Brand Loyalty

As the NASCAR season is one week away from the shootout it is time to know how is racing for what sponsor.  This year like most years there are some shuffling of drivers and numbers and sponsors. Thinking of one of my favorite drivers Mark Martin and his new sponsor Aarons sponsor got me thinking about Brand Loyalty.

It has long been said that NASCAR fans are the most brand loyal people around, and since the late 90's more companies have joined the ranks. NASCAR fans can still be loyal but i think the sponsor's in some cases are advertising in a market that isn't their consumer base. Case in point DuPont, Gordon's primary sponsor for 18 years and still 12 race sponsor. Who knows what they do? They are a chemical company, and they have used their sponsorship to get their name out their, but they don't make consumer goods so they don't benefit from the brand loyalty of Gordon's fans. It is good advertisement but are they getting their monies worth out of it. At about $500,000 a race Dupont has dumped $20 mil a year into advertising a company that the average viewer has no idea what they do.

Comparing a Driver of similar fame tony Stewart who has sponsors that are more at the fans level. When Driving for the #20 Home Depot you bet that many of his fans would only use that as their hardware store, especially when the other option is Johnson's Lowe's or Menard's Menards. But the case seems to me at least that many of the sponsor are not in touch with their fan base. Now that being said i realize I don't fit the historical fan base of NASCAR but living within 30min of Chicagoland speedway I m at least kind of in the geographical range, and as a 20 year old male i represent a demographic NASCAR is desperately trying to reach. And have done so with the adding of sponsors like AMP, Monster, and such.

But still major sponsors such as Sunoco (I have never even seen a sunoco gas station, as they are only in 26 states), and Mark Martin's former GoDaddy, along with many other sponsors I would never have the need for their product.

Point of all of this is as a guy that chose Amp over Monster because of Dale Jr. and prefers to shop at a Home Depot because of Tony Stewart, and will take a Coke the official non-alcoholic beverage of NASCAR over a Pepsi any day, and a proud user of Gillette thanks to Busch and Edwards and other NASCAR "young guns", and would never put anything but goodyears on my car even if it is a VW, I feel that some sponsors just don't fit in. That being said I realize there aren't enough beer companies to sponsor every car and some race fans do need Viagra, but if we don't stop some where we will have "Maxipad the offical tampon of NASCAR Drivers"