What Drag Racing Sponsors Want: The Mechanic in the Stands

Drag racing has a sponsorship advantage most racers never use in their pitch: the people in the stands and the pits are the exact people the parts brands sell to. When I opened the Drag Racing Sponsorship Summit with a panel from NGK, K&N Filters, Permatex and Elite Motorsports, almost nobody talked about elapsed times. They talked about mechanics, influence, audience and patience. If you race at the strip and want a parts brand behind you, this is what they're actually buying.

The strip is where their customer spends the weekend

Eric Seibold of ITW Permatex gave the clearest answer I've heard for why an endemic brand picks one form of racing over another. It comes down to who uses the product. He estimated that about 60 percent of Permatex's end users are professional mechanics and about 40 percent are heavy do-it-yourselfers, and the company's own demographic research puts those mechanics at the drag strip on weekends, racing their own cars, helping a buddy or wrenching on a pro team.

Advertising alone can't reach them the same way, he said. "We could advertise all day long. We could put every one of our dollars in advertising, and we could promote plenty of awareness, but it doesn't show... the product in use, and it doesn't come off as authentic, and it doesn't meaningfully connect with the audience." ▶ Watch Eric Seibold explain this

Scott Woodruff, who spent 24 years at JEGS before moving to Elite Motorsports, sells trailers, which for many racers is the biggest purchase they'll make. His reason for being at the track is the same. "At the end of the day you need to be where your customers are. You need to be where your customers are passionate. If they're out there racing, you need to be out there racing with them. You need to be where the emotion is, and not just be a pop-up ad." ▶ See Woodruff's answer

They're paying for influence, not the time slip

Steve Williams has been at K&N for almost 29 years and helped build its sports marketing program from the grassroots up. He put the whole business case in one sentence: "The best advice I could give is you've got to be able to influence behaviors which create sales for whatever company it is you're targeting." The racers K&N backed early were the "mavens" of their local tracks, the people others asked for advice. "Mavens are really a precursor. They're the early version of what is now known as social media influencers." ▶ Watch Steve Williams on this

K&N also had a hard rule it called authenticity: products in use. If a racer wasn't running the filters, K&N wasn't sponsoring them.

Seibold sees the same gap in the decks that land on his desk. "When I get sponsorship decks, everyone's always trying to sell me on themselves, and maybe they put in a little about their schedule and the number of people showing up, but they don't often show me enough about how they connect with the audience, and that's what we're looking at." ▶ See the full answer For the one or two big programs Permatex runs each year, he said, the content and the connection the drivers deliver matter more to the company than the driving itself.

Your series demographics are not your audience

When Megan Meyer asked the panel how much audience data matters, Seibold warned against the most common shortcut in drag racing decks. "If you're copying and pasting demographic information from your series and the schedule, what you're telling me is I can hit all those same people by calling the series director and putting up signs at the track. You're not really giving me anything individual." ▶ Watch the exchange

What he wants is your niche. Permatex worked with Jay Blake of Follow A Dream Racing for about ten years because Blake "really carved out a niche with veterans," a group Permatex knew it could reach through him. "What's your niche? Who's your audience? Not just the audience that's at the race, but who's your audience?"

Jackie Donahue, marketing manager at NGK Spark Plugs, gave a concrete example of what a brand is screening for. "Since we are trying to skew towards more of the younger demographic, the 18 to 30 year olds, that's a big deal," she said. NGK asks racers what their social audience looks like. If you can't answer that question, you can't make the case. ▶ Watch Jackie Donahue on audience data

Product first, money later

Every brand on the panel described the same ladder. Donahue starts most new partners on product, "just to make sure they're using the product," and treats the early stage as an audition. "It is like a job interview, right? You're coming to me, you're coming to our team, we're trying to see if this is going to work out." How long before product turns into cash? "Probably like a year. Try them with product for a year, and then after that, trying to develop something." ▶ Watch Jackie Donahue on this

Seibold was just as clear that a stranger never walks in and gets a big-money deal. At Permatex, a racer the company doesn't know starts with product, builds a relationship and then hopefully works into some cash. And Williams added a timing rule that costs racers deals every year. Budgets lock early, so ask about the calendar before you ask for anything. "One of the first questions I would ask any target, whether it's for product or money, is... what's a good time to talk to you about? And it's not PRI. It's like, when do you develop what next year's looks like?" ▶ Watch Steve Williams on timing

Over-deliver on the small deal

The step from product to money is earned during the product year. Williams wants racers who make a small budget look like a bargain. "You want to be somebody that they can't do without. You want whoever's inside that company to go, 'Man, we didn't really pay him that much money, but I cannot believe the way and how hard they work to help us...'" Then the brand starts doing the math in your favor: "I'm giving them five thousand dollars worth of product, but man, what could they do if I was paying them 25,000 a year?" ▶ Watch Williams explain it

He also reminded racers that marketing departments are smaller than they look. "Give them a turnkey opportunity to promote their brand. Do the work for them, because a lot of times we're understaffed."

His favorite example was tiny. Two young junior dragster racers asked K&N to back a local burnout contest for about $500. Williams agreed if they made it look like a K&N show, and they did: "They sent me turnkey videos, there were banners everywhere, the announcer kept talking about K&N." That small event led to a real dollar sponsorship of their junior dragsters.

Ask how they picture success

Woodruff closed with advice that works for any brand in any class. "Number one, don't make any assumptions. Number two, ask what is important, what's most important to them." Then go one step further: "Ask them, how do you visualize this program being a success? When you think of this program, what do you see in your head?" ▶ Watch Woodruff's closing advice

Donahue's version was just as simple. Work out what you're good at, whether that's short videos or Instagram posts, "and then ask me the question: what do you guys need from me?" ▶ See Donahue's closing advice

The takeaway

• Lead with who you reach. If your crew, your followers or your local track are full of mechanics and serious DIYers, say so and prove it.
• Drop the copied series demographics. Describe your own niche: who follows you, and why they listen.
• Expect a product year. Treat it as the job interview, and deliver more than the parts are worth.
• Ask each brand when it plans next year's budget, then make contact well before that window.
• In your first real conversation, ask how they'd picture success and what they need from you, then build the program around the answer.