NASCAR Makes Their Own Celebrities

NASCAR does not merely rely on big names to endorse and promote their organization. Rather, they create and market their own celebrities to carry the brand. Mike attributes DALE EARNHARDT JR. and his development into the sport’s first true cross-over legend as one of the factors for NASCAR’s meteoric growth in the first part of this decade.

Based on that idea, if you can’t find a celebrity to endorse your dealership, you can just become one yourself. Think it’s not possible?? Well in the age of YouTube, Social Media and the web, it is actually not.

Make yourself a local celebrity by beginning a blog, writing articles for your local publications, speaking to local groups, hosting seminars about smart car buying or credit strategies, hosting your own weekend radio show, etc. You could get a book or take seminar on DIY PR and begin getting your name in the media as a featured expert. Use social media to garner “fans” and develop your celebrity status that way. Every little bit counts.

NASCAR Understands the Potential of Cross Promotions

You may be a small guy in a big dealer pond, but you certainly do not have to market like one. Actually, you could play a bigger game in this area simply by associating yourself and your business with several other well known entities in your area. When done right, this can help strengthen the effectiveness of your message and protect you from being hurt financially and emotionally in the case of a failed promotion.

To break this down further, more advertising means teaming up with other companies and advertising each other. Sometimes you see this in an auto mall, where multiple dealerships would pool their marketing dollars to create a bigger splash in the market. Occasionally you see this with multiple, non-competing businesses in a tight geographical area, where they combine their marketing bucks to bring shoppers to the general vicinity.

But if you wish to cross promote similar to NASCAR… you would have to do what these other businesses are doing and take it to the MAX.

So forget auto malls and tiny marketing collaboratives… doing it the NASCAR way means partnering with famous (celebrity-like) businesses right from the beginning. For example, Tag Heuer, the watch brand, already has Tiger Woods secured as a celeb endorsement. Possibly you could connect with a local jewelry store which is a Tag Heuer retailer, to provide a Tag watch to one lucky winner on Father’s day. Your marketing could feature you and the jeweler (and Tiger). You could either share the cost of the marketing, or ask the Jeweler to offer the watch. You then have a big event, the jeweler is on site with a cut out of Tiger wearing a Tag watch, you have a putting contest (of course, you can also tie in a golf course or country club for this, split the marketing 3 ways!), you give away the wristwatch, you sell few cars, and everybody goes home contented.

Realizing that there is power outside of yourself is the main element here. You should expand your thinking to allow the opportunity of working with others and leveraging their existing celebrity associations. Not to mention, you will be paying less money for greater exposure as you learn to pull your resources and share the costs of these incredible campaigns. Here is some other great ideas you may want to consider.

You can tie with local celebrities such as news personalities, local authors, radio DJs, local musicians, etc. Again, promote them and ask them to promote you. Perhaps offer to pay for a printing of the next batch of CDs produced by a local popular band… with your logo and offer on the CD or inserted inside. A friend of ours recently offered to host a reception in his coffee shop for a group of young pageant contestants. The result was the current Miss America came by to meet the contestants, signed autographs, tasted his coffee and declared, “Best Ever.” Now he has a portrait of Miss America drinking his coffee that he could use forever.

You begin seeing a lot of opportunities everywhere when you start expanding your thinking on this. You just need to look through the lens of the power of celebrity to start seeing them all. In less than an hour of focused concentration on this subject you could definitely come up with 10 good ideas. Or, plant the desire in your subconscious by writing it down on a piece of paper and carrying that in your pocket for a week. In time, the ideas would pop right into your head while driving in traffic, or standing in the shower, or after waking up in the middle of the night.

Focusing on this element of your business truly is the kind of powerful, leverageable activity which can make you rich. While most people are moving cars around or writing on windshields or brewing coffee, you could be working on SPEED and quickly moving your business into the fast lane, while drafting behind the existing success and celebrity of someone else. That is the true power of NASCAR!

Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller are the authors of Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers and founders of the Rich Dealers Institute.

They help dealers double their profits in as little as 118 days. Receive a free copy of their special report & video presentation, The New Rules of Automotive Marketing by visiting http://www.RichDealers.com/special