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How Important is Your Paint Scheme?
Each week, we field lots of questions on marketing, sponsorship, PR and social media via the blog, email and on the Sponsorship Success Facebook Community. One of the topics that I frequently get questions on is regarding paint schemes.
For example:
- Will my current paint scheme attract or repel future sponsors?
- Should I make my car look ’empty’ so that sponsors see the opportunity?
- Should I let my sponsors determine the color scheme?
- Should I pick a signature color scheme or topic theme (example: non-profit partner) if I don’t have a title sponsor?
And the list goes on and on. 
Before we get so deep into the paint scheme conversation, I think it’s pivotal to note: your paint scheme should not be your primary focus unless that’s your primary offering. (And, by the way, I don’t think it should be your primary offering when you’re looking to grow from beginner to intermediate and advanced. To go to the next level, you need a dynamic program that engages beyond a logo on a car.)
What I really want you, as a sponsorship seeker or seller, to think about is this: what purpose or role do I want my paint scheme to have in my marketing program as a whole?
The answers to those questions above depend heavily on what you’re selling to marketing partners.
And what you’re selling to marketing partners depends heavily on what your marketing partners’ goals are.
Think about it this way: how would an advertising agency answer similar questions? When a company approaches their marketing program, they have virtually an unlimited number of ways to spend their marketing budget. Should they buy roadside billboards or placemat ads, promoted social media posts or magazine advertisements? Should they sponsor an athlete or throw an event?
Questions about your paint scheme can be answered in the same way that I help companies answer the above questions: what is your program goal?
If you have a local, mass-market product (example: car wash), then getting in front of thousands of automobile drivers each day before they pass your car wash via a billboard would be significantly more effective than advertising that on social media, which they’ll be looking at (hopefully) while they’re not driving.
Comparatively, if you’re looking to appeal to company owners who don’t set their budgets ahead of time and might make a spur-of-the-moment decision to advertise with you when they see your empty car, then putting as little design and as few logos on as possible might be the right plan for you.
If you’re trying to snag more aggressively marketed companies that are more advertising-savvy and want to align with an established brand – and likely have a larger budget, a full paint scheme with companies that they’re comfortable aligning with will be more appealing to them.
If your primary offering is a speaking tour, your paint scheme can be completely unrelated to the marketing partner.
In my opinion, the most successful teams are using the actual race car as a tool, not a placemat to sell ads on. They’re using the car as part of a dynamic program – on autograph cards, at appearances and client events, on social media and more. The amount of logos, empty space or design elements aren’t as important as the overall image and how it fits with the team or driver brand.
And there are plenty of marketing partners that never even utilize the race car in their program.
So, when you’re thinking about next year’s paint scheme, ask yourself this: what’s important to my current marketing partners and the ones I’d like to appeal to in the future? You might save yourself some time and stress…
xo.
Kristin
P.S. Missed the live presentation of our Sponsorship Marketing Webinar: Crafting and Valuing the Perfect Offerings? You can now get it as a recording! Click here for more information.
Sharing Thanks
What ever turns out like we thought it would?
Whether it’s the Thanksgiving turkey or your racing season, we all have expectations, we all face challenges and, often, we’re surprised by our results. Good or bad, what happens almost never matches what we envisioned in our minds.
Isn’t that kind of magical?
On this day where we gather together to give thanks, I want to specifically thank you for being here. For being a part of my journey and for allowing me to be a part of yours. For helping me and for allowing me to help you. For sharing my vision – our vision – for the future of our community.
If you had described to me a few years ago the opportunities I’ve had, the people I’ve gotten to meet and the family that I’ve become a part of, I don’t know that I would have believed you. For all of those things, and many more, I’m so grateful.
But the best part?
I’m most grateful for the magic.
Because who knows where it’ll take us next.
xo.
Kristin
Selling Sponsorship is Hard. Here’s the (Secret) Reason Why.
