Apple-sponsored racing...
Okay, I've been watching NASCAR Winston Cup racing all year long. Yeah, yeah...spare me.
I actually watched the opening Daytona 500, out of boredom, and lo and behold, Dale Earnhardt buys the farm.
So, knowing how big he was to the sport and how major of a loss that was, I tuned in the following week, just to see what the mood and proceedings would be like. Then the next week. Then the one after.
By April, I was hooked. Got to know the drivers, the teams, the connections, the stats, rivalries, familial relations, sponsors, terminology, the underlying dramas/politics, etc.
By the way, I'm a Dale Jarrett fan...go 88!
It always hits me while watching the cars every Sunday, and noticing the designs and paint schemes and sponsors, that it would be really cool to see an Apple-sponsored team.
I don't know if that's the demographic Apple would necessarily want to target or be associated with, but I've been shocked by some of the less-redneck aspects of it as I've watched this year and became a fan. They go to Arizona, Chicago, Michigan, New York and other "above the Mason Dixon line" places and the crowds are just as enthusiastic and packed in.
If nothing else at all, a big blue Apple logo riding around in front of about 120,000 people for several hundred laps probably couldn't hurt anything.
I was bored the other night and started drawing my vision of an Apple-sponsored Winston Cup car and it looked pretty damn cool: you could have two variations: an Aqua-field type of cars with blue and white and Aqua text for the number and soft shadows and stuff like that (playing off the whole OS X style), and you could also have a cool-looking silver car with a white Apple logo and trim, playing more to the Quicksilver/Titanium end of the spectrum.
I don't know. I thought it would be cool.
Currently, there doesn't seem to be a huge presence of tech-oriented major sponsors. Lots of beer (Miller Lite, Coors Light and Budweiser), UPS, DuPont, Lowe's, Home Depot, Kellogg's, NAPA, Kodak, Valvoline, Viagra (yes, I'm serious), etc.
One guy, Jason Leffler, drives a cool orange, white and black car, sponsored by Cingular Wireless, with the big orange Cingular X-looking logo on the hood. It's a pretty sharp look and I think our favorite computer company would look pretty cool in there too.
I actually watched the opening Daytona 500, out of boredom, and lo and behold, Dale Earnhardt buys the farm.
So, knowing how big he was to the sport and how major of a loss that was, I tuned in the following week, just to see what the mood and proceedings would be like. Then the next week. Then the one after.
By April, I was hooked. Got to know the drivers, the teams, the connections, the stats, rivalries, familial relations, sponsors, terminology, the underlying dramas/politics, etc.
By the way, I'm a Dale Jarrett fan...go 88!
It always hits me while watching the cars every Sunday, and noticing the designs and paint schemes and sponsors, that it would be really cool to see an Apple-sponsored team.
I don't know if that's the demographic Apple would necessarily want to target or be associated with, but I've been shocked by some of the less-redneck aspects of it as I've watched this year and became a fan. They go to Arizona, Chicago, Michigan, New York and other "above the Mason Dixon line" places and the crowds are just as enthusiastic and packed in.
If nothing else at all, a big blue Apple logo riding around in front of about 120,000 people for several hundred laps probably couldn't hurt anything.
I was bored the other night and started drawing my vision of an Apple-sponsored Winston Cup car and it looked pretty damn cool: you could have two variations: an Aqua-field type of cars with blue and white and Aqua text for the number and soft shadows and stuff like that (playing off the whole OS X style), and you could also have a cool-looking silver car with a white Apple logo and trim, playing more to the Quicksilver/Titanium end of the spectrum.
I don't know. I thought it would be cool.
Currently, there doesn't seem to be a huge presence of tech-oriented major sponsors. Lots of beer (Miller Lite, Coors Light and Budweiser), UPS, DuPont, Lowe's, Home Depot, Kellogg's, NAPA, Kodak, Valvoline, Viagra (yes, I'm serious), etc.
One guy, Jason Leffler, drives a cool orange, white and black car, sponsored by Cingular Wireless, with the big orange Cingular X-looking logo on the hood. It's a pretty sharp look and I think our favorite computer company would look pretty cool in there too.
Comments
They did use to sponsor a car back in the late 80s I believe
Still fun to dream, though
All it would take would be for a Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. or another popular, high-profile NASCAR figure to take on Apple as a sponsor and watch the iMacs fly off the shelves.
Well, maybe that's being a bit optimistic, but true, diehard, nutball racing fans would probably not think twice about buying stuff if it meant their favorite driver had a connection with them. Maybe, at the very least, get a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise even give Apple a second look.
Despite the ribbing and bad jokes aimed its way, that sport has a HUGE and loyal fanbase who absolutely worship at the alter of stock car racing. And I wouldn't want to be so snobby or crass as to imply that race fans don't (or can't) use computers.
If Apple could get their hooks into even just a small piece of that pie and play it halfway right, that's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of potential, "just maybe..." customers. The attendance at those races is always in the 6 digits...WAY more than football and baseball stadiums hold.
But you're right...it'll never happen.
See though, it's stuff like this that's aggravating sometimes. It would certainly be cool to try it, just to see. That's why I mentioned Cingular Wireless above. I wonder what kind of thoughts ran through THEIR mind? Sprint/PCI, Kodak and Epson sponsor some cars too, so these kinds of companies aren't completely out of the racing loop.
