The Absolute BRILLIANCE of NASCAR Marketing in the 90's

if you travel back in time to 1996 and a six year old made to rattle off my favorite NASCAR drivers one guy who might have snuck his way into the top 10 would be lake speed no I didn't really know at the time who he was I didn't know about his own win at Darlington I didn't know he spent most of his career as an owner driver hell I really didn't even know what he looked like and I certainly didn't know about him winning the 1978 World go-karting championship over Ayrton Senna yeah that Ayrton Senna the only thing I knew about lake speed was a he drove the spam car and has a six year old kid who didn't know any better I love spam spam was always on the menu and fried spam and egg sandwiches were a favorite of mine I genuinely liked the stuff whatever it may or may not consist of so when I saw a spam sponsored car pop up on the track I immediately became a fan of that guy to top it all off the grocery store chain Engels had an exclusive deal with spam for a limited time only if you bought a special 2-pack of spam it came with a 164 scale diecast of lake speeds car either in the traditional navy blue with yellow lettering or the inversed colors i of course had to have the navy blue car because it was the one lake actually drove out on the track now the quality of the diecast was pretty poor as it was the type of cheap toy you'd expect to come in a happy meal or something but I didn't care I wanted a lake speed car and that was the easiest way to get one one sale of two cans of spam for Ingalls in the books so what do I tell you all of this what's the point well here's the real kicker my mom never shot that Ingalls Milo was half the distance to her house so she always shopped there instead she only went to Ingalls because I begged and pleaded with her to go there because I had seen the spam card deal in the newspaper my dad had left on the table one Sunday she is all parents do gave in and got the spam 2-pack and of course while she was there she did the rest of her shopping too because well why not how many times scenarios like this have played out across America I don't know but this phenomenon isn't just relegated to spam and NASCAR companies all over the world do stuff like this and to great effect this goes to show the power of sponsorships ads and marketing and how it played a sizable part of the explosive growth of NASCAR in the 90s and back then let me tell you their marketing efforts were second to none [Music] nascar's in the doldrums right now and it could use a resurgence in popularity and I bring all of this up because I think I have the answer NASCAR needs to market itself like it did when it was on the upswing in popularity in the 90s no it's not mince words here a big part of it was marketing these children big-time now now I know with Coppa and all of the YouTube drama going on right now surrounding it that's kind of a dirty phrase to say out loud but marketing and advertising to kids isn't entirely illegal obviously I mean you have to sell sugared cereals Barbie dolls and Easy Bake Oven ripoffs to kids somehow right they're pretty strict guidelines and regulations in place to limit the ways in which advertisers can manipulate children into buying their crap back in the 80s these rules weren't implemented yet and entire plot lines and Saturday morning cartoons were centered around some sort of vent on selling kids new toys in some cases during the actual show itself characters were trying to sell you some sort of new plastic crap to buy or rather to make your parents buy on your behalf the 90s changed all that with sweeping laws that made it illegal to run ads longer than a certain period of time have characters trying to peddle merge and now you had to have distinctive breaks between the show and commercials you can still sell your toys to kids you just had to be more upfront about it so why is it so important to sell NASCAR to kids well if you can hook them early you can probably hook them for life you ask people when they became a NASCAR fan and I'm going to bet most did before the age of 13 I mean NASCAR is full of loud obnoxious colorful cars flying around at unreasonable speeds kids are practically hardwired to like it you just have to get them to the trough enter one of my favorite sponsors of all time Cartoon Network launched in 1992 is a dumping ground for hanna-barbera cartoons Ted Turner had bought the rights to Cartoon Network had morphed into a serious competitor to Nickelodeon with tons of new original shows like Johnny Bravo and Dexter's Lab one big push for the network made by Turner Broadcasting was a four-year long NASCAR sponsorship for a oddly enough even sponsoring Lake speed during his 19 a campaign they even did commercials for the network on other TV channels with their driver from 1997 Robert Pressley now Robert Pressley isn't an actor I mean he's definitely not an actor but he's serviceable here he has some fun with the superimposed characters on screen and even heats Dexter straight out of his car at one point it was a lot of fun and I'm sure it got a lot of kids not just interested in Cartoon Network but NASCAR too Ted Turner is in charge of the Turner Broadcasting Empire and is actually a big fan of professional wrestling and auto racing perhaps he could be persuaded to sponsor a team or a race or two just for old times sake and just to see what would happen you don't even really need to have ads for children's products to hook them either if you can just get them on board with the product of NASCAR they'll go on to the sponsors of their favorite driver whatever that might be my favorite driver of all time is Mark Martin and while I was too young to have a reason to go out and buy Valvoline he did drive a Busch Series car sponsored by the winn-dixie grocery store chain now there wasn't a winn-dixie anywhere near where I lived but my family did go on vacation to Myrtle Beach every year and you know what we found down there a winn-dixie and I begged my parents to buy any food or drinks that we needed from that winn-dixie which was actually further away than the nearest grocery store Kroger why because I loved Mark Martin and god damn and I wanted to see the inside of a winn-dixie if he's gonna fly there colors then I'm onboard I want to go see it when Dixie was one of my favorite sponsors in NASCAR simply because they had some pretty slick paint schemes and I bought a couple of diecast because of that and when I entered the halls of that culinary shopping center you know what they were selling more winn-dixie die casts and of course I had to buy them because I had to have a winn-dixie car that I had bought from a winn-dixie kids are stupid like that that's why I advertise them to them is so damned effective but hell you don't have to just pigeonhole yourself to advertising to kids adults are susceptible to this as well to this day the only motor oil I use is Valvoline thanks to that indoctrination I had as a youngster and I've been known to drink only Brad light while attending races NASCAR's bread and butter has always been well bread and butter consumer items that's why these days newer sponsors don't really have the same appeal to the average race fan like they used I don't think anybody's gonna bank with a lie no matter who they sponsor or for how long and what the hell even is toko r8 horn the tide ride has been a favorite paint scheme among NASCAR diehards for a long time and it's a real shame they're not backing anybody full-time right now not only that but back in the day sponsors like that used to go all in on their drivers Todd jumped the hendrik ship with Ricky Rudd in 1994 when he decided to become an owner driver with his now iconic number 10 and they stuck it out with him for six years when Rusty Wallace left Raymond beetles came in 1991 and joined up with Roger Penske Miller beer went with him because they had signed a sponsorship deal not with the team but with rusty wherever he went so did Miller and they stayed loyal partners until rusty retired in 2004 these are the types of sponsors NASCAR needs more than ever consumer brands are still in the sport Procter & Gamble with their various candies and pedigree dog food sponsor Kyle Busch almost every single week and Busch beer have really gone all-in with Kevin Harvick letting him race custom paint schemes and even going so far as to rename their beer and his honor for a week help yourself to a nice ice-cold Harvick because we don't want to give unintended free advertising to the Busch brothers no affiliation see that's the kind of driver sponsor advertising relationships and ask her needs to help foster these days and they were all over the place in the 90s people aren't loyal to products so much as they're loyal to brands and the more you can make the drivers and the brands one in the same the better it was hard to turn on a race back in the day and not be subjected to a litany of driver sponsor commercials during the breaks but these even aired outside of races on channels that didn't even carry NASCAR NASCAR has recently begun advertising their series on non-affiliated networks again and maybe running ads with Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer on save twitch and YouTube can rekindle some of that interest if the NFL can get an end with crunchyroll an anime streaming service because just one of their players is a weave then surely NASCAR can do something similar and that's really the ticket moving forward utilizing new avenues of advertising as much as people want to say that advertising doesn't work anymore nothing could be further from the truth it's just people motivations and viewing habits have changed it's true that people are more cynical these days but we will still indulge advertisers if we think it means supporting people we like or products that benefit more than just a company that sells them again we like brands and we want to support brands just give us a reason to feel some sort of connection there and the average person will latch on to it the 90s had a lot of unique and effective marketing strategies that can still be utilized today all NASCAR and their sponsors have to do is shift over to more modern advertising techniques and get behind their drivers and push products that people are going to want and that means no switching sponsors every god-forsaken weekend I know sponsorship dollars are getting thinner and it takes more than just one main sponsor to put a whole