February 16th, 2012 
Journo **I know I’m a couple of days late on this, but I wanted to weigh in with a little post-mortem on the deal.
It was announced on Monday HendrickCars.com would provide various forms of sponsorship for three teams at the Daytona 500, one at the March race at Bristol and one for July’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona – this is in addition to existing sponsorship on Chase Elliott’s K&N East car and Kasey Kahne’s Cup car. The move was obviously met with surprise since none of the announced three are WHOLLY owned by Rick Hendrick.
The caveat here is that Phoenix Racing and JR Motorsports are on the Hendrick engine deal and JR Motorsports went through a “merger” with Hendrick’s Nationwide program a few years. Obvious partners for a Hendrick owned entity to put money into. The third team though, Richard Childress Racing, is another story. Why invest sponsorship dollars in a competitor?
For Hendrick though it presents an interesting opportunity to blanket two different series with relatively high profile sponsorship during NASCAR’s most watched weekend. Sponsorship rates are not what they used to be and for teams looking for last minute opportunities, you can bet that already discounted rate was even lower. I’ll bet Hendrick Automotive Group got one hell of a deal on its buy.
On top of that was the serious chatter about the move on various social media channels and news sites. I found at least a dozen articles written and I know there were hundreds of tweets in the hours that followed the announcement. Remember, this was a simple sponsorship buy! What’s better than a whole lot earned media to go along with that paid media?
It was without a doubt an unusual move, but one that I bet pays off for Hendrick Automotive. Well played.
UPDATED 2/27/2012 1:48pm
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Evidently, they got a good ROI on that when they ran it before. And when the price is right, Mr. Hendrick does step in to buy.
Have to admit, the announcement reminded me of JD Stacy, and the way he blanketed Cup in the early 80′s. But Mr. Hendrick keeps his promises.
i wonder if i’m the only one who saw this release on jayski, but ignored it and moved on and just assumed it was all for hendrick owned cars? i know i did it. i didn’t look at it for longer than 5 seconds. so when you posted this, it was my FIRST realization of this. amazing move, well played.
Hendrick owns 25% of JRM, Mr. “insider”
For this to work, Hendrick has to increase the number of cars he sells to cover the cost of the sponsorship. Given that the marginal profit per car sold is on the small side, Hendrick’s going to have to sell a whole lot of cars.
Is it possible? Potential car buyers come from two sources: new viewers to NASCAR who don’t know of Hendrick and who are so infatuated that they buy a car from Hendrick, and existing viewers (who very much already know of Hendrick) but for some reason decide that they’re going to buy a car from Hendrick instead of from somewhere else.
Maybe the numbers are there, but I don’t see it.
@steve – I don’t see it either. Not in this economy. There may be something more to this…maybe moving to be the “Roush” of Chevy? But that’s reaching….
Hey “A,” you are certainly correct. But the fact that this wasn’t mentioned in the blog post changes nothing. If you were paying attention, you would have realized the point of this post was to point out the deal with RCR. Thanks for your “input.”
Makes sense to me. If you’ve got the dough, why not “blanket the field” for add’l tv spots.
It actually was mentioned in the post–incorrectly–which is why I pointed it out. I don’t ordinarily leave comments (on any site).
“The move was obviously met with surprise since none of the announced three are owned by Rick Hendrick.”
Perhaps a bit pedantic, who’s to say.
Your helpful fact checker / copy editor-
A
A – Thank you for the smarmy correction. The post has been updated.
I never thought, as a KuBu fan, that I would be cheering for something with the Hendrick name on it in big letters, but that’s life in 2012, I guess. At least Phoenix probably gets a discount on the engines this week.
Pedantic & smarmy. Heh. I love this site. I like “A” too.
I’m digging the smart-ass responses by Journo and TC… The break obviously rekindled your fire.
I think whoever (marketing person most likely) that came up with this did a good job, its brilliant. Think about it for a moment:
1. All of these rides are Chevrolet
2. Most are under the Hendrick Motorsports banner in one way or another.
3. Hendrick Cars will be in three different series
4. RCR is a good organzation that also has its own marketing ways that work.
5. And most importantly, people are talking about it and will be most of the year.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see more companies caught on and do the same.
Now if only they’d get back to posting every day!
@steve: Agreed, The guys need to feed us daily!
RE Steve and Doug: at (80) franchises, billions $ in sales and even more in service work, I suspect some HendrickCars.com sticker space is mere pittance. Maybe Rick will receive more than his fair share of Hondas in return? D’oh!
Smarmy & Pedantic? Ok I have to admit. I had to look those up. So,…combined we have the unctuously flattering & overly concerned w/ minute formalisms racing team. Sounds like a winner to me…Nice!