Oilpressure

Believe it or not, we are one-third of the way through the offseason for the Verizon IndyCar series. That also means that two months have passed since Josef Newgarden was crowned as the new champion.

When Newgarden won the 2017 championship, it wasn’t just a sign that he accumulated more points throughout the season than his rivals – it was symbolic of the new guard coming of age.

At the time that Newgarden won the championship, I opined that I was hoping that IndyCar would not make the same mistake with Newgarden as they did with their last American champion – Ryan Hunter-Reay. What was their mistake? They wasted a golden opportunity to showcase a young, good-looking driver to an American audience. Even in the 2012-13 offseason when Hunter-Reay was the reigning champion, I remember thinking that IndyCar was squandering a chance to utilize this marketable American driver to promote the series. By the time the 2013 season started, I’m not sure I saw one ad featuring the new American champion.

But things were different then – a lot different. IndyCar was known as the IZOD IndyCar Series. They had just dumped CEO Randy Bernard and their leadership and marketing programs were in a state of flux.

Fast-forward five years to a whole new world in IndyCar. CEO Mark Miles has been at the helm for several years. He has also made two key hires in Jay Frye and CJ O’Donnell. Although they are leaving after next season, Verizon has been a much better partner than IZOD was after their first big splash. All in all, there seems to be a long-term plan in place as far as marketing and promotion. This is a much stronger IndyCar Series than it was five years ago.

That’s why it’s hard to figure out just how the series plans to take advantage of Josef Newgarden’s marketability. Team Penske and their sponsors have done a good job promoting their new star. They released their video a couple of weeks ago, when Newgarden announced he would be running the No.1 in 2018. It was a clever spot that also featured last year’s champion Simon Pagenaud. Apparently, they have made up after their skirmish at Gateway.

There have been social media campaigns showing Newgarden signing champagne bottles for their various partners, along with a Shell Oil ad featuring Newgarden, Penske’s Joey Logano from NASCAR and Formula One’s Sebastian Vettel. These spots are great for those of us that are die-hard IndyCar fans; but what about the mainstream? That’s how the sport grows.

Obviously Team Penske knows what a star they have in Newgarden and they are taking advantage of the opportunity to market a charismatic American champion to the American public. My hope is that Team Penske sponsor Verizon will create a series of clever ads centered around Newgarden instead of the unfunny bearded millennial they have in their current slate of commercials.

But other than getting Newgarden on SportsCenter the week of clinching his championship and a couple of other spots – what has IndyCar done in the last two months to showcase their newest American star?

I could be way out of the loop. The IndyCar offices across the street from IMS may have been burning the midnight oil for the last two months, coming up with creative ways to get Newgarden’s face into every American household through print, TV and social media. Maybe they plan to launch this blitz just before Christmas. If that’s the case, good for them and I offer my apologies for falsely accusing them for sitting on their collective hands.

But if that is not the case and we’ve already seen all of the exposure that Newgarden is going to get, my question is – why?

Josef Newgarden is a marketer’s dream. He is young, good-looking, well-spoken, funny and oh, by the way – he can drive the heck out of a race car. If IndyCar does nothing this offseason or goes into next season without a full promotion campaign built around Josef Newgarden, they should be tried for marketing malpractice. They will have been guilty of negligence by letting another golden opportunity slip through their fingers.

I understand it was a different era, but how do you think the names of Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt became household names? It wasn’t because all households were tuned into IndyCar races or the Indianapolis 500 – they weren’t. IndyCar races outside of the Indianapolis 500 were rarely carried on the three channels we all got back then. It was because Madison Avenue made household names out of them.

Even as recently as the early nineties, Foyt and Andretti were teaming up with Nigel Mansell in a series of cleverly written Texaco-Havoline commercials, while Foyt was a consistent voice for Craftsman Tools.

If there was ever a natural athlete for television commercials, it’s Josef Newgarden. Most, but not all, enjoy Peyton Manning’s commercials. As he has hawked for mainstream products like MasterCard, Gatorade, Buick, Nationwide and others; he comes across as very funny and a natural. But do you remember his first few commercials as a rookie QB out of Tennessee back in 1998? They were painful to watch. He obviously got some good coaching early on.

With the exception of Fitzgerald Glider Kits, Team Penske has some pretty mainstream sponsors. Shell, Pennzoil, Verizon, HP, MillerCoors, AAA, Chevrolet and Coca-Cola are just some of the household brands that can be found on Team Penske Indy cars. Surely just a couple of those companies could be convinced by the star power that Newgarden brings and build a campaign around him.

But that’s for Team Penske to decide. IndyCar has several household brands that they are partners with. Surely Verizon can come up with a way to showcase the new champion of their series (at least for one more season). Firestone and Sunoco both seem like mainstream products that could benefit from having Newgarden on their commercials.

Maybe I’m overreacting. After all, it’s been only two months. I’m going to be optimistic that things are currently happening behind the scenes. I’m putting my faith in this new IndyCar regime that they are sharp enough to realize what they have in their new champion, and they are not going to squander this opportunity. But if there are no national spots featuring Josef Newgarden by next summer, I’ll know that nothing has really changed in the last five years.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on November 15, 2017 at 4:02 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.