Marketing

14. February 2009Truck racing certainly belongs to those motor sport series which are well suited for marketing. Spectacular and exciting races and actions, huge advertising spaces on the trucks; and on the grand stands and in the publicly accessible paddocks more than half a million interested and dedicated fans and visitors – many of them perfectly acquainted with the topic automobiles and commercial vehicles – that’s a great marketing, advertising and PR potential. But for some reason it’s somehow refusing to work. Quite different was the situation last month at The Dakar, organized by the A.S.O. There were also some people from the FIA European Truck Racing Championship participating: FIA chief technician Fabian Calvet, MAN truck racing technician Artur Klein – co-pilot to Franz Echter who was fifth in the truck ranking – former truck racers Peter van Delm (24th) and Jo Adua (retired); perhaps they could gain an insight into how the organizers of The Dakar handle things or what they do differently.
Of course, a lot more PR money is poured into The Dakar. And for everybody who watched the TV reports it was clearly recognizable who had paid the maximum amount. Watching the television pictures and listening to the interviews Eurosport aired shortly before midnight, you got the impression that there were only a few cars and a couple of motorbikes. But in reality there were far more than 500 participants in 4 classes. No matter what happened during the day – if it didn’t relate to the protagonists, the issue was only worth a passing remark at best. To those who would like to learn something about the not so splendid details, the difficult working conditions for the more than 550 journalists, we warmly recommend the very readable Dakar blogs of the Eurosport reporter Gernot Bauer on “eurosport.de” (only in German). Compared to that it’s plain sailing for the media at the FIA European Truckracing Championship.
With regard to the infrastructure, there are well or even very well equipped circular tracks, for the most part a neatly arranged programme that can be worked through easily, permanent local press centres with, mostly, high-tech equipment. With only a fraction of the expenditure needed for the Dakar event the media can enjoy optimal working conditions. And also the fans and the spectators are included in the events. In the publicly accessible paddocks the pilots and race trucks are right in front of the crowd’s eyes and close enough to touch – there are no fenced off bivouacs and camps.
What a tremendous media, marketing and PR potential lying idle.
But perhaps, particularly also in view of the global financial and commercial crisis, many a PR department and advertising agency will begin to rethink, simply because presumably in truck racing a bigger effect can achieved with much less expenditure. After all, several of the companies and teams, hitherto very successful with The Dakar, have already announced there withdrawal from the event, others are discussing whether to withdraw.