Sunday, May 20, 2007

Lowes Motor Speedway - My first brush with NASCAR



Each year in Charlotte in May we have a two week period of racing with the Busch Truck Series race, the Nextel All Star Challenge and the Coca Cola 600.

Last year one of my clients became the Director of Group and Club sales for Lowes Motor Speedway. I have worked with many of the major sports teams in the group sales area helping them with database marketing, customer relationship management and web strategy.

Since I live in the midst of NASCAR, I decided to learn as much as I could about it and began to look for ways to learn about it customers and the marketing of the sport.

Last spring, I helped with Lowes Motor Speedways booth at a carnival like event called "Speed Street" and helped to manage their booth. Hundreds of thousands of fans come to downtown Charlotte to be entertained by companies (Kellogg's, GM, Ford, Tide, Cheerios, Home Depot,and any others you would find on the hood of a race car.

For the Fall 2006 race, the Bank of America 500, there was a new opportunity to work with the Corporate Sales area as a concierge for their corporate suites. This was the perfect fit as I really had a way to see how the corporate side of NASCAR entertains their clients. I was responsible for suites for Bank of America (who was the race sponsor), Budweiser (Dale Jr.), 3M, and The Wallace Family (Kenny and Rusty's family).

This week, year I will be working for the races on the suite level and also working to help with areas of the Speedway Club (the dining club and area for its members). The Speedway Club a beautiful dining facility overlooking the track with a large ballroom and meeting rooms as well.

Since I enjoyed looking at the inside of making a film with Leatherheads, I decided to do a simliar thing my experiences working with Lowes Motor Speedway and Race Week when over 200,000 fans descend upon the track.