RETAILERS, START YOUR ENGINES 1998-09-14 (1)

Dale Buss

"We're seeing not only more requests for account-specific stuff from supermarkets, but more requests for everything we've got related to NASCAR," said Anheuser-Busch's Hoff. "Chains are just looking for ways to affiliate themselves with the sport." With Anheuser-Busch, for example, IGA is sponsoring a contest giveaway of a trip to next year's Bud Shootout race, which is run at the venerable Daytona Beach track before the official NASCAR season begins each spring.

Considering NASCAR's zooming growth and popularity, perhaps the most surprising thing is that some packaged-goods marketers still seem to be surprised by the marketing opportunity NASCAR provides them. General Mills Co., for example, discovered that NASCAR fans "are a good fit for nearly all of our major brands." And so, after zilch involvement in the sport before, the Minneapolis food giant went wild this year - -- its Cheerios brand sponsored a Winston Cup team, car No. 26, driven by Johnny Benson; its Bugels brand became an associate sponsor of Martin's car, and its Wheaties brand made a onetime deal with the Dale Earnhart team for the Winston Cup all-star race.

General Mills' regional sales reps are offering in-store displays and cooperating with supermarket chains around the country on merchandising events, fan festivals and other promotions. Because the company is so new to NASCAR, it tends to let its grocery-store partners lead the efforts. "Accounts know what works in their stores and have developed these programs because they work," said Laurie Greeno, vice president and director of the Cheerios Racing Team for General Mills. "There's the best opportunity for us to improve our merchandising performance if we tie into something that's already important to them and their consumer base.

Thorn Apple Valley jumped whole hog into NASCAR sponsorship this year -- its first year -- sponsoring the Cale Yarborough team on the Winston Cup circuit. That meant its logo has consistently appeared prominently emblazoned on the car's hood and deck lid, and on the in-car camera during TV telecasts. The company also became an official sponsor of NASCAR's 50th anniversary and slapped the golden-anniversary logo on packages of all four of its major brands: Corn King, Colonial, Wilson and Thorn Apple Valley meats.

"We also offer all the tie-ins, in ads and flyers, custom-header cards for POP [point of purchase] -- everything is customized for the retailer," said Thorn Apple Valley's Farley. "And we keep funneling the program down because this provides us with an excellent platform for account-specific promotions with retailers big and small."

At a Super Kmart in Canton, Mich., over the summer, Thorn Apple Valley staged a "mega meat sale" that featured five NASCAR show cars in the store's parking lot, a live on-location broadcast by a popular hard-rock radio station, ticket giveaways for the circuit race nearby and a sweepstakes for a go-cart replica of the company's NASCAR vehicle. At many other stores, Thorn Apple Valley brought show cars to supermarket parking lots along with a battery of grills so customers could sample sausage as they gawked at the hardware.

Not surprisingly, however, as big as it has gotten, the NASCAR marketing phenomenon already has spawned some cautionary tales for packaged-goods makers and supermarket chains alike. One of the most important lessons is the reminder that, beneath all the marketing, stock-car racing is still a competitive sport -- and fans still like winners more than they like losers.

For example, after touting the fact that its Busch series driver was a woman -- still quite a rarity among NASCAR competitors -- Fleming was disappointed this year with Kathryn "Kat" Teasdale's poor performance on the track. "She made perfect sense to us for our orientation to the female demographic, and she was an absolutely perfect spokesperson, but competitively it was a little difficult for her," Mills said.

"Our retailers compete to win in the marketplace, and we have expectations for our car to be victorious, too," added a Fleming spokesman. "We want to be a competitive race team." Team IGA will be switching drivers for '99. And Thorn Apple Valley had to switch drivers to Rich Bickle because its original driver, Greg Sacks, was injured.

"Those guys are different sizes and [have] different driving styles, so you have to reconfigure the cars," Farley explained. While the company's marketing staff doesn't exactly get involved in changing the hardware for the track, it does have to stay on top of the situation, and that in itself "is much more complicated than anyone would know if you're not associated with the sport."

To the extent that NASCAR is an outdoor sport and thus affected by the weather, some types of promotions are vulnerable. For example, General Mills tied in Team Cheerios and its show cars with its Suddenly Salad brand for country-and-western concerts at the sites of several major races this year. But the first one, scheduled in July in Florida in conjunction with the Pepsi 400 race, had to be postponed until October because of the fires that were raging across the eastern edge of the state at the time.

Overall, supermarkets and brand marketers are realizing that their efforts aren't going to be effective automatically just because they're labeled "NASCAR." For example, fans' loyalties rise with the price of a product or service, explained Robert Van Dam, president of Nordhaus Research, a Southfield, Mich., consumer-research concern that advises clients on NASCAR marketing. "That sort of flies in the face of what you might expect, but we've found it to be true."

And whether NASCAR is right for a brand marketer, for example, depends on the kind of competitive battle you're in. "If I'm Tide, I think it makes all the sense in the world, because the affinity can provide that subtle little difference that might switch someone from buying a box of Surf," said Doug Rose, marketing director for QVC, the home-shopping network that has been a NASCAR sponsor. "But for us, our game isn't a share battle, but to grow the category and get people to change their behavior and start new behavior; it's more ethereal."

NASCAR's Pyne said "coming into NASCAR for defensive reasons" -- so rivals can't grab a sponsorship -- "isn't a good expenditure. It's difficult to buy every single driver, every single team, every single track....You have to go on the offensive. Understand what your objectives are, tailor a program that allows you to meet them and leverage your involvement."

And it's certainly possible to overspend. Two years ago, Maxell Corp. co-sponsored a car with Kmart Corp., "but we found it was rather expensive to participate," recalled Scott Fain, product marketing manager for audio tape, video tape and other consumer lines for the Fairlawn, N.J., company. "We found we could do other things with the money that we were spending on cars that otherwise could drive that business at Kmart." So this year, Maxell has become Wal-Mart Supercenters' official marketing partner for NASCAR's 50th anniversary and is focusing on an in-store decal giveaway and mail-in T-shirt and cap offers.

"We're focusing now on core groups of consumers within retailers, and the NASCAR consumer is one that happens to shop frequently at Wal-Mart," Fain said. "So I want to make my product more appealing to them than the competitors on the shelf."