Hat's off to the winner: How Pepsi landed Dale Jr. (cont'd)

Looking for a sponsorship that would bridge the gap with its energy-drink competitors, Pepsi decided early in 2007 that a motorsports play was the answer. Earnhardt was a better solution than they could have imagined. "We felt all along that if we could find the right equity in racing, we could immediately tap into a larger fan base for Amp.

Dale's got the most fans, so he was nirvana for us," said Lance Bloomberg, racing manager in Pepsi's sport marketing group. "If you do it the right way, we'll have a base to start with and you can reach out with your creative to try and broaden it."

Earnhardt's legacy, both as a fan favorite and one of NASCAR's "regular guys," dovetailed nicely with the repositioning Pepsi was planning for Amp.

While Red Bull and its clones have successfully marketed their beverages as frenetic energy, best used to stay up in the nightclub and later if needed, the "new" Amp is about energy that lends focus to daily tasks, even if they are as complex as driving at 200 mph.

Pepsi felt Earnhardt would deliver a different and more diverse consumer, as well as lend a sense of maturity to the category.

For Earnhardt, it was a step away -- although not too far away -- from the party-boy image he had cultivated with Budweiser, while maintaining a sense of authenticity with Mountain Dew. He might occasionally wear neatly pressed white shirts to Hendrick Motorsports functions, but no one is confusing Junior with a choir boy just yet.

"Adding Dale makes Amp the working man's coffee," said Tom McGovern, director of sports marketing at longtime Pepsi agency, OMD. "That should really separate Amp from Red Bull and the rest of that market."

Genesco's Dzanis, a former employee at International Speedway Corp., recalls having passing thoughts about landing Junior as early as January 2007, when reports began to surface that Junior might not renew with DEI. When Earnhardt announced that he was leaving four months later, Dzanis immediately called Pepsi Sports Group Manager John Stamatis at home, reminding him of Earnhardt's selling power in the sport. Industry analysts estimate that Junior accounts for about a third of all NASCAR's licensed merchandise sales.

"We have to get in on this," Dzanis recalls saying in his initial pitch.

But first, Pepsi had to see which team would land Earnhardt.

"If he wasn't going in the Hendrick stable, we weren't going to pursue him," Santana said.

Conversely, Santana knew that having Junior with Hendrick gave Pepsi at least an even chance of landing the popular driver. Just days after Earnhardt hit the market, Genesco had some rough marketing concepts sketched out and presented the idea more formally the next week to Santana and Stamatis.

On May 23, a very informal and initial conversation with Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, Junior's sister and president of his JR Motorsports operation, indicated some mutual interest. Approval from Gordon came the next day. On May 29, Hendrick Motorsports director of marketing Pat Perkins was at Pepsi's headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., for some Gordon-related business. Santana and others told Perkins that if Junior joined Hendrick, they wanted him. Perkins told them they were at the top "of a very short list."

Things heated up from there. Just after the Autism Speaks 400 race in Dover, Del., in early June, Gordon and Earnhardt discussed the deal on the helipad, and just about 10 days later, on June 13, Junior announced his decision to join Hendrick.

The race within the race was on.

Immediately following, a two-word e-mail from the ivory towers of Pepsi management convinced any doubters that the Junior hunt was real. The all-caps message from Chris Kempczinski, vice president of noncarbonated beverages, was simple and direct:

"GET JUNIOR."

Hendrick said he heard from more than 20 brands about sponsoring Junior's car. A few he knew, but most he didn't. "There were sponsors from within the sport and sponsors that I had no idea wanted to be in the sport," he said. "But it was always Pepsi's and [the] National Guard's to lose. And they never did anything to lose it."

Rumors immediately surfaced regarding who would sponsor Junior's new car, and the speculation included Wrangler, Visa and M&M's. But June 17 was the first time the eventual sponsor's name came up publicly.

Earnhardt confidant and longtime friend Darrell Waltrip did an interview on SPEED's Wind Tunnel that showed Pepsi's hand.

"It will still be probably something you can drink," Waltrip said, when asked which company would sponsor Junior's new ride. "And it won't be in a red can."

Even though Pepsi's existing deal with Hendrick offered it beverage exclusivity, Anheuser-Busch wasn't ready to surrender its relationship with Earnhardt. Within minutes of Junior's announcement with Hendrick, Tony Ponturo, Anheuser-Busch's vice president of global media and sports marketing, personally called Rick Hendrick to express his interest in moving over with Junior and sponsoring the car. But as the days passed, speculation surfaced that Bud and Hendrick weren't on the best of terms from their split a decade ago, and there was a prevailing sense that Earnhardt might be ready to go in another direction, as well.

"We were going to have a hard time with [Anheuser-Busch] anyway because there was already the conflict with Pepsi," Perkins said. "Then there was the whole Dale Jr. side of it. So there were a lot of major hurdles to get past before we could have any real serious discussions with Pepsi." (Continued)