Bass Pro Shops has reeled in a racing champion. Or is it the champion that has successfully lured Bass Pro?
The national outdoor retailer on Oct. 5 signed a lead sponsorship deal with reining NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart. Bass Pro’s logo will adorn the hood of Stewart’s No. 14 car beginning in 2013.
The lead sponsorship agreement fits within an “alpha-bravo” marketing model that will give Bass Pro the most coveted advertising space – the hood of Stewart’s car, as well as the back bumper and prime fire-suit ad placement – in 18 races of the 29-race season, according to Mike Arning of True Speed Communication, agency of record for Kannapolis, N.C.-based Stewart-Haas Racing LLC. Through the marketing model, Bass Pro will be the bravo sponsor in 11 races when Mobil 1 moves into the alpha position. During Bass Pro’s secondary ad-placement stint, its logo will be featured in areas including the trunk lid and above the rear wheels.
Bass Pro spokesman Larry Whiteley said Stewart and Bass Pro founder Johnny Morris have been friends for years, and when Stewart-Haas Racing offered a lead-sponsorship opportunity after Office Depot dropped out, Morris jumped at the chance.
“He’s the defending champion,” Whiteley said of Stewart. “He is a very visible driver – a very popular driver. A lot of the people who enjoy NASCAR and enjoy Tony Stewart enjoy Bass Pro, too. We are marketing to them.”
The company has had smaller sponsorships with Stewart since 2006.
Richard Sheehan, a business professor at the University of Notre Dame specializing in sports economics, said NASCAR appeals to a wide range of advertisers due to the amount of brand exposure.
“The issue, in part, is a question of eyeballs,” said Sheehan, author of multiple books, including “Keeping Score: the Economics of Big-Time Sports.” “You have a choice of picking up a regular advertisement on network TV, versus getting continuous advertisement while your car is racing around a track.”
Last year, NASCAR sponsors received more than $1.1 billion in exposure for their brands, according to a study by Sydney-based sports marketing firm Repucom.
The estimated value is based on a number of matrixes including the amount of time brands are on television, and the logo prominence in comparison to competing brands, according to Repucom’s U.S. Executive Vice President Pete Laatz, who works in Charlotte, N.C.
“From an expectation standpoint, (Bass Pro) is going to crush it. Tony Stewart is the defending champion. He has a long relationship with those guys,” Laatz said. “There is a very important alignment that I think he has with those guys from an outdoor standpoint with his lifestyle and the lifestyle that Bass Pro tries to promote. … There is a definite brand fit there.”
Stewart, Laatz points out, is an avid fisherman and has worked with Morris through the Catch-A-Dream Foundation to take kids with life-threatening illnesses hunting every year on his Indiana farm. In addition, Laatz described Stewart as one of the top five marketable drivers.
“His hood is waterfront property. It is prime real estate,” Laatz said. “There’s an old saying, ‘The hood is good.’”
While Whiteley and Arning declined to disclose terms of the deal, Laatz said his company had determined that Stewart’s current alpha advertiser, Office Depot, had received $9.8 million in estimated marketing value through Oct. 13, with about a month left in the 2012 season.
According to
Politico.com, the U.S. Army paid $11.3 million in 2011 for another top driver, Ryan Newman, in its 15-race hood-sponsorship deal.
Notre Dame’s Sheehan said the National Football League is the No. 1 sport for advertisers, followed by Major League Baseball. Rankings aside, he said NASCAR’s business model is in a league of its own.
“You may not have the ability to structure a story like you would in a 30-second ad, but you have something that is on the screen for quite a period of time,” Sheehan said.
“With in-stadium signage, no one comes close to NASCAR at all,” he added, noting rotating signs in basketball, hockey and baseball are becoming more popular. “But (those signs) are not as strong in terms of placement. Those rotating banners are in some sense a side show, distracting viewers from the action as opposed to being part of the action.”
Whiteley said the sponsorship agreement with Stewart would help it keep pace with other top brands across the country.
“NASCAR is highly covered by the national media,” Whiteley said, pointing to Advertising Age naming Bass Pro Shops among the Hottest Brands in America in 2010. “That is pretty good company to keep, and that’s because we’ve worked hard to keep our brand out there in front of the American public.”
More recently, Bass Pro has been a lead sponsor for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing’s Jamie McMurray, a Joplin native, who won the 2010 Daytona 500, one of the sport’s top races. Whiteley said the company would continue its relationship with McMurray, but he declined to say at what level.
Sheehan said the outdoor retailer’s move is probably a calculated decision.
“It might get more eyeballs on the daytime soaps, but I don’t think they’ll sell as much product to the people who are watching,” he said.
Laatz said fan support of NASCAR sponsors is wide and deep. “Sponsors make the sport go ‘round. Without a sponsor, a driver doesn’t have a job,” Laatz said.
Laatz thinks fans will respond positively to Bass Pro’s arrangement.
“It is not all about winning races. It is about getting exposure and running upfront consistently,” he said. “It is the whole package.”[[In-content Ad]]
