Friday Night in Texas

The first official night of the NASCAR Texas race weekend got kicked off in fine sytle as Jim Beam hosted a local market appearance with Robby Gordon at Buffalo Joe's in Dallas. The Jim Beam team put together a good show with Robby getting up close with some of his fans. The Jim Beam team had its RV (think macked-out rock n roll tour bus) parked out front of Buffalo Joe's, complete with two NASCAR video games for the would-be racers to test their skills against Robby. Inside Buffalo Joe's the Beam team was giving away hats, shirts and even miniature Jim Beam #7 hoods -- and if you didn't mind waiting a couple minutes, Robby would sign them and ask you to pose for a picture with some of his friends. After the appearance at Buffalo Joe's, Robby grabbed his sponsors, a couple team members and some of his friends and headed out for dinner. The big surprise was when Robby got behind the wheel of the Jim Beam tour bus. I've yet to meet a race car driver who doesn't want to drive himself, but I think his instincts may have had him hugging the walls of George Bush Tollway a bit too close, though! You can imagine the look on the faces of the valets when we rolled up ... I don't think they really knew what to do with us. Today is more practice time. Robby likes his car, and thinks yesterdaya's qualifying isn't indicative of the car's capabilities. Let's hope he and the team can work out some of the kinks in today's practice rounds. Tonight Robby and team are going to catch the Dallas Stars game and then call it an evening to get ready for the show tomorrow. I'll try to post some videos and pictures of today's activities a bit later. And you can follow me on Twitter @mojomorris. All for now ... Mojo

Mojo gets SPOT into NASCAR with Robby Gordon

As the sports marketing agency for the SPOT Satellite Messenger (http://www.findmespot.com/), Mojo has worked with SPOT to identify sponsorship/partnership opportunities across a variety of different activities in order to help them increase their brand visibility, awareness, and of course product sales. While we focus on growing SPOT's core target markets, we have also researched a variety of unique opportunities to grow their business and one sport that Mojo has always thought would be a good testing ground for SPOT has been NASCAR.

With its very active fan-base filled with hunters, hikers, anglers, campers & RV'ers we have always thought that the NASCAR fan was closely aligned with that of the SPOT user. And, after a few months of deliberation, internal discussions, various debates and an assortment of PowerPoint presentations the day finally arrived when SPOT was ready to enter into the world of NASCAR....even if only for one weekend.

The deal, brokered by Mojo, was a very creative one-race deal for SPOT with the #7 car of Robby Gordon (http://www.planetrobby.com/) for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Race (http://www.nascar.com/) at Bristol Motor Speedway. Through the sponsorship SPOT received primary branding on Robby's racecar and racing suit (both seen below), as well as branding on all casual and racewear for his staff and pitcrew.

To promote the sponsorship Mojo worked with SPOT and Robby Gordon's marketing/pr team on a variety of fronts to get the word out. The standard PR blitz was developed and handled by SPOT's PR manager Derek Moore with the help of Mojo and PR agency Skyya, and TV and print interviews were lined up.

On the activation side of things, Mojo promoted SPOTs sponsorship via the SPOT twitter page (www.twitter.com/spot_messenger) providing fans with live updates throughout the race weekend including behind-the-scenes images from the racetrack. The SPOT feed was also incorporated and "retweeted" via Robby's twitter account during the race.

Additionally, Mojo worked with SPOT to develop a unique landing page (www.findmespot.com/robby) with a limited time special offer on a SPOT Messenger. All marketing efforts, including the special offer and landing page were also promoted on both of Robby's websites (http://www.robbygordon.com/ & http://www.planetrobby.com/).

Check back for more updates, news, photos and videos from the Bristol weekend soon.

Ciao for now,

P.J.