NASCAR Kinetics team promotes race day
By Steven Haller
Last year, Fox’s ratings for NASCAR Sprint Cup races dropped 29 percent among viewers age 18-34. NASCAR has since deployed new initiatives to connect with views in that age range. With the average age of NASCAR viewers being 42.4 years old, the organization is reaching out to a new generation.
NASCAR Kinetics is a nationwide program run by NASCAR’s marketing department, with the goal of involving students on college campuses, including High Point University, to expose other students to NASCAR. All over the country NASCAR Kinetics teams have formed and are taking a variety of steps to share the world of racing with their peers. The Kinetics program also serves as a way for college students to learn marketing techniques by applying them to NASCAR.
“Our main goal is to get people excited about NASCAR,” said HPU’s NASCAR Kinetics team captain and junior Cameron McGraw. “We go to a school where (a large portion) of the students are not from North Carolina and a lot of them have maybe never heard of NASCAR.”
At HPU, the NASCAR Kinetics team is made up of students from the business and communication schools, but it is officially housed in the business school. The students involved get to communicate directly with NASCAR’s marketing department to give updates on the team’s promotional strategies and to report findings from conducting case studies.
“NASCAR has a long set of marketing-oriented problems, which they are more than happy to provide as live case studies for our team,” said Phil Watson, a communications professor and the HPU NASCAR Kinetics team adviser. “NASCAR’s agenda with NASCAR Kinetics is to fish around for ideas that will attract young adults to the sport as spectators and as television viewers.”
One Kinetics team member, sophomore Chelsea Hyde, said, “Our team has been working on case studies, hoping to help NASCAR’s problem of reaching younger audiences.”
Professor Watson also likes that these case studies are actual marketing problems that NASCAR is facing and needs a solution for. He says that this is a plus because it provides change from the same case studies he rotates through each year.
As part of the Kinetics program, colleges were competing to host the best viewing parties during the Martinsville, Va. race. The viewing party at HPU will be judged by NASCAR’s marketing department and compared to the viewing parties hosted by other schools all over the country. The members of the winning Kinetics team will receive all-access tickets to the NASCAR Sprint Cup race in Charlotte this summer.
The HPU team hosted its viewing party on April 1 in The Point, to which more than 500 students attended over the course of the afternoon. At the party there was free food, live music from Chris Lane, a remote-controlled racecar track provided by Thunderdome Attractions, and of course, a large screen that displayed the race.
The decorations were donated by Race Party Decorations, a local business in High Point. Other decorations came from M&M’s, which was the main sponsor for the viewing party. Because M&M’s was the main sponsor, the team organized a game where visitors of the event placed guesses on how many M&M’s they thought were in a giant bowl. Senior Justin Terrell’s guess of 3,050 was closest to the actual 3,062, so he won tickets to the Oct. 28 NASCAR race at Martinsville Speedway.
“Our NASCAR viewing party was a huge success,” said McGraw. “The NASCAR spirit was certainly present on campus and we are proud of how everything came together. Even students who were not familiar with the sport prior to our event were able to get a feel for what race day is actually like.”
The team will be submitting a report about the event to NASCAR on April 25 along with the other 18 competing schools. After comparing the detailed reports, NASCAR’s marketing department will declare a winner at the end of May.
The students involved with HPU’s NASCAR Kinetics team are not only interested in learning about marketing, but they are also passionate about NASCAR.
“My grandparents are die-hard NASCAR fans. They have an entire basement devoted to Dale Earnhardt,” said Chelsea Hyde, a sophomore on the team. “I live really close to the Loudon track in Massachusetts, and when I heard NASCAR Kinetics was coming to HPU, I thought that would be a nice taste of home.”