Raise your hand if you:
- Hate thinking about sponsorship
- Love thinking about sponsorship but never actually do anything about it
- Worry your proposal looks amateurish
- Have no idea what to charge (too much? or too little?)
- Don’t follow up because you feel like a nuisance
- Feel like you have to promise the world, or aggressively ‘spin’ your driving resume like your competition, to even get in the door
- Are tired of hearing: “We don’t get involved in motorsports”, “It’s not in the budget” or “I’ll get back to you”
- Resent the fact that running your own race team or track makes you feel like you have to be someone else to be successful.
Yep, selling marketing partnerships is hard. But for most of us, there’s a reason why that’s the case – why many of us stop before we even start – beyond the obvious.
It’s confidence.
And, no, I’m not going to tell you to recite some affirmations while you brush your teeth every morning or when you breathe out in yoga class.
Let’s get practical.
Many racers and tracks aren’t selling (enough) sponsorship because they’re not confident about what they’re selling, or how to value it.
You and I both know that you can’t sell wins. You can’t make promises about on-the-track performance.
But what we can sell? Some of us are secretly afraid that we can’t deliver those offerings. Or that the people sitting across the table don’t care about those offerings, at best. Or that we’re hitting all the right notes, and completely off-key on the price.
It’s all about confidence, baby.
When you’re confident about what you’re providing, your mindset will shift from ‘selling’ to ‘offering an opportunity’. Because you know that what you offer will benefit them.
I found this out first-hand last weekend, speaking at the RPM Promoter’s Workshops in Las Vegas. For weeks, probably months if I’m honest, I’ve been secretly terrified of getting up on stage and speaking about social media in front of 200 track and series promoters. Subconsciously, I felt like I needed to ‘sell’ the audience on using social media to promote their businesses.
But when my trusty partner in crime reminded me that I knew exactly how to use social media to make businesses (lots of) money and was merely showing them the opportunity they had if they used what I taught them, everything shifted. I was no longer worried about whether they’d care about my material. I was just concerned about giving them information in a way that they could be successful.
My offering helped them. And that’s what yours should do, too.
Smart marketing partners look forward to spending money with teams, tracks and businesses because they make them more money. When you know what you’re selling and how it will help someone, you’re no longer afraid to hand over your proposal. You don’t forget to follow-up. You no longer sweat over the in-person pitch.
You’re excited to give them the opportunity to achieve their goals with you.
Learning what to offer, when to offer that and how to value it, is one of the most important things you can do for your marketing program.
…Which is why I’m inviting you to sit down with me next Friday, November 27th for a private workshop on Sponsorship Marketing: Crafting and Valuing the Perfect Offerings.
I’ll be opening the doors on Monday, November 23rd and, if you raised your hand when you started reading, I want you to be there. Not available Friday? Don’t worry – you’ll get access to a replay, whether you show up live or not, that you can keep forever.
Sign up here to receive an email with all the juicy details on Monday, November 23rd. (You won’t be subscribed to additional emails, FYI.) Already subscribed or filled out the survey? Rest assured, you’ll get it automatically.
UPDATE! Check out our on-demand workshop here.
When you’re confident about what you’re selling and why, you’ll always be able to prove your worth, whether that’s to your boss, your wife, or the no-longer-elusive marketing partner.
Imagine those possibilities.
xo.
Kristin
P.S. If you’re interested in influencing the content, please feel free to submit your thoughts, ideas and feedback here. I’d really love to be impacting more racers with a series of workshops, so if this one doesn’t sound like your cup of tea but you have a wish list of other topics, click on the link and tell me what would rev your engine.
The Power of a Trophy
At the end of the race, at the end of the day, what are you left with?
‘Trophies,’ according to Kenny Wallace.
This morning, I had the pleasure of listening to Kenny Wallace keynote the RPM 
Promoter’s Workshops in Las Vegas. He made quite a few interesting points, but one that jumped out to me for racers was this (and, forgive me, but I’m paraphrasing):
“For racers, the money goes into the accounts, and the money goes out of the accounts. All we have left at the end of the day are the trophies.”
