What Brands Look For in a Racer: The Ryan Beat Case Study

Racers ask me all the time what brands look for. One way to answer is to pick a racer that several brands chose and ask each of them why. Ryan Beat, a two-time Pro Lite champion in short-course off-road racing, works well for that. His name came up again and again across my Summits, Meet the Sponsors webinars and PRI Show seminars, from brands as different as Chevrolet, Bilstein, Wheel Pros, Holley, K1 RaceGear and Lucas Oil. Each one described the same racer in a different way, and together they make a useful checklist.

Build the program before the big brand shows up

Chevrolet never got a pitch from Beat. He described how the deal began when a stranger walked up to the fence at a race. Beat invited him into the pits, showed him the truck and the engine, and talked shop. The visitor noticed details only a real Chevy person would catch. At the next race at Crandon, the man came back and introduced himself as the head of GM propulsion, with a project to discuss.

Beat doesn't credit luck. He credits the years of work that made his pit worth walking into. "I've worked really hard over the past 10 years in short course to build the most professional program that I possibly could. We have the pit presence, we have activation in our pits, we have data collection in our pits, and we really try to do things right, and I think you have to cover all those bases to really attract the big ones." ▶ Watch Ryan Beat tell the Chevrolet story

He also invested ahead of the deal. When COVID hit, he paid for a new, current-model Chevy body while many teams ran Fords or older bodies. "If I thought I was going to have a chance at getting a manufacturer involved, I had to be on the leading front or cutting edge of making sure that my trucks looked as professional as possible, but not only professional, but OE related." His summary: "It wasn't me going after anybody. It was just more or less one of those, being prepared for that situation at the right time when it happens."

What Chevrolet saw was a team that already looked like a factory program before any factory money arrived.

Help them make the product better

Bilstein came to Beat with a problem. "One of their marketing managers approached me at the time and said, hey man, we're looking to get in the sport of short course. We have a shock, we know it's unproven, but we would like to work with you in developing not only a shock but proving that it's far superior than the other manufacturers." The first deal was small: "I think it was like 10,000 bucks. It was very small for us at the time, and they were very large on the truck." He accepted because his team works on its own trucks and he believed he could add value, and the shock he helped develop went on to dominate short course. ▶ Watch Beat on the Bilstein deal

Why him? "They saw a good representative, a well-branded team that was professional and running well, and I represented myself correctly on social media, and I went on the podium, and our trucks looked good, so they wanted to be a part of that. Looking and doing right always attracts and draws in sponsors."

At a PRI Show seminar, the Wheel Pros executive on my panel described the same kind of relationship from the brand side. "We use our athletes a lot for R&D. So when we're looking at people that potentially become part of the roster, these are also people that are gonna help us build a better product," he said. "We actually work with Ryan Beat as well, and he's come in and helped us make a better Pro Lite wheel. We've put sensors on his car, we're measuring G-loads and corners and stuff like that, to where they work as close with R&D as they do with marketing." The payoff goes both ways: "He can speak well educated about the product, and it's something that makes us both better." ▶ Watch the seminar

A racer who can test, measure and explain a product is worth more than a racer who just runs it. And because he helped develop the parts, he can talk about them with real knowledge, which most marketing can't fake.

Make the brand look good in public

The same Wheel Pros executive explained what his contracts ask for on social media, and it isn't ads. "We don't want you to be a commercial. We don't want you to just repost a picture of a wheel: hey, they're great, they sponsor me. We want it to be organic. We want to see it on your wife's car. We want to see it on your buddy's car." ▶ See the full seminar

Another brand executive on that panel explained why that matters before a deal is ever signed. "As brands, the first thing we do when we look at an athlete that we're trying to build a relationship is we look at what you're posting on social media, we look at how you conduct yourself, we look at how you work with other sponsors." He then pointed the audience to Beat, who was also a BELL athlete, as a racer worth studying.

Your feed and your behavior at the track are the background check. Beat made sure his passed.

Offer something before you ask

Two more brands told similar stories. Bill Tichenor of Holley said Beat volunteered his spare truck for a Holley event before he had any deal, and later became the face of a Holley product that fixed a problem he'd had on the track (see the Holley guide). JR Twedt of K1 RaceGear said Beat's first question to him was what K1 needed and how Beat's team and partners could help (see the K1 RaceGear guide). Both brands remembered that Beat offered help before he asked for anything. Even his Lucas Oil sponsorship, Beat has said, started with a flatbed trailer, an off-road truck and a friendship built at the Lucas Oil off-road races (see the Lucas Oil guide).

The sponsors' gains also overlapped. At that same PRI seminar I mentioned a story I'd heard about Beat's co-sponsor General Tire, which put him in a national TV campaign. Because the truck in those commercials was wrapped in Bilstein colors, Bilstein got visibility that General Tire had paid for. When a racer's sponsors work together, each one gets more than it paid for.

The unwritten list

Cam Douglass, director of marketing at Optima Batteries, has a name for what Beat's sponsors were describing: his unwritten list. Follower counts, views and race wins are things he takes for granted, he said. They check a box. But the partners Optima values most share qualities that never appear in a proposal: chemistry with his team, creative suggestions and solutions, and a can-do attitude when he needs an autograph session on short notice. His last item matters most to a four-person marketing department: "They contribute to the workload, not add to it." ▶ Watch Cam Douglass explain his list

Every brand that backed Beat described a racer who made its job easier: a professional pit, useful test data, real product knowledge and a willingness to help before being asked.

The takeaway

• Run your program like a factory team before any factory is watching: clean pits, current equipment and a real activation.
• Offer to help develop and test products, and keep data good enough for an engineer to use.
• Post about your sponsors' products naturally, the way you'd talk about them with friends.
• Assume every brand will check your social media and ask your other sponsors about you.
• Offer help before you ask for money, and make every sponsor's job easier.