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MARKETING COMPANY GOES RACING A BRAND NEW WAY

Michael Holigan has always found a way to make things work. Whether his nationally-syndicated home improvement television show or how to make NASCAR sponsorship work in down economic times. Holigan knows his stuff.

His race teams – a NASCAR Busch Series stock car and an AMA Supercross team – have landed primary sponsorship thanks to an idea he put together. Additional associate sponsorship for both teams is coming from the same direction. Essentially, Holigan has a marketing company that has gone racing through a brand new means.

REALITY TELEVISION
“Giving race fans a chance to see how race teams work, giving them an unblemished look inside the race shop every single week, is something they have really taken hold of,” Holigan said of his show. “The Reality of Speed”, which debuted on Spike TV Saturday January 3 and has run at 10:30 AM EST with a new show on Saturday morning of every week. The program follows the racing teams of the Enzyte-sponsored NASCAR Busch Series car of David Starr and the Samsung Radio Shack-sponsored AMA Supercross team. The day-to-day efforts behind both teams are featured.

“The setup allows a corporate sponsor to establish sports marketing goals without necessarily going into a sports marketing program”, Holigan explained. “Companies take from their television advertising budget and advertise on ‘The Reality of Speed’. By doing that, they also get space on the race car of motorcycles, as well as the benefits that go with associate sponsorship, and it doesn’t cost them anything extra. They are doing what they already do, are able to hit a target market perfectly, and can move into sports marketing in a new way.”

“The Reality of Speed” is the only motorsports reality television show currently on national television, and the response from fans has been very positive.

“We get phone calls and emails every week, talking about the show and how much they like it,” Holigan said. “A lot of times they have questions about something they’ve seen. But nobody has ever shown what goes behind the scenes of a race team on a weekly basis, left the blindfold off and showed everything of interest. We have a no-holds barred program, and the response to that has been phenomenal.”

Holigan is a former volume home-builder and contractor with his own nationally-syndicated television show. He purchased the assets of TKO Motorsports, a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series team, and is running the NASCAR and AMA teams from his new motorsports facility in Dallas (Texas). Team Enzyte will run 15 NASCAR Busch Grand National racers, beginning with the March 6 event in Las Vegas, Nevada, while the motocross team is competing in the full 16-event AMA Supercross schedule and the full 12-event AMA Outdoor Nationals.

Starr, one of the top names from NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck Series, drives the Busch car and continues driving the NASCAR Truck Series entry of Spears Racing. Todd Myers, a veteran who has worked previously with such names as Jamie McMurray, Brendan Gaughan and Starr is crew chief.

Lifekey Healthcare, Inc. is sponsoring the Busch team through its brand of Enzyte, the one-a-day tablet for natural male enhancement. The show follows the lives of driver, riders and members of both the NASCAR and AMA Holigan Racing teams as they prepare and compete on the grueling circuits.

The program breaks ground as the first motorsports-related reality show on national television. Spike TV, the first network for men, is available in 86 million homes and is a division of MTV Networks.

“I think a lot of people have looked at the possibilities of a reality-based racing show but just didn’t know how to go about it,” Holigan said. “My own television background, as well as the ability to work with a strong network like Spike TV, enables us to do things no one else has been able to do. We said from the beginning that we wanted to show everything, not hide anything. Other shows along these lines tend to blanch over the negative stuff and accentuate the positive. I just told the guys on our teams, ‘Hey, you better do a lot of positive things because we’re going to show it all.’”

“That’s one of the reasons I think the fan reaction has been so strong and we are starting to get so many phone calls and emails from them,” he continued. “This is what they want to see. This is the stuff they like. We’re making is as real as we possibly can, and they feel they are a part of what is going on. That is going to help us keep growing.”
 

Article Courtesy: Ernie Saxton’s Motorsports Sponsorship Marketing News – Feb/March, 2004
 
 

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Kart Marketing Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 101
Wheaton, IL 60189 USA
Telephone: 630-653-7368
Fax: 630-653-2637
Email: karting@msn.com

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