Fast cars and superstars make for reality TV, Part 1

As Larry McReynolds is wont to say, "it's time to reach up there and pull those belts tight," because during the month of June, it's going to be a wild, wild ride.

Beginning June 7, ABC will present the latest reality TV series -- and the first based on NASCAR -- when it airs the first of seven episodes of Fast Cars & Superstars -- The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race.

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Twelve celebrity stars, including actor William Shatner, singer Jewel, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk and former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Bill Cowher, strap themselves in behind the wheel of a real NASCAR stock car to compete against each other and the clock.

On the flip side, the Gillette Young Guns, including Jimmie Johnson, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, Jamie McMurray, Carl Edwards and newcomer Kasey Kahne, will be tutoring the celebs in a competition to see who has what it takes in making racing superstars out of superstars from other disciplines.

The idea stemmed from Gillette's popular Young Guns advertising spots, and BBDO out of New York took on the challenge of making the short commercials and their speedy stars into a full-fledged reality TV happening.

Kenny Mayne, former host of ESPN's racing studio show, and former NBA great Brad Daugherty, a NASCAR car owner and ESPN broadcaster, are the hosts for the series, which ends with an hour-long show where the celebrities compete against each other.

Al Merrin, vice-chairman and executive creative director for BBDO New York, said the operating theory behind the creation of such a program was experiential.

"If you step back a little bit to a challenge we got from our CEO to create newsmaking for our brands outside the TV box, Proctor & Gamble and Gillette were interested in doing branding that was more emotional and experiential," Merrin said. "We presented several ideas, and one of the ideas that kept emerging as something different and special was to create the Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race.

"It's very difficult to create a TV show in that, no matter how ingenious you are, in the end, it still feels like a sponsorship," Merrin explained. "With the Gillette Young Guns equity, we had the chance to create a show where the brand was integral to the show; it couldn't be separated from it. The Young Guns are a great property that we've done great commercials with and who have great personalities that we thought it would be fun to pair up with celebrities to learn how to race and finally, compete in races."

Sounds easy enough, right? The Young Guns commercials are popular, and the newest one, where newcomer Kahne gets "clipped" by the veterans, debuted during the Super Bowl.

But why NASCAR? Gillette has made inroads into the estimated 75 million fans of the sport and if you want experiential, then NASCAR is the place you need to be.

"Racecars really embody the winning spirit of Gillette, which is all about confidence, performance and striving to be your best and that's what racing is really all about," is the way Steve Fund, global business director for Gillette, chose to put it.

"The power of this idea is the colliding of two worlds," Fund said. "We were very careful in terms of the superstars that we picked. We wanted to get a wide range of celebrities that were superstars in their own realm. Tony Hawk is a superstar skateboarder. Ty Murray is a superstar in rodeo. Serena Williams is a superstar in the world of tennis.

"We wanted to get range of superstars that had a passionate fan base, so we could optimize that passion that each of those celebrities has to maximize the impact of the program."

Gillette has taken the concept and thrown virtually everything in the corporate arsenal at it to make it a happening, rather than just four hours of TV programming.

"We've supported the Young Guns since 2004 in a number of different ways, through traditional advertising, at retail through special promotion packs and in print advertising," Fund said. "This is bringing the marketing effort behind this property to a whole new level.

"This program has many different facets to it, so it isn't just about a great network prime-time series. There's a lot of components, from internet activation of our GilletteYoungGuns.com site that drives millions of users, we're going to have a featured section on the TV show that we're partnering with AOL on to display content. We're going to have retail activation; we have a number of different retailers who are going to activate. We have a consumer promotion where the consumer gets to choose which world they want to live in, the world of NASCAR or the world of celebrity. We have a whole PR activation program, and some of the partners we've taken are going to promote the show in various ways.

"There are lots of tentacles to the marketing plan."

Among the celebrities involved in the series are actress Krista Allen, former NBA champion John Salley, Super Bowl-winning quarterback John Elway, WWE wrestling champion John Cena, volleyball superstar and model Gabrielle Reece and legendary surfer Laird Hamilton.

Next week, we'll examine the Young Guns and their feelings on expanding NASCAR's marketing and promotional boundaries beyond the weekend and into prime time.