Kenny talked a lot about where we are as a sport, both fiscally and emotionally.He made sure to emphasize that as racing businesses, we need to be profitable. But what I took away from it was this: if you’re only paying attention to the financial side of things, you’re forgetting about why we’re here.
Because at the end of the day – and this is according to Kenny – we’re all trying to get to that same moment where we’re cracking open a Bud Light after the hauler’s closed up and the lights are shut off. The money that came in has already gone out, and all we have left are the trophies.
Kenny was talking about actual, physical trophies because we’re at a race track conference, but I think it goes beyond that. Our trophies are not just trophies.
In your relationships, whether that’s with a fan, sponsor, racer or track, I think we need to ask ourselves: what trophy are we leaving them with?
Are we giving them the trophy that they can remember us (and their experience) by?
The racer is the easiest and most pertinent example – there’s never any money leftover to remember the wins by – but can’t we say the same for the rest of us?
What are we leaving our customers and fans with? Many tracks that I’ve been to, I can recall the exact program I saw, or some fantastic concession offering, the atmosphere or the hospitality. Others, not so much.
I can remember meeting drivers as a little, little kid and the autograph cards they gave out, the t-shirt they autographed, or simply the way they spoke to me. Again, others not as much.
Whether it’s a trophy, autograph card, conversation or thank you note, can you leave the people who give you their money, time, or appreciation with something that will stand the test of time?
Can you give them a trophy?
xo.
Kristin
The #1 Sponsorship Mistake Racers Make
“The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.” – Theodore Roosevelt
(I love the sentiment of this quote, but you could even argue that ‘never doing anything’ is that mistake-less man’s mistake. Anyway, I digress. And in the first paragraph, no less!)
I get emails, Facebook messages, tweets and phone calls every single week from racers asking questions about sponsorship. We all make mistakes when it comes to marketing – or, we learn what not to do, in my opinion – but there’s a general theme that I find when we talk about the mistakes racers make when pursuing sponsorship.
In one word, it’s ‘focus’.
Too often, racers are focused on the wrong things when approaching their marketing strategy:
- Focusing on the money they’ll get and what they’ll do with it instead of what their marketing partner will receive.
- Focusing on what they can do and not what their marketing partners want.
- Focusing on selling sponsorship first and building the audience that the sponsor wants to purchase access to second.
- Focusing on why their competition is getting sponsorship that they’re not.
- Focusing on how much work they’ll have to do for a ‘small’ amount of money.
- Focusing on the health of the economy or their perception that large companies have large marketing budgets, and vice versa.
- Focusing on racing results instead of marketing ROI.
This is not meant to be a criticism towards racers. I, too, am often focused on the wrong things at the wrong times. Usually because the ‘wrong’ thing I’m focusing on is easier than the right thing.
In my experience, focusing on right things can be difficult because there are unknowns. It often requires more work. It sometimes requires us to invest time, money and effort into things that are foreign to us or out of our control.
We’re comfortable building race cars. We driven by winning races. We can picture logos on our cars and appearances at local businesses. We don’t have a lot of money to spend or time to kill. We might not know much about marketing beyond what we see other teams do.
It’s easy to focus on the comfortable, easy, fun parts of the sponsorship equation.
But I’d challenge you to start re-evaluating your focus when it comes to marketing your race team, business or track.
Ask yourself, if I want to be successful next year or five years from now, what do I need to be doing today, tomorrow, this week or this month? What needs to happen between now and then, and what’s time sensitive that I should be addressing now?
When you start focusing on marketing, you prioritize building your audience. You value creating loyal, happy fans. You embrace helping marketing partners make money.
You start looking at the world outside of your garage as full of opportunities to build relationships. And businesses. And your dream.
xo.
