State Water Heaters alters their approach to NASCAR Sponsorship

May 5, 6:40 PMSports Business ExaminerJosh Lobdell

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State has altered its NASCAR plan Getty Images/Chris Graythen

In these economic tough times companies the world over are looking to cut costs while still attracting new customers to their products. Naturally many of these companies turn to NASCAR as car sponsor to help bring in a lot of attention. State Water Heaters is going to the other direction. What they have done is not only brilliant but a highly effective, rather inexpensive way to remain part of the NASCAR world without spending top dollar sponsoring a race car.

Over the past few years State has been a valued, loyal sponsor in the sprint Cup garage. They have spent a lot of money, anywhere from 5-10 million dollars sponsoring lower tier race teams. These teams fielded cars that were rarely competitive, and sometimes were not qualifying for the races each week.

So the good people at State hooked up with 919 marketing a came up with an out of the box solution to keep State at the race track each week while not wasting millions of dollars sponsoring a uncompetitive race car.

State and 919 marketing hired former Cup driver Ward Burton to be their representative at the track each and every week. It is Ward’s job to show State’s guests around the track, explain the race strategy to them, and really smooze them into buying State Water Heaters.

Since Sprint Cup team owners have soured on employing Burton, older brother of fellow Cup driver Jeff Burton, this is a natural fit for Ward and State Water heaters.

Ward gets a chance to earn a paycheck, and State gets a former elite driver (from the years of 1999-2002) who won a Daytona 500 as a guide for their customers into the world of NASCAR. This is a classic win-win scenario.

On top of that State, along with 919 marketing, have found a very inventive way to remain apart of the Sprint Cup circus for 36 weeks a year without flushing marketing dollars down the toilet sponsoring lower tier cup teams.

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