Joe Gibbs Racing is launching a weekly series on Facebook’s new Watch short-form video series platform, becoming what is believed to be the only motorsports outfit involved with the outlet’s soft launch. JGR is currently producing the series, “Joe Gibbs Racing on the Job,” which highlights the stories of surprising or interesting positions among JGR’s 600 employees. The race team is targeting 15 episodes a season along with other supporting content like blooper reels. JGR’s sponsors have the opportunity to get involved in the five- to seven-minute episodes, as exemplified by an episode being shot now on a tire changer who uses Dewalt tools in the episode. JGR Digital Marketing Dir Bryan Cook said Facebook offered the opportunity to the team and was open to what JGR wanted to do as long as it was in episodic form. The first episode had 140,000 views in the first 24 hours after it launched. Cook said, “NASCAR is a unique world where not everyone might understand what goes into it, so my approach was, ‘Well, this is going to reach people who probably aren’t going to on their own just find auto racing and NASCAR, so how do we interest them?’ … There’s just a lot that goes into NASCAR that people don’t realize the level of detail behind, so that’s the route we took.” Facebook late last week started rolling out the Watch feature, which Facebook is hoping will help it become more of a leader in video to rival the likes of YouTube. Content creators will keep 55% of revenue around the series while Facebook gets the remaining 45%.