race season together but for those lucky few guys that do have one or two sponsors that carry the entire team for the season it's important that they jump out in front of this and run with it as much as they can if I was Steve Phelps or Jim Franz I'd be pushing these guys to do stuff like that and if you notice the guys who are doing this sort of stuff already are the guys from the 90s in the early 2000s Kevin Harvick Ryan Newman and Kurt Busch all have really good relationships with their primary sponsors and often appear in ads for them for whatever reason this seems to not be jiving with NASCAR's younger breed I mean I know not all of them have the sort of magnetic personalities that Harvick and the like do but Bubba Wallace Ryan Blaney and Corey Lajoie seem to like being expressive and jumping out in front the camera fairly often hell when Corey got sponsored by Old Spice they let him put his face on the car or rather his face was the car it was great heck some of these newer guys actually have some of those ever-elusive consumer item sponsorship deals they just don't do anything with them I mean why isn't Chris Buescher out there doing Bush's baked beans what's the matter scared of beans oh and I almost forgot about video game sponsorships video games are the highest-grossing form of entertainment on the planet and a lot of them have popped up in NASCAR Joey Logano supported the game stop colors quite often when he was with Joe Gibbs and offered up hood space to pimp out new games Game Stop was selling Dale Earnhardt jr. NASCAR's most popular driver over the past two decades got a sponsorship deal with Halo 5 in 2015 but really didn't do anything with it the fact that we didn't get at least one commercial or promo image of Dale and Spartan armor is honestly a travesty Noah Gregg's and fan of the channel by the way is sponsored by pub G mobile and with the thousands of dollars they've put up to make that happen did no one think to put Noah in a twitch ad spot or add him as a character skin there's a lot of open opportunity here is just no he's taking it or god forbid we start advertising you know the actual cars that are out there racing on the track yeah I know Harvick's Mustang has more in common with the space shuttle than the Mustang I can buy at the local Ford dealership down the road but they didn't stop a NASCAR from doing just that in the 90s during the time when NASCAR was arguably as far from stock as it had ever been automakers still use NASCAR to market their vehicles a showroom Pontiac Grand Prix and the one at the racetrack had almost nothing in common but they still ran with it in their ads say what you will about the Gen 6 cars these days but they do kind of sort of look like street cars from the front more so than the Monte Carlos and Grand Prix's of the 90s sure it's a stretch but since when did stretching the truth ever stop advertisers now I know one of your main concerns is going to be yeah I know that sounds great and I'll slap but isn't it going to be kind of cringy trying to shoehorn NASCAR drivers into commercials and ads face it while the sport is at its absolute lowest in popularity and you know what you might have a point yeah it might seem kind of weird to put yourself out there and have a million people go who the hell are these guys supposed to be but that's the exact question we have to have asked right now hey look at us we race it unreasonably fast speeds for 500 miles and then sometimes we fight each other at the end of it sometimes you just have to man up and force your way into the national conversation sometimes you just got to have a Jeff Gordon type character making some pervy jokes about Britney Spears to sell Pepsi remember you miss 100% of the shots you don't take it's basically a running theme on this channel that the way forward for NASCAR lies in its past going back to legacy tracks putting the stock back in stock car and embracing the aggressive marketing from the 90s that laid down the groundwork for us to reach the zenith of NASCAR's popularity in the mid 2000s and if you recall NASCAR didn't let off the throttle and advertising itself and letting sponsors run wild with their drivers back then either if NASCAR's leadership wants to get its name out there then pushing drivers and their sponsors to step up their own advertising efforts off the track and to do it in a more modern approach could bring in a lot of new fans and maybe even win back some of the old breed as well impressions matter the marketing efforts of the 90s proved ad and going forward and all-out assault with sponsors pushing their drivers on all fronts could be the key to getting the sport back on it be just a thought if you want to get the word out or just do your part then hit up Twitter and let some current sponsors know that they have some racecar drivers on payroll and they're missing out on a massive opportunity here and if you're loyal to a product or just simply tried it for the first time thanks to you seeing it in NASCAR let them know that their sponsorship dollars made that happen and that their payouts are having the desired effect now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go have a fried spam and egg sandwich y'all take it easy [Music]