Kristin
P.S. Are you focused on building your marketing program this off-season? Don’t know where to start? If this bullet point hit home with you – focusing on what they can do and not what their marketing partners want – and you’re interested in taking part in a virtual workshop on this in the next few weeks, please let me know below.
(Trash) Talk is Cheap
It’s that time of year – okay, it’s always that time of year – when the stakes feel their highest for teams, tracks and manufacturers. We have to get that one last win, that one last show in, that one last sale and, often, that one last dig at our competition.
Media training was a big part of my career when I started out working in professional football because my role was in the public relations department. Helping athletes to understand how to deal with media was one of our most important jobs, and I learned a lot about the importance of positive messaging as it benefits the:
- Athlete
- Team
- Sport
- Marketing Partners
To say that trash talking in the media was discouraged is an understatement.
Trash talking, in my opinion, hurts everyone. When you see another driver spinning his or her version of a story, it’s so tempting to hop on the media or social media bandwagon and try to correct it. Or put out your own equal-and-opposite take on the situation.
But if you’ve ever worked with me, you know that I advise my clients to take the high road every time, no matter how difficult or tempting the situation is. (And, by the way, the high road doesn’t always mean silence. “No comment” is a response, too.)
Why?
Trash Talking Makes YOU Look Bad
Whether you’re talking directly about your competition’s actions or highlighting your position at their expense, in this industry there are plenty of witnesses. If you think you can pretend you didn’t hit someone on the track or scream obscenities at them in the pits, you better think again. When you see your competition doing just that, remember this: they might appear to get away with it, but the people that you care about (or that, I’d argue, you should care about) know better.
If your competition is bad-mouthing you on social media, they’ll likely get a positive response from some. Because they’re self-selecting – they’re pandering their message to their fans. Many of their fans will always be their fans, so they’ll choose to believe their messaging. In fact, they’ll believe that driver is in the right no matter what – whether they saw the race, saw the dirty slide job, saw the hit or saw them checking out at the super market. The faster you accept that, the better off you’ll be.
Pushing others down doesn’t lift you up. Some fans will get off on it, others will see their behavior for what it is: negative. Many fans, tracks and, perhaps most importantly, marketing partners will not associate with that.
Think you’re making a splash? Maybe. Maybe not the kind you think.
Bad Mouthing Hurts the Sport
Pointing out the negativity in others can turn people off to the industry as a whole. Do you think that the abuse of sponsorship – read more here – by teams who have taken money and given no return to the sponsor or, worse, ripped them off entirely hasn’t affected the whole sport? I would argue that bad apples ruined the sponsorship bushel in the last few decades, and that’s why many companies cringe when they hear that word.
Negative messaging reflects badly on all of us, and when companies see drivers doing that, it can turn them off from being a part of the sport entirely. Lose-lose.
Calibrate Your Moral Compass
When you see or hear something negative about you, even if it’s not true, it’s natural for your blood to boil. I know. It happens to me to, even in situations where I’ve gone out of my way to help someone. Take as long as you need to cool off, and keep your responses to yourself.
If your compass is aligned with mine, the type of people that you want to work with – marketing partners, crew members, fans – don’t want to be associated with a negative, loose cannon. Marketing partners value professionalism and respectfulness, even if your brand is silly, funny or otherwise ‘un-corporate’.
One of the quotes that I saw in my time in the NFL is one that I believe we could change the sport of racing with, if we started thinking as an industry instead of as individuals:
“It’s more important than ever than ever that the players cooperate with the media… It’s important that salaries rise and revenues rise, and the only way that salaries can rise is if revenues rise. Promoting the game through the media is one way of accomplishing that goal.” – former NFLPA Executive Director Gene Upshaw.
We don’t have the Collective Bargaining Agreement that the NFL does to hold tracks and racers accountable, but imagine if we had some way of applying that to racing? I believe it’s in our best interest – yours, mine and the sport’s – to give it a shot.
xo.
Kristin
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