Going where work is has Wypall reaping rewards (cont'd)

Even though Wypall Wipers is a division of Kimberly-Clark, it's not like the budget is unlimited. Nobody's is these days. That means Merrill and Larry Nedrow, director of Kimberly-Clark's Professional Wiper Business, have to be creative to move the brand forward.

"There's a lot of stuff we would wish for sure, like a Wypall car, a race entitlement, and we've talked a lot this year about where we want to take the program," Merrill said. "But we've already gotten a lot of really great customers from this work and forged some really strong relationships with them, and we continue to find ways that we can leverage and build upon those moving forward. The program we are running works.

"Most of the products we sell are in the B2B arena, a business-to-business relationship. You can't walk into Wal-Mart on a Monday after a race and buy a box of Wypall Wipers; it just doesn't work that way. Companies want the products delivered to them for use at their facilities. One of our continuing initiatives moving forward is how to grow those B2B relationships, not only from a customer retention standpoint, but how do we continue to make relationships at the track that get us involved with other big companies and organizations that could potentially use our products and gain momentum that way. We'll be concentrating over the next year to two years on how to leverage that."

One way that is being done is by hosting the Wypall Wipers Bristol Track Tours, which is in its second year of existence. The event is set for Saturday, Aug. 23, at Bristol Motor Speedway as part of the annual Sharpie 500 weekend.

"Each time we try to make it a little better," Merrill said. "A lot of the people that come to the races and do the track tour are hospitality or suite guests who are typically B2B-type businesses invited by someone they have a business relationship with, and that gets us back to the kind of customer that we are looking for at the track."

With 10,000 such fans in the March of each year and 15,000 or so in August, that's a target-rich environment.

There will be interactive games, a tire-changing booth and much more at the track tour, executed by Motorsports Agency of record for Wypall Wipers, Pro Sports Management and Marketing of Charlotte, N.C. The fans who attend get to be right on the track, in the pits and garage and right up close to where it all happens. Hammond and the crew chiefs will be on hand to sign autographs and interact with the fans.

"You have the ability to lead your customer right down to the pits to see what normal people don't get to see," Merrill said. "The idea is to provide exclusive activities that you can't buy a ticket to. You have to know somebody to get there, and we hope that connection is, 'Well, we knew Wypall Wipers and they were able to get us there.'"

Nedrow, like Merrill, says the program is working, and for a brand like Wypall Wipers, that's the best news of all.

"We look at our return on investment, and we did a study last year with Georgia State at Bristol trying to understand and validate whether our proposition is getting heard? It's creating awareness that Tom referred to, yes, which is great, but will they actually buy? Can you convert that awareness to a purchase?

"Based on the survey we conducted, indeed there are a substantial number of people that will purchase, whether they're actually using it or making the decision for the facility, we're hitting the mark."

Nedrow said that one of the uses of the track tour is to provide executives an up-close look at what Wypall Wipers offers in hopes of affecting purchasing decisions.

"We generally focus on the user of course, but the decision-makers are there as well; there's a whole level of NASCAR that is in the suites, the executives," Nedrow said. "Our focus clearly is where the work is done, and Wypall Wipers is a tool they can use every day. But our important business question is 'who's making that decision?' Sometimes it's those folks up in the suites. We feel like we can cross all functions of anyone who is at a race."

That, in a nutshell, is all a sponsor asks for when playing in the deep, deep ocean that is NASCAR sponsorship.