphones. Elliott notes another "popular method of expanding the new-media presence of NASCAR sponsors is microsites." Office Depot Dir for Global E-Commerce Noah Maffitt said that the company's microsite, officedepotracing.com, “‘allows us to do some things we normally wouldn't do’ to engage customers, including blogging and podcasting.” Office Depot is also teaming with Harlequin Enterprises for an online contest at getyourheartracing.com. The winner will have his or her marriage proposal or a renewal of vows featured on the No. 99 Office Depot Ford driven by Carl Edwards. Meanwhile, Best Western Int'l Senior VP/ Marketing Dorothy Dowling said that the company will make its "first foray into online contests" Friday with a promotion featuring an "April Fool's Day theme" (N.Y. TIMES, 2/15).


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