Promoting Drag Races with Posters and Telephone Poles

12/8/05

ll of the corporatespeak at the front of my latest National Dragster got me thinking about how the business of drag racing has changed in my professional lifetime. Even before getting to editor Phil Burgess’s excellent editorial (about Pomona’s all-supercharged Comp finale, NHRA’s first since 1973), his poor readers were assaulted by two Page Four “news items” announcing organizational sponsorships (e.g., the clumsy renaming of “Historic Auto Club Raceway at Pomona”) and multiple personnel moves within the ever-growing sales and marketing teams.

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This former editor suspects that no National Dragster staffer dared edit what amounted to press releases issued by the marketing department that now runs this organization. Dig the lingo: “naming rights”; “presenting sponsorship”; “track entitlement”; “signage rights”; “sponsor activation”; “series entitlement”; “contractual elements”; “potential activation opportunities.”

Am I the only NHRA member who wonders why such drivel is directed at us? Is anyone else disturbed by the absence of motorsports experience among these strangers being hired or promoted?

Please, no hate mail educating your naive columnist about how drag racing runs on deals and promotion. Prior to starting a motorsports advertising agency (Good Communications Inc.; www.goodcomms.com), yours truly handled publicity for both Orange county International Raceway (1973-75) and Lions Drag Strip (1968-69). Even earlier, this preteen kid would strain to overhear fascinating promotional discussions on the other side of the plywood wall that separated my dad’s trophy shack from the tiny office of San Fernando Raceway.

Lifted from Drag News (May 2, 1959)

In those prehistoric days before television advertising and computers, word seemed to get around just as quickly and efficiently as it does today, only less expensively. Most tracks drew profitable turnouts of racers and fans on a weekly basis, despite little or no paid promotion. Spectators tended to support their nearest drag strip. Bringing in more butts to pay for some special show (e.g., a best-of-three match race for a spot on the prestigious Mr. Eliminator List) was a simple matter of printing up posters, then nailing them to utility poles in the middle of the night. If a promoter could combine some charity event with a photo of a swimsuit model (as in our 1959 Drag News illustration), he might get lucky and land some advance publicity on the sports page.

Persuading out-of-town racers to tow the extra miles was a little trickier, involving two additional expenses: a larger purse than usual, and a Drag News ad to tell the world. Still, such minimal promotional investments enabled holding admission prices to a buck or less (plus another two bits for those who couldn’t resist “crossing over” to the pits).