Gillette to Unveil $20 Million-a-Year NASCAR Marketing Deal
By Naomi Aoki, The Boston Globe Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Nov. 14 - Gillette Co. is expected to unveil today a $20 million-a-year marketing deal with NASCAR and six of stock car racing's top young drivers, including Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth, the champion of last week's NASCAR Winston Cup.
The logic behind the deal: NASCAR fans are 75 million strong, unusually loyal to brands that endorse stock car racing, and they shave, brush their teeth, and buy batteries.
With Gillette embroiled in a bitter marketing and legal battle with rival Schick-Wilkinson Sword over the introduction of its new four-blade Quattro razor, the Boston company is looking to the NASCAR deal and its other sports marketing activities to help it maintain its dominant position in the market for wet shaving.
"NASCAR fans are among the most loyal in all of sports," said NASCAR spokesman Andrew Giangola. "That's a big part of what Gillette's buying into."
In contrast to the stereotype of the NASCAR dad being bandied around in the presidential campaign -- white, Southern, conservative males that Democratic candidate Howard Dean was trying to reach when he said he wanted to "be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" -- fans of stock car racing are relatively affluent men and women from across the nation.
And, according to Giangola, they are three times more likely to buy a NASCAR-sponsored brand than a rival product. This deal makes Gillette among the most prominent corporate sponsors of NASCAR. It will have more NASCAR drivers on the track than any other corporate sponsors except for Coca-Cola, which counts more than a dozen drivers as part of the Coca-Cola Racing Family, Giangola said.
Dubbed the Gillette Young Guns, Earnhardt, Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman will be featured in print and TV ads for Gillette razors, Duracell batteries, and Oral-B toothbrushes.
They will wear Gillette patches on their jumpsuits and stamp the name on their cars.
Gillette is counting more on its sweepstakes than its signs to get its name in front of fans. At each race, NASCAR fans will have a chance to win $5,000 by picking the right Gillette Young Gun to win, and at two races, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Ford 400, fans will have a chance at $5 million in prizes. So far this year, the six young guns have won half the races on the NASCAR circuit.
"There are a number of corporate logos and IDs on the drivers and on the cars," said John F. Manfredi, Gillette's senior vice president of corporate affairs. "That's not what we're counting on. We're counting on the advertising and on the in-race commentary, on the announcers saying 'Watch for the Gillette Young Guns. Someone today could win $5 million.' "
Gillette has a long history of sports sponsorship. In 1910, the company hired baseball great Honus Wagner to help sell razor blades. It bought the exclusive radio rights to the World Series in 1939 and was heavily involved in boxing in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, Gillette sponsors World Cup soccer, Major League Baseball, NCAA basketball, the men's and women's professional golf tours, and the National Hockey League. The stadium where the New England Patriots play bears its name.
The NASCAR deal marks the latest step in a turnaround strategy outlined two years ago by Gillette's chairman and CEO James M. Kilts, an outsider who took over in early 2001. After many prosperous years, Gillette lost some momentum in the late 1990s.
Kilts blamed the subpar performance in part on a decision by previous management to cut advertising, and vowed to cut overhead and use the savings for marketing. Since then, Manfredi said, spending on advertising has grown from 6 percent of sales to 8 percent of sales.
Earlier this month, Gillette posted record third-quarter profits. Its quarterly sales for everything from batteries to toothbrushes were $2.41 billion, up 11 percent from a year earlier.
By Naomi Aoki, The Boston Globe Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Nov. 14 - Gillette Co. is expected to unveil today a $20 million-a-year marketing deal with NASCAR and six of stock car racing's top young drivers, including Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth, the champion of last week's NASCAR Winston Cup.
The logic behind the deal: NASCAR fans are 75 million strong, unusually loyal to brands that endorse stock car racing, and they shave, brush their teeth, and buy batteries.
With Gillette embroiled in a bitter marketing and legal battle with rival Schick-Wilkinson Sword over the introduction of its new four-blade Quattro razor, the Boston company is looking to the NASCAR deal and its other sports marketing activities to help it maintain its dominant position in the market for wet shaving.
"NASCAR fans are among the most loyal in all of sports," said NASCAR spokesman Andrew Giangola. "That's a big part of what Gillette's buying into."
In contrast to the stereotype of the NASCAR dad being bandied around in the presidential campaign -- white, Southern, conservative males that Democratic candidate Howard Dean was trying to reach when he said he wanted to "be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" -- fans of stock car racing are relatively affluent men and women from across the nation.
And, according to Giangola, they are three times more likely to buy a NASCAR-sponsored brand than a rival product. This deal makes Gillette among the most prominent corporate sponsors of NASCAR. It will have more NASCAR drivers on the track than any other corporate sponsors except for Coca-Cola, which counts more than a dozen drivers as part of the Coca-Cola Racing Family, Giangola said.
Dubbed the Gillette Young Guns, Earnhardt, Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman will be featured in print and TV ads for Gillette razors, Duracell batteries, and Oral-B toothbrushes.
They will wear Gillette patches on their jumpsuits and stamp the name on their cars.
Gillette is counting more on its sweepstakes than its signs to get its name in front of fans. At each race, NASCAR fans will have a chance to win $5,000 by picking the right Gillette Young Gun to win, and at two races, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Ford 400, fans will have a chance at $5 million in prizes. So far this year, the six young guns have won half the races on the NASCAR circuit.
"There are a number of corporate logos and IDs on the drivers and on the cars," said John F. Manfredi, Gillette's senior vice president of corporate affairs. "That's not what we're counting on. We're counting on the advertising and on the in-race commentary, on the announcers saying 'Watch for the Gillette Young Guns. Someone today could win $5 million.' "
Gillette has a long history of sports sponsorship. In 1910, the company hired baseball great Honus Wagner to help sell razor blades. It bought the exclusive radio rights to the World Series in 1939 and was heavily involved in boxing in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, Gillette sponsors World Cup soccer, Major League Baseball, NCAA basketball, the men's and women's professional golf tours, and the National Hockey League. The stadium where the New England Patriots play bears its name.
The NASCAR deal marks the latest step in a turnaround strategy outlined two years ago by Gillette's chairman and CEO James M. Kilts, an outsider who took over in early 2001. After many prosperous years, Gillette lost some momentum in the late 1990s.
Kilts blamed the subpar performance in part on a decision by previous management to cut advertising, and vowed to cut overhead and use the savings for marketing. Since then, Manfredi said, spending on advertising has grown from 6 percent of sales to 8 percent of sales.
Earlier this month, Gillette posted record third-quarter profits. Its quarterly sales for everything from batteries to toothbrushes were $2.41 billion, up 11 percent from a year earlier.
