NASCAR’s Live ‘Hashtag 500’ Twitter Race Sees Daytona Fans Tweet Hashtags For Memorabilia

In February top US auto racing property NASCAR and one of its flagship events Daytona 500 teamed up to create a live social activation in the form of the first-ever ‘Hashtag 500’ – a Twitter race among fans that rewarded winners with memorabilia from the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.

The campaign, developed by agency OgilvyOne New York and Social@, was designed to engage fans around the Great American Race.

This social promotion saw fans tweet custom hashtags to win race-used memorabilia from drivers and the Daytona 500.

Promoted via a pre-race video using an extended version of the umbrella campaign tagline ‘Ready. Set. Race….for a piece of Daytona’ that rolled out through mid February and was posted by both the rights holder and by some of the teams themselves.

For a full campaign case study video click here.

The ‘Hashtag 500’ was part of a wider new NASCAR season race promotion ‘Ready. Set. Race’ campaign that was inspired by the simple truth that all human beings love to race,

‘Ready. Set. Race’ was developed to introduce the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season leading up to the 2016 Daytona 500 through a blend of digital and social media activation and advertising creative (including the ‘It’s In Our Blood’ TV spot)

plus a new Twitter emoji, Vine and Periscope content from Daytona International Speedway.

‘Ready. Set. Race is a significant campaign for NASCAR in that it represents an evolved approach to how we market the sport,’ said NASCAR senior VP marketing Jill Gregory.

‘We’re prioritizing fan engagement above all else and leading campaigns with digital and social marketing, and that’s created a more immersive experience for NASCAR fans.’

Our goal for Ready. Set. Race was to help NASCAR engage with its fans in new and different ways,’ explains Teddy Lynn, chief creative officer, Content & Social, Ogilvy & Mather.

‘This year we created a campaign that encouraged consumers to bring their natural-born racing mentality to life. We’re thrilled with the response the work received at the CLIO Sports Awards and last month in Cannes, but even more so with the reaction from our most important audience: NASCAR fans.’

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The Hashtag 500 fan race on Twitter to win the race suit of Dale Earnhardt Jr generated the most NASCAR-related mentions in one minute (13,000) since the inception of the FMEC.

By the season’s halfway point in 2016, the combination of top racing action and a marketing strategy spearheaded by this campaign via digital and social media significantly boosted fan consumption of the sport.

From January through June, NASCAR doubled its follower growth compared to the same period the previous season.

Engagement with social content increased by 83% year-over-year – with more than 114m total engagements.

The 2016 Daytona 500 saw more NASCAR-related social conversation than any single day since the inception of the NASCAR Fan and Media Engagement Center (FMEC). Social conversation was up 44 percent compared to last year’s race.

The Hashtag 500 campaign has won multiple awards at advertising ceremonies around the world – including a silver Cannes Lions in the Social In Sports category and a Bronze in the direct category, as well as three silvers at the CLIO Sports Awards.

This real-time memorabilia and merchandise offering has become a genuine trend in the sports sponsorship and partnership space over the last year and other stand out examples of this trend include the NRL’s ‘Instabilia’ live, in-game auction in Australia (see case study) and the new NFL season tri-partite initiative from Fanatics, Uber and the LA Rams (see case study).

Links

NASCAR Web:

http://www.nascar.com/

NASCAR Twitter:

https://twitter.com/nascar

NASCAR YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/nascar

NASCAR Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/NASCAR/

NASCAR Pinterest:

https://uk.pinterest.com/nascar/

NASCARInstagram: