An effective and sustainable way to activate your motorsports sponsorship and engage with your audience is through a strategic showcar program. No longer are the teams people who transport a car to an event, set up some chairs, and endure the day. We have expanded this more traditional program for our clients by integrating them into a larger marketing mix, now leveraging them as Experiential Marketing & Merchandising Teams (EMTs).
Showcar programs have been used in the marketing world for many years, and for good reason. Using a sponsorship asset in this way allows our teams to bring the excitement of motorsports to you. How often do you get the opportunity to see a real race car up close, see a race-used engine and ask all the questions you want to know about racing? Since expanding the program from a traditional showcar program into a more robust marketing platform, our EMTs have naturally become mobile brand ambassadors for our partners.
Coast to coast in North America, they are representing multiple stakeholders and bringing brand awareness, product knowledge, and the ability to answer real-time questions for fans and customers. This engagement often results in local media attention and other organic, grassroots marketing value. When working with retail sites, our teams engage local managers and gather live business intelligence that helps drive sales and create a better experience for customers.
Create some buzz for your next event with an engaging performance display.
By incorporating these teams strategically, we can access a larger group of our partner's key audience and objectives. After initial analysis, this concept is driving traffic and driving sales for clients with retail outlets. According to Statistic Brain, 66% of fans are willing to pay more for a sponsor’s products than those not in the sport. With 75 million NASCAR fans, that adds up to substantial revenue. We activate this willingness by placing our sponsor right next to the place where their products are sold. Using EMTs is one way we work with partners on building custom programs that extract the most value out of a particular asset.
To start seeing big ROI through showcars and EMTs, we recommend starting with these rich placement opportunities:
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Retail store locations
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Industry conventions or trade shows
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Corporate gatherings such as shareholder and board meetings
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Grand opening parties
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Drive traffic at underperforming locations
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Use it as an award for sales contests, or employee recognition
The next step to enhancing your program's ROI with a strategic showcar program is to align it with your other initiatives. We recently developed a resource that explores this idea further. Check it out below.
Updated for added value.
