Dew Tour general manager Kenny Mitchell is leaving Alli Sports to take a marketing job with NASCAR.
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The former Gatorade sports marketer will become NASCAR’s managing director of brand and consumer marketing, a role that will see him work with NASCAR Vice President Kim Brink on the sport’s brand direction and strategy.
Mitchell will be concentrating on marketing designed to bolster NASCAR’s youth and multicultural fan base. He worked extensively on those categories during his seven years at Gatorade, where he worked in the sports group on the NBA, Major League Baseball and action sports. He continued to work on youth-related marketing after leaving Gatorade in 2012 to join NBC’s action sports division as general manager of the Dew Tour.
“Both Gatorade and the Dew Tour have a fairly complementary target of teens and young adults,” Mitchell said. “I’m going to rely on my experience from both jobs.”
Steve Phelps, NASCAR chief marketing officer, said via email: “Kenny’s work developing and growing brands so that they appeal to younger and more diverse audiences makes him the perfect fit for this role and for NASCAR. Him joining our team is the next step in the evolution of our marketing function, which is now better positioned to lead our industry through strategy, innovation and creativity.”
The Dew Tour is a division of NBC’s Alliance of Action Sports, and Alli Sports President Eric Grilly will take over Mitchell’s management of the tour through its final event of the year at Breckenridge next month.
Grilly plans to evaluate the open position after the Breckenridge event and determine whether Alli Sports will fill it.
