Izod and Indy Will Be Interesting Partnership To Watch
Posted: 11/4/2009 9:36:00 AM by
Jim Andrews | with 0 comments
Media reports indicate that the IndyCar Series will announce its first title sponsor in eight years with a Thursday announcement that Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.’s Izod brand has purchased naming rights.
Much of the current commentary around the deal involves speculation of how much Izod is paying. The Indianapolis Star quoted the series’ sales rep, Zac Brown of Just Marketing, as saying the “asking price” was $10 million a year to be allocated across IndyCar and its media partners.
Conventional wisdom says that no property is getting its asking price these days. And that $10 million starting point is down from where it was three years ago, when an exec for a company that had been pitched the series title at that time told me IndyCar was seeking $15 million a year for 10 years, not including TV ad buy commitments.
But the amount of the check that Izod is writing is not the most important element of this deal. Every property wants and needs cash and certainly IndyCar is no exception. However, the series needs something just as, if not more, valuable. It needs a title sponsor who can be the marketing engine that drives interest in the sport.
Indy racing is in dire need of an all-out marketing push that it cannot accomplish on its own, but which can be done by the right sponsor. That’s what happened with the series’ biggest competitor decades ago: NASCAR couldn’t market the sport the way Winston could, and did.
Is Phillips-Van Heusen IndyCar’s R.J. Reynolds? It would be a great thing for both of them, not to mention for racing fans and for our industry if that turns out to be the case. No matter what you think of cigarettes, Winston and NASCAR was a near perfect sponsorship.
There are certainly challenges to be overcome if that scenario is to play out. An apparel brand, while bringing a great deal to the table in terms of retail partnerships and the ability to appeal to a broad range of consumers, does not have the marketing budget of a major packaged goods company, for example.
Also, fashion is a notoriously fickle business, as well. Izod may be moderately hot right now, but what if it cools off? Where does that leave IndyCar? The one thing nobody wants to see is a repeat of the series’ last title deal, which evaporated when search engine Northern Lights—riding a high when it signed its deal—crashed and burned in the dot-com bust.
For the moment, let’s congratulate the folks behind this sponsorship deal for getting it done in the current climate and wish them well with the new partnership. In many ways, if they win, we all win.
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Filed under: fashion, sports, activation