On Twitter, INDYCAR’s miss becomes NASCAR’s hit
IndyCar, IndyCar commentary — By Steph Wallcraft on February 29, 2012 2:05 pmSo, Brad Keselowski tweets a few times during the red flag period of Monday night’s Daytona 500, and major news outlets across America fall over themselves declaring NASCAR’s brilliance in embracing social media.
Meanwhile, INDYCAR and its teams have been using social media for more than two years. About 95% of INDYCAR’s drivers have Twitter accounts and use them regularly. And social media advocates within the sport have been screaming out about the unharnessed potential Twitter holds to expand and engage the fan base.
And what has INDYCAR gotten out of Twitter? Certainly not the above-the-fold headlines that NASCAR has enjoyed for the past couple of days.
Social media isn’t the first subject on which INDYCAR has allowed itself to be largely ignored.
For example, INDYCAR had Danica for six years and only just barely managed to scrape her into household name status — and the people who knew her name weren’t always aware that she was an INDYCAR driver. Meanwhile, she’s driven in exactly one Sprint Cup race, and INDYCAR has already been taken to school on how to leverage a driver’s promotional potential.
And after Danica’s huge shunt in the Nationwide race last weekend, what did she tweet? That she needs to thank NASCAR for the SAFER barrier that spared her from more serious injury. She needs to thank NASCAR! How quickly she’s forgotten that the SAFER barrier originated as an INDYCAR innovation. Convenient, that.
These are harsh words, but they need to be said: It’s high time someone at 16th and Georgetown took a look at these issues and started asking some hard questions. Why does INDYCAR continually get walked all over by NASCAR in the mainstream media? Why does INDYCAR allow this to happen? And most importantly, when are we finally going to admit that we’ve been going about this the wrong way all along and do what needs to be done to fix it?
The majority of people reading these words will happily declare that INDYCAR is a superior sporting product to NASCAR, particularly with the exciting changes on the horizon for this season. But if INDYCAR doesn’t very quickly start learning how to throw the gauntlet and do these things right, no one outside the current fan base will ever know.
Tags: NASCAR, Verizon IndyCar Series - Marketing
Thanks for saying all that Stef, especially the way @IndyCar missed the bandwagon on Danica, mostly by being so pissed off about the attention she did get. Paddock and Pagoda both guilty there.
Good read Steph… PR department needs a shake-up. They still personality of Tony George (passive) as opposed to Randy Bernard (candid and forward thinking).
Wow,
Salient points all.
When a political figure crosses over to the “dark side” I have no more to do with them, same goes for Danica, Sam, JPM, Dinger, Dario et al. Indycar never did sell their product even before Danica. I watched the Daytona pre race & listened to all the Danica hype at nauseum. I’m guessing all this will start to lay heavy on the stomachs of all the other “stars” of NASCAR as it continues. I mean DW already stated she is “The Face” of NASCAR. Patience boys, our star will start to shine soon enough.
It helps to be highly promoted on network television, over a low rated cable sports channel. Of course the greatest elephant in the room–weekly ratings. When your ratings rival ARCA, does it matter you have been on social media longer?
maybe (probably) I’m a social media neanderthal, but what’s the point?
so Indycar twittered, but it got no play until Nascar (much bigger audience) did it? that makes sense because it’s much bigger. it doesn’t mean Indycar was promoting it enough. and Danica got plenty of Indycar-level publicity, but of course Nascar (again, bigger) kicked it up a notch.
indycar’s publicity can encourage all the twittering they want, but–for now at least–it’s going to be dwarfed by anything N-car does. it’s like comparing the NFL to Arena Football. it’s bigger.
Who cares what NASCAR twits.
Ding Dong the witch is dead.
Danica thanks NASCAR for the SAFER barrier, DW says Danica is teaching NASCAR drivers how to turn loose of the wheel, DW claims Dario’s NASCAR experience led him to three straight IndyCar tiles, blah, blah, blah.
The NASCAR machine gets away with such malarkey because they can. As you say, no one calls their hand on it. Hopefully, Randy Bernard can devise away to take NASCAR and the media to task anytime these myths are propagated.
There’s really nothing Indycar can do about these issues as long as it is seen as being a minor league sport. The American sports landscape can only comprehend one league with one sport; the NFL is football, NHL is hockey, and NASCAR for better or worse is auto racing. You can be a minor league sport and come up with any innovation you want and no one will care until a big league comes along and steals it. That’s how the sports world works, heck, it’s essentially how the business world works, so that shouldn’t be a surprise.
The argument used to go around about how NASCAR had reached its level of popularity because of its population of “American short track drivers” who had established fan bases. I always thought this was exactly backward, and the new spike in Danica-interest proves it. NASCAR has a brand, and then legitimates everything it touches by stamping its brand on them. You could take the entire Indycar field, swap them with the Sprint Cup grid and tomorrow your coworkers will be talking about how much they like that nice JR Hildebrand, and think Sebastian Bourdais is a prissy Frenchman. It has nothing to do with promoting drivers; you can promote drivers all you want, you can have make them a door to door barbershop quartet in every city if you want, nothing will matter if they don’t have the NASCAR brand stamped on them.
NASCAR is a series on network TV heavily promoted, IndyCar is mostly on a low rated cable station and when on ABC almost never promoted beyond the 500. I wonder why the smaller fan base?
So, what I’m reading from some of you is that NASCAR is bigger than INDYCAR and INDYCAR should therefore not bother trying to do a better job of promoting itself.
When it’s put that way, does that still make sense to you?
Indycar should promote itself, but it (and the fandom) shouldn’t expect a magic bullet marketing strategy that will solve everything. That everyone seems astonished at a NASCAR driver using Twitter (or having opposable thumbs) isn’t the result of a flaw in Indycar’s Twitter strategy. That’s just too small to matter.
What Indycar needs is a sugar daddy to come along as RJ Reynolds did for NASCAR and sink hundreds of millions of dollars to turn it into their private playground. Unless you know a Middle Eastern oil princeling who likes Indycar racing and has a few billion to blow, that isn’t going to happen.
I think you’re making too big a deal of Danica’s comment about the SAFER barrier. She didn’t thank NASCAR for “inventing” it, just for putting it up at Daytona. That’s fair and accurate. IndyCar has nothing to do with DIS.
Are you now going to insist she thank the inventor of seat belts, helmets, Nomex, etc.???
It sounds like you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder when it comes to NASCAR and take offense easily.
I look at it this way. IndyCar acts like Estella in “Great Expectations,” and NASCAR acts like a Scandanavian prostitute.
You can argue about which is more ladylike and respectable, but you can’t argue about who gets more sex.
Writer, I think you might need some reading practice! This article isn’t about how NASCAR stole IndyCar’s idea and pretended it was their’s, this article is about how IndyCar is consistently unable to get traction on their marketing strategies.
Steph just highlighted that with some key examples. She is actually praising NASCAR, and asking IndyCar to re-think their approach, that’s not a chip, that’s the exact opposite of a chip.
Clown.
Just want to point out that NASCAR, participated in the development of the SAFER barrier, that was spearheaded by Tony George.
Oh and by the way NASCAR did not always have the safer barrier on the inside wall, so contrary to what you believe Danica should thank NASCAR for installing the SAFER barrier there. I am also pretty sure that it is NASCAR and NOT Indycar that requires the tracks it races on to have the SAFER Barrier in place.
Personally I think you sound silly criticizing Danica for thanking NASCAR. I mean really com on!!
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