Feb 26, 2006

Fast and Furious at the Track

The NASCAR Nextel Cup season has started and they're coming at us thick, fast and furious.  No, we're not talking about the racing cars; we're talking about the promotional campaigns.  In an effort to "leverage" their investments in the racing series into promotional opportunities that will draw fan interest and, presumably, sales, several companies cranked up the promotional machine at Daytona.

For instance, Ford, which is fielding the new Fusion as a replacement for its old Taurus, is warning against Overactive Adrenaline Disorder (O.A.D.), a dysfunction the carmaker coined as part of its latest integrated campaign. The effort, which takes the form of a pseudo-informational campaign about the fictional disease, debuted prior to the Daytona 500. The online part of the campaign centers around a Web site called Carl's Thrill Ride where visitors can run diagnostic tests on themselves to determine if they have the disorder. It includes Rorschach-style visualization tests, while another area asks visitors to put their heads up to their computer screens for Adrena-Scan brain imaging.

Meanwhile UPS is upping the ante on its popular "Race the Truck" campaign, by building a real racing truck.  Not a company to waste resources, its truck is based on a 20-year-old, 250,000-mile UPS package-delivery car. A team of fabrication specialists transformed the old truck into a race-worthy steed, dropping in a 514-cubic-inch factory Ford SVO engine that generates 620 horsepower and 700 pounds of torque. The engine, in turn, was fitted with a two-stage nitrous oxide injection system that boosts its output to 800 horsepower, allowing for low gear burnouts and an estimated top speed of nearly 150 mph on the track.  That'll get your package there on time, buddy.
 
Finally, Office Depot is offering small business owners a rare opportunity to capitalize on both "the huge popularity of driver Carl Edwards and the incredible marketing power of NASCAR" by offering its customers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be named the "Official Small Business of NASCAR." One lucky small business will win the rights to have its company name and logo emblazoned on the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion driven by Edwards for the final 25 races of the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series season. The "Official Small Business of NASCAR" winner's company logo will make its debut on the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion Memorial Day weekend and remain there through the balance of the schedule. Additionally, the winning company will have the unique right to promote its business by using the "Official Small Business of NASCAR" logo for business cards, letterhead and other materials for a full year.  It'll be interesting to see if that sponsorship makes the cash registers ring.