NASCAR begins campaign that targets core fan base

NASCAR is unveiling a brand message for the season dubbed "Our NASCAR"

that targets its core fans, the same ones who have complained that the sport left them behind during its growth.

The brand message is part of an overall strategy to prevent erosion of the sport's core fan base and reflects the attention NASCAR is paying to declines in TV ratings and attendance, especially among its most loyal fans.

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Sunday's 50th running of the Daytona 500 on FOX scored increased average audience, total audience and household ratings compared to a year ago, according to fast national figures released Monday by Nielsen Media Research.

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NASCAR's research indicates the core fans are watching less. Dick Glover, NASCAR's former vice president of broadcasting and new media, attributed the TV ratings drop in 2007 to "heavy viewers watching fewer events [two less]" annually and "lower initial tune-in," meaning fewer viewers were in front of the TV for the green flag.

That information was in Glover's year-end report to sponsors and other stakeholders after a season in which network ratings dropped 11 percent, from a 5.4 in 2006 to a 4.8 last year, the second consecutive year of decline.

NASCAR described that research as proprietary and would not comment.

Glover left NASCAR in January to become CEO of Funny or Die Networks.

TV viewership also dropped among males 55 and over, another statistic that could speak to the loyalty of the longtime fan. These figures offer some support to the more anecdotal complaints longtime fans have voiced about inconsistent start times, the commercialization of the sport and the desertion of tracks in the Southeast such as North Wilkesboro and Rockingham, both in North Carolina, in favor of new markets such as Los Angeles, which is served by two races per year at California Speedway.

NASCAR has responded with a strategy that includes "Our NASCAR" and a more proactive approach with the sport's key stakeholders. Privately, CEO Brian France and his top executives met with top racetrack officials, team executives and broadcast partners in New York during the offseason to share research and talk about NASCAR's marketing plans moving forward. The full "Our NASCAR" plans were unveiled Friday at a sponsor summit in Daytona Beach, Fla.

"It's about looking reflectively at the great things that connect people to the sport," said Jim Obermeyer, NASCAR's managing director of brand and consumer marketing. "We can't address everything in one campaign, but [fan complaints] was an input that led to this strategy. It'd be foolish to assume that one campaign is going to solve that, but it's also about creating a mind-set that focuses on the core fan with everything we do."

It was during Champion's Week in November in New York that France, president Mike Helton, chief marketing officer Steve Phelps and others began these strategic meetings at the Waldorf-Astoria. They met separately with track officials from Speedway Motorsports Inc. and International Speedway Corp., which play host to 31 of the 36 Sprint Cup races, to share the vision for "Our NASCAR" in hopes that tracks might fall in step with the theme of talking to the core fan. NASCAR has no authority over tracks' marketing.

Those meetings complemented France's own individual meetings with track presidents, which began last summer. Eddie Gossage, president of Texas Motor Speedway and an admitted NASCAR critic, said France flew to meet with him in August to talk about how NASCAR could better reach its fans.

"That was a big step," Gossage said. "The old NASCAR never came to talk to me. You know, we're all in this together, but it hasn't always felt that way. It was refreshing that Brian would seek out other opinions."

France's team in those meetings included Helton; Phelps; Obermeyer; Robin Pemberton, vice president of competition; Jim O'Connell, vice president of corporate marketing; Jill Gregory, director of industry marketing; and Paul Brooks, president of NASCAR Media Group. That group also met with teams and broadcast partners to set a course for 2008.

France has said he hopes broadcast partners and drivers will talk more about the action on the track than off it after a 2007 season in which competition was largely overshadowed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. changing teams and AT&T wrangling with NASCAR and Sprint in court. (Continued)