The tie-ins and promotion possiblities are endless and fun to think about, in any case. Both would win, in a way: each company/organization getting exposure to people previously unaware of each others' potential coolness: Apple gets introduced to a segment of the population that probably doesn't go out of their way to read Macworld or keep up with Apple Store openings, and geeks like us who'll dig anything Apple is doing or up to might tune in on a Sunday afternoon to check out so and so's Apple-sponsored car and, lo and behold, after a few times of watching, get genuinely hooked into a sport they never gave much thought to before, like me.
Believe me: I made a career out of poking fun at NASCAR and the whole culture (being born and raised in Tennessee, it's just part of the life there, but I never bought into it and used to TOTALLY rag on family and friends who watched it...for YEARS!). It wasn't until I was 32, living in SoCal and completely out of the sphere and influence of "back home" that I started watching. I can't be the only person who tuned in out of curiosity or boredom and wound up getting hooked.
That's more classy.
Jeff
Apple is looking to get the affluent, always-have-a-new-SUV, soccer moms and related demographics.
The NASCAR audience isn't looking to pay $400 for an MP3 player.
Apple would make lots of money in NASCAR. If you think about it, who's more likely to have a computer, an open-wheel fan or a NASCAR good ole boy?
NASCAR cars themselves have more ad space than any F1 or Indy or Champ car will ever have.
Kodak, Cingular, UPS, McDonald's, Cheerios, K-Mart, Tide, Conseco, Kellogg's, Pfizer, Sprint, M&Ms, Tropicana, Rubbermaid...these aren't redneck sponsors.
Compaq sponsors Williams-BMW in F1. Apple used to have associate sponsorships in CART. Which amounts to a sticker on the back of your helmet that you can see on the roll-hoop cam.
NASCAR is still rising in popularity, unfortnately. Apple should capitalize. I'd rather see Apple in NASCAR than the IRL.
I like racing where the cars turn both left AND right.
I used to watch CART, but my hometown pal was killed a few years ago driving for Player's Forsynthe, and I stopped watching ever since.
<strong>
NASCAR is still rising in popularity, unfortnately. Apple should capitalize. I'd rather see Apple in NASCAR than the IRL.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Definitely. Expand your reach. Appeal to a different demographic. NASCAR fans have more money than you might think. Do you have any idea what tickets to the Daytona 500 can cost? And there's the numbers thing. There are just a LOT of them. Apple should sell to them. Their cash is as good as mine.
Don't be such elitist, poo-pooing snobs. As ramjet said, the money it takes to attend these things or collect the souvenirs isn't anything to sneeze at. Plenty of "good ol' boys" and the like make good money and have it to spend. TRUST me on this. And * gasp * I bet some of them even know what a computer looks like AND how to use one!
Go figure!
Hell, if I was Apple and had to choose between NASCAR and the NFL, it wouldn't even be a contest! Screw rigid demographics or personal prejudices. $1499 from Randall in Alabama is just as valid as $1499 from Ryan in San Jose.
<strong>Jeez-louise, guys. Some of you really make it sound like the ONLY people who watch NASCAR are inbred, slack-jawed "Deliverence" extras.
Don't be such elitist, poo-pooing snobs. As ramjet said, the money it takes to attend these things or collect the souvenirs isn't anything to sneeze at...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Exactly what I was thinking but you have no idea how hard it was for me to not go for the cheap one-liner.
<strong>Ceci n'est pas une pomme.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Whadya mean it isn't an Apple?
<strong>Jeez-louise, guys. Some of you really make it sound like the ONLY people who watch NASCAR are inbred, slack-jawed "Deliverence" extras.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, they just consist of 99.9% of the audience. And then there is you
<strong>Whadya mean it isn't an Apple?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Either you are unaware of Rene Magritte's painting "Ceci n'est pas une pomme" or you are yanking my chain and want me to get into some philosophical discussion of the nature of representation.
Rene Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter who also liked to call himself a philosopher as opposed to an artist. One of his paintings, "Ceci n'est pas une pomme", displays a very realistic image of an apple. Above the apple he wrote the words "Ceci n'est pas une pomme" which, simplistically states, this is not an apple, which obviously it is not. It is a painting of an apple and so not a real apple. But yet it still is an "apple"... or is it? <ruminate, ruminate>
The questions this brings up can lead you to distraction, but if you are interested I can highly recommend checking out Magritte's work. He also did a more famous painting of a pipe with the words painted above it "Ceci n'est pas une pipe". An interesting excursion into this is written by the French thinker Michel Foucault in a short book called "This is Not a Pipe" (English translation).
I just thought it was funny because by putting this quote on an Apple enthusiast's bulletin board it dredged up yet another angle upon which to think about Magritte's painting
And if you are interested in the book I mentioned by Foucault you can <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520049160/qid=1005930962/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_10_1/002-5934274-5945660"; target="_blank">check it out here.</a>
[ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: Retrograde ]</p>
Of course, if Apple does sponsor Ferrari, I don't think they would need to be a main sponsor, like Shell or Marlboro, but even a small Apple the size of the current Tic Tac advertisement would be great.
Ferrari and Apple, both produce high quality products, are fast, are produced in smaller numbers to keep quality high, orders can be option configured, a little more expensive than your average car or PC, come in different colors, and both have great leaders at the helm...Montezemolo and Jobs.
Alessandro
<a href="http://www.autografica.com"; target="_blank">http://www.autografica.com</a>;