After a decade-long hiatus from the sport, Shell made a NASCAR comeback this year as primary sponsor of Kevin Harvick’s No. 29 car.
The company gained an almost immediate edge from the move—starting with the up close and personal hospitality opportunities.
“It is amazing how, when you get [Shell distributors] there, they see the advantage of NASCAR sponsorship and why we’re back in it,” Heidi Massey-Bong, senior business advisor of NASCAR sponsorship for Shell Oil Products, said earlier this week at the SportsBusiness Journal’s Motorsports Marketing Forum.
Shell’s biggest publicity coup of its new multi-year deal was when Harvick won the Daytona 500 by a whisker, carrying the Shell-Pennzoil logo to victory in a dramatic finish at the outset of the season.
“We were not even ready with win ads,” Massey-Bong recounted.
But Shell quickly produced win posters with Chevrolet and AutoZone for display in dealerships and retail locations.
Mobile elements of its sponsorship have included a “Meet the Energy Challenge” exhibit and a Pennzoil exhibit, extolling the virtues of a product that gets widespread use by NASCAR racing teams.
On the retail level, the company distributed branded racing schedules at its 15,000 locations nationwide, where it also employed life-sized talking Harvick stand-up displays.
The firm has also gotten considerable mileage from gift cards bearing Harvick’s image in denominations from $5 to $50 through the year.
“People have really taken to those,” Massey-Bong said
The big payoff is the opportunity to engage customers to discuss its products, both at live events and through a TV ad campaign featuring “passionate experts” decrying the evils of engine gunk produced by non-Shell oil products, she said.
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