Car Brands Look to Dirt For Differentiation

Brandweek, April 17, 2000 by Jeff Green

As auto marketers try to hedge their reliance on Nascar's cluttered Winston Cup and other mainstream circuits, they're eyeing such alternatives as World of Outlaws' "greatest show on dirt," Monster Trucks and even video arcades.

At the Great Lakes Crossing mega-discount mall in Auburn Hills, Mich., Kyle Tucker and Clinton Montgomery are standing in the shadow of a simulated Ford Winston Cup racecar suspended near the ceiling of the GameWorks arcade, watching a virtual race unfold.

The 17-year-old Warren, Mich., high schoolers have stopped by GameWorks to check out the Ford Racing Zone and, so far, are neutral on whether Ford's highly visible sponsorship holds any prospect of making them Ford acolytes in the future. Ford and GameWorks partners Sega, DreamWorks and Universal Studios have launched an aggressive effort to co-brand all GameWorks racing videogame areas as the Ford Racing Zone.

"A racecar game is a racecar game," Tucker says, watching a GameWorks employee pace behind a row of simulated Indy cars bucking and rocking as he calls the action in a virtual race.

But Tucker, with a fresh brush cut and the studied detachment that can only be perfected in high school, admits he already owns an older-model Ford Thunderbird and Montgomery says he plans to buy his own used T-bird soon, too. And Montgomery is less cynical about the impact of the co-branding on his consumer psyche.

"If nothing else it will make it easier to remember what we were playing. 'It was at the Ford racing game." or something like that," he said.

As they leave, the teens pass by a Ford Focus that will be given away to the best of 64 virtual racers who qualify at weekly contests and have a chance to sign up for Team Ford Racing for an insider's view of the racing world.

It's all part of the automaker's attempt to find visibility and leverage for its racing operations away from the rather narrow and cluttered confines of a Winston Cup raceway or a Nascar telecast. In that ambition, Ford is one of many carmakers seeking quiet corners in the motorsport world where they can cuddle up with consumers without having to shout down rivals.

While DaimlerChrysler's Dodge division is entering the fray of Winston Cup racing, its Mopar parts arm was the only automaker to sponsor a car during the 1999 championship of the World of Outlaws open-wheeled racing on dirt tracks. Chevy recently bought rights to American Motorcyclists Association Motocross and Superbike racing. Both Dodge and Ford are aggressively courting participants and fans of the International Hot Rod Association. Castrol GTX has snagged the junior drag racing circuit.

Thus, while Nascar may be an 800-pound gorilla of racing sponsorship, there's plenty of monkeying around on the margins. The way the marketers put it, they're aiming at far more than brand awareness hits.

"Ford Motor is not in any form of racing for exposure's sake," said Mickey D'Armi, Ford Racing business manager. "We're trying to create an atmosphere that makes the brand relevant."

While Ford is fully involved with such mainstream racing entities as Nascar Winston Cup, CART, World Rally and NHRA, increasingly the automaker is looking off-track for real impact.

That's where GameWorks comes in, D'Armi said. The partners are expecting to build more than 60 of the arcade/eatery/entertainment destination operations with a potential for 2 million visitors per year per location--boasting an average customer age of 22,with 85% of attendees less than 35,D'Armi said. The relationship will include in-store product displays, co-branded apparel and game cards and other product links.

"The fan base for racing isn't growing, it's polarizing," D'Armi said. "We have to cut through the clutter. It's survival of the fittest. If it's less mainstream and doesn't deliver the customers, it's not cost-effective."

Don't tell that to Lou Patane, DaimlerChrysler vp-motorsport operations. His Mopar parts division is in the second year of an ambitious effort to get serious dividends from the Outlaws circuit.

Patane credits sponsorship in Outlaws with sales increases of 25% last year and 50% in the first quarter of 2000 for its Mopar performance parts. Racing fans are only part of the target: Outlaws turns out to be a favorite pastime of the auto mechanics who decide what parts get used to fix vehicles in shops. Winning on the Outlaws track has meant winning the hearts of the men who control the aftermarket, Patane said.

Until recently Outlaws would have struggled to qualify for the margins of mainstream motorsports. Ford had been involved in the 1980s but shelved the effort, and sponsorships were barely able to scrape up low six-figure commitments for events in small, outmoded stadiums with capacities of less than 5,000.

But thanks to a TV partnership with TNN that started four years ago and a major sponsorship by Pennzoil, Outlaw sponsorships have entered a solid seven-figure range. New tracks are either in operation or under construction in Texas, at the Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., and other racing hotspots where the feisty little sheet metal and steel-tubed cars often end up paired with Winston Cup tracks, said Ted Johnson, president of the 22-year-old World of Outlaws organization, based in Piano, Texas. The new venues can accommodate more than 20,000 fans; estimated seasonal attendance for the "greatest show on dirt" has passed 2 million with another 1 million tuning in on TV,he said.