The NASCAR Cup Series schedule saw several changes this year, including moving the race at Homestead-Miami Speedway from the season finale to late March. With that move also came a new title sponsor for the race -- Dixie Vodka. The Charleston-based brand, led by Founder & CEO Matti Anttila (@DixieVodka), did not get a full year to promote the Dixie Vodka 400 scheduled for March 22. With a shorter-than-usual window, Dixie Vodka utilized social media, as well as activations at Champions Week and the Daytona 500, to bring awareness to its relationship with NASCAR. Anttila said, "It is a short period of time. We’re not Diageo or Bacardi so we have only a certain amount of bandwidth and we need to be really careful about not trying to be too many things too quickly and making sure our resources are spent as efficiently as possible. This is a long-term agreement with NASCAR, this isn't a kind of one and done. So we have time to build this relationship with the fans." The brand is also working with social media influencers, such as the Cocktail Bandits to spread word of Dixie Vodka.
SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
Must-follows: I love Bob Menery on Instagram. He's hilarious. He sounds like an actual sportscaster and then it just goes off the rails.
Favorite app: I personally like Instagram from a social media standpoint app. I'm on the road a lot, so I'm usually on like Delta or American apps.
Average time per day on social media: Probably 15 to 20 minutes.
The brand’s social media philosophy:
It's really about storytelling. I mean, at the end of the day our brand hierarchy begins with made in America, raised in the South. So, we try and communicate that across all of our channels. Whether it's our packaging and our point of sale, or what we're communicating through social media and in particular around social media, it's kind of encompassed in an idea that we've put through a certain funnel called flavors of the south. The flavors of the south goes to what ingredients that we're using in our product. But then too, it's what stories are we telling and what partnerships are we pursuing. It's one of the reasons why NASCAR made a lot of sense for the brand. NASCAR is a very authentically southern sport.
Change in approach since NASCAR deal:
Look at our email list as an example, which probably before the announcement was 15,000 people. Now it is around a 100,000 and similar kind of growth is reflected in social media. What we've seen is it's gone from a lot in the Southeast, where we had really concentrated our efforts, to now having all 50 States represented on our our email list and social media audience. That's kind of evolved a little bit in terms of the stuff that we talk about and trying to make it a little bit more relevant to a broader audience. We've started doing a lot more experimenting, a lot more on video content than we had in the past. That’s going to be one of the great benefits we're going to have coming out of our race in two weeks. We're going to have a ton of great visual content, both photography and video
Race week activations on social media:
There will be an announcement around something we're doing with Kurt Busch and tickets for veterans. There will be some on-premise partnerships that we'll be activating. We have a big program coming out with Hooters nationally, as an example. We have a regional program with Applebee's. Then we'll have at-track activation with some of those partners, too. We're doing a lot with Hooters at the track, so it will be a lot of revealing those things to our fan base throughout the week and then leveraging some of those partners to use their social channels. For Daytona, we developed a cocktail called the Speedway Cocktail, and that was something that Fox put out to their social media channels. We're doing something similar for our race in Homestead that may even get on-air presence during the race.
Year-round strategy:
It's evolving. We're new to the sport, so we're kind of learning as we go along and we're testing stuff and seeing what's working and maybe what's not working. We can kind of refine the strategy because we're the the official vodka and it's not just one race. The great thing about NASCAR is it's year-round. There's not that much downtime, so there are a lot of opportunities, and every week there's an opportunity to engage with fans. It's going to be an ongoing dialogue that we're having about what is engaging fans the most? We're putting a lot more emphasis on Twitter now because NASCAR fans tend to be pretty engaged on Twitter, which prior to our relationship with NASCAR, Twitter was kind of third priority behind Facebook and Instagram.
Personal involvement in the brand’s social media:
Everything kind of runs through me in terms of whether it's ideas for content or just approval of content. I tend to be the one who gives a lot of direction in terms of what I think we should be speaking about at this period of time. I'm the one who has to kind of sit up there and try and figure out all the pieces and how they fit together and really make sure that it connects the different arms of the business.
How a craft brand approaches social compared to large brands:
Generally a craft brand has significantly less resources, so you have to be a little bit more creative on quite less of a budget. The advantage of a smaller independent craft brand is you can have a bit more of an authentic story. Even the big brands, they all generally started as small brands at one time. But it's harder as you get bigger. One of the advantages of social media is how it kind of tends to level the playing field. You can tell your story in a really creative way without having to go and buy TV time or billboards or do these big high-cost items that are generally reserved for the bigger players.
If you know anyone who should be featured for their use of social media, send their name to us at jperez@sportsbusinessdaily.com.
