Mobil 1 recently signed a renewal with NASCAR that will extend its decade-long sponsorship of the sport through 2017.
Financial terms of the five-year deal weren’t available. Mobil 1’s previous deal was valued at more than $1.5 million a year.
The new agreement expands Mobil 1’s official designations from official motor oil and lubricant to official motor oil and lubricant technology partner of NASCAR. It’s the second renewal Mobil 1 has signed since it struck a six-year agreement to replace Unocal 76 as the sport’s official lubricant in 2003.
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Mobil 1 has also sponsored NASCAR teams since 1990.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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In addition to expanding its official designations, Mobil 1 picked up the presenting sponsorship of a feature on the new NASCAR.com. The “Automotive Technology Center engineered by Mobil 1” will feature stories, imagery, video, live chats and fan polls about race cars and races.
Rebecca Aldred, Mobil 1 global brand manager, said that getting digital exposure was critical for the company. She added that being able to develop a feature and sign on for it with NASCAR, which reacquired its digital rights from Turner Sports last year, was a plus.
“That allowed them to provide flexibility to meet our needs, which perhaps they would not have been able to in the past,” Aldred said. “NASCAR did an excellent job of meeting us on our needs.”
Mobil 1 research shows that NASCAR fans are twice as likely to try the brand when they know it is the sport’s official motor oil. The company will continue to use the NASCAR logo on its products at retail and in marketing.
The motor oil company has sponsored NASCAR teams since 1990 and is currently a sponsor of Stewart-Haas Racing and Tony Stewart’s No. 14 car.
The brand also sponsors the Vodafone McLaren team in Formula One, and it featured Stewart in advertisements with F1 driver Lewis Hamilton in recent years. But Hamilton left McLaren for Mercedes this year, so Mobil 1 is in the process of finishing new creative around Stewart for 2013. Aldred said the new ads will be released in the spring.
