NASCAR builds awareness for regional businesses

Auto races are known for them: fast-moving cars covered in company logos.
And it doesn’t take too long to spot the names of a few Springfield companies on racing cars.
Bass Pro Shops, Tracker Boats and O’Reilly Automotive invest millions of dollars to post their names on cars, drivers and on the races themselves.
Bass Pro Shops and Tracker Boats have been sponsoring NASCAR drivers for five years, beginning with Dale Earnhardt Sr. The company now sponsors eight drivers at varying levels of competition and funding, including Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kerry Earnhardt, Tony Stewart, Elliot Sadler, Michael Waltrip and Jeff Burton.
The company’s main car – the car that prominently features the Bass Pro logo on the hood – is driven by reigning Busch Series champion Martin Truex Jr.
Bass Pro also is the title sponsor of the annual October race in Atlanta: the Bass Pro MBNA 500.
Springfield-based O’Reilly Automotive also puts money into different racing events, including Nextel Cup, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Busch Series racing and the National Hot Rod Association. The company is sponsoring more than 1,100 events this season, including grass-roots racing circuits such as the sprint car and modified circuits.
The motivation for spending the money is simple.
“It’s about brand awareness,” said Larry Whiteley, Bass Pro spokesman. “The NASCAR fan is our type of customer – they’re outdoor enthusiasts. They’ve done surveys, and the majority of the fans hunt and fish, and this keeps our brand in front of them.”
That loyalty is not just theory.
According to a recent study conducted by professors from the universities of Missouri-Kansas City, Southern Mississippi and Queensland, 72 percent of NASCAR fans prefer brands that sponsor NASCAR.

Collegiate sponsorships
Great Southern Bank also realizes the value in sports sponsorships. The Springfield bank sponsors on the high school, collegeiate and semiprofessional levels, as well as with local parks systems. The bank’s sponsored programs include the football, basketball and baseball teams at Southwest Missouri State University and basketball programs at Drury University and Missouri Southern State University, as well as the Springfield Cardinals.
Great Southern Marketing Director Teresa Chasteen-Calhoun said the college and professional sponsorships bank hopes to capitalize on fans’ inherent interest in their home teams.
“There’s such an allegiance and a loyalty and a desire to be involved among fans that if we can somehow capture that and turn that into them being a customer of our company, that’s very valuable,” she said.
O’Reilly has made its mark in collegiate basketball, as well.
The company has its logo on the court at Texas Tech University, and it has deals with more than 20 other colleges and three sports conferences.
Kevin Greven, motor sports marketing manager for O’Reilly, said the return for his company is hard to quantify.
“There’s a lot of different things you can look at to tell you what return on investment you’re getting,” he said. “The main thing we get is what the stores are hearing through our customers, about the excitement around the events.”
Whiteley said the return on investment sometimes comes from the drivers the company sponsors.
“All these guys are outdoor enthusiasts, too. They love to hunt or fish,” he said. “They’re fans of Bass Pro Shops. It’s kind of neat; we’re fans of them, but we find out they’re fans of us, too.”

An expensive proposition
Brand awareness does not come cheaply. Nextel paid an estimated $600 million to $750 million over 10 years for naming rights to NASCAR’s top circuit, while PepsiCo paid $500 million over eight years to make Gatorade the official sports beverage of the National Football League.
While spending is on a smaller scale locally, officials are tight-lipped about the amounts.
Chasteen-Calhoun would not disclose exactly how much Great Southern spends on sponsorships, though she did say that it represents at least half of the company’s advertising and marketing budget annually.
Bass Pro and O’Reilly officials also declined to disclose how much they spend.
However, a recent series of reports by the cable network Speed Channel said that the cost for primary NASCAR car sponsorship – having the company logo on the hood and rear quarter panels of the car and on the driver’s uniform – is anywhere from $12 million to $16 million per car.
There are other levels of car sponsorship. The cost to be a major associate, which will get a logo on the rear deck lid of the car, runs between $2 million and $4 million, while associate sponsorships, which include logo placement on the posts of the car, ranges from $50,000 to $500,000 per car.
Most of Bass Pro’s NASCAR sponsorships are at the associate level.