Channel: S1apSh0es

Views: 551,308

Keywords: NASCAR, chase elliott, kyle busch, ryan blaney, 90's, 1990's, NASCAR history, marketing, sponsorships, Lake Speed, Spam, brands, Twitch, pubg mobile, Noah Gragson, Mark Martin, Winn Dixie, Valvoline, 90's commercials, NASCAR commercials, 90's NASCAR, old school NASCAR, motorsports, stock car racing, video games, kevin harvick, stock car, commercial, NASCAR drivers, joey lagano game stop, Cartoon Network, racing, worst sponsors in nascar, S1ap, slapshoes, S1apSh0es, NASCAR marketing

Id: PVDoWEGA-VM

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/vatara6]

Most important part of this video is at the 0:07 mark.

A picture of the super rare Dick Trickle #63 ford with 63 Days until Daytona from the history thread.

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https://i.postimg.cc/mgfvbKZJ/trickle63.png

[u/ElijahWhosoever]

In terms of evidence and editing, this video is really well put together. But I will say this...

Marketing in the 90s is drastically different than today. In the 90s and early 2000s, companies had fewer outlets to divide their marketing budgets. entertainment media (sports, TV, movies), newspapers, magazines, billboard... those had the largest audience. And with NASCAR’s booming popularity and massive inventory, that was the sport to flock to. Exciting and new.

In 2020, you’ll also have professional gaming, digital streaming, social media advertising & campaigning, email marketing, apps, etc. Options that are ~much~ cheaper than racing. I believe that motorsports, especially NASCAR, brings a partner experience like no other. It also brings an asset that you can’t get anywhere else in professional sports- branding the entire team with your company. AND you can tie in social media marketing with motorsports (and it has been done well before). But the spotlight on NASCAR needs to be bigger before companies invest dollars in campaigning over here. It needs to be part of the weekly conversation it used to be in order to be brought up seriously in corporate marketing meetings.

This of course is my opinion from what I’ve seen over the years. Nonetheless, helluva video from Slap (again).

[u/CrossFire43]

I want every sponsor, team, track, and executive in this sport to pay attention to this.

[u/Tarheels_2015]

Michael Waltrip couldn’t get his spam can open when the tab broke.

[u/lipperypickels]

I Understand what he is saying but its kind of out of touch. The root is true: Getting drivers in front of faces not watching NASCAR is important.

But marketing has changed so much in the last decade that trying to go back to what worked in the 90s is not the answer.

[u/BeefInGR]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of the video.

However you want to market the business, your NASCAR driver is (or should be at least) as close to the "face" of the company as a lot of these companies have. NASCAR needs to do what they can to encourage their partners and team partners to use them in their marketing campaigns.

A few weeks ago I watched some thing about some dude named Ninja...who is he? Idfk. But he went to a Lions game and took over our social media for the day. I know more than a few people looked him up because of that.

That example right there is a prime example of how NASCAR used to do marketing. I don't care if its on Twitch, YouTube or CBS...get these guys out there.

[u/Buckeye2443]

Think about this:

It’s simple, but crazy. Nascar was everywhere in the 90s and early 2000s. There was the NASCAR racers cartoon show. There was the NASCAR 3D pinball game on top of the EA Sports ps1/N64 games, that were amazing for the time. Dale Jr used to appear in commercials for Budweiser, Chevy, Gillette Young Guns. Nowadays, we don’t see our most popular driver in many ads except for the one or two NAPA or Hooters ad that runs all year long. The Coca-Cola racing family used to be literally all the biggest names in the sport. Not so much anymore, and part of that is the fact that we have failed to create stars, which comes back to the marketing.

Slap nails it. There’s just so much missed opportunity. I know the 90s are much different from the 2000s, 2010s, and soon the 2020s, but we gotta take that mold and build on it. Like he said, with how big PUBG and the like are, why not get Gragson out there to promote the sport, hell, Dale Jr is a PUBG regular as well.

Steve Phelps is a marketing guy. So if one can fix it, one would hope he’s the guy.

[u/JCTaylor46]

I really enjoy Slap's videos and views on the sport. He remembers the sport exactly as i do from growing up during the same era at the same age. Always good quality content!

I think people commenting how different the times are compared to the 90s and pointing out the flaws, etc are missing the point of this video by trying to sound smart and overly technical. Of course digital marketing has changed the way advertisers spend and promote their products and target audiences etc, compared to the 90s.. but the simple and general message is how much better the partnership between sponsorships & drivers were in the 90s compared to now and we should look at ways to bridge that gap again.

[u/48ever]

2021 is the year that NASCAR returns to its former glory. I’m calling it.