Busch has played a role in sponsoring NASCAR for decades, both of the league and individual drivers. In recent years the brand has been the title sponsor of driver Kevin Harvick, one of the top drivers in the sport who is also emblematic of Busch brand values. Busch is constantly pushing the envelope with its sponsorship, leading the way in creative paint scheme designs for Harvick to race in.
Harvick has been racing in NASCAR for years, and despite coming to the tail end of his career, the 2018 season was one of his best. But nobody seemed to notice. Young, millennial drivers such as Joey Logano were grabbing all the headlines and media attention, and Harvick and Busch were miffed. So the brand wanted to change that conversation and remind everyone who they should be talking about.
In the final race of the season, with Harvick in the running for the championship, Busch made a bet. The brand was so confident in their sponsored athlete, that they announced on social that they were betting on Harvick’s behalf, offering up Kevin’s car with a “millennial-inspired” paint scheme in 2019 if he didn’t win. Well, Busch lost the bet. Joey Logano beat Harvick at Homestead which meant Busch owed the millennials a paint scheme next season.
As the 2019 season began in the spring, Busch needed to make good on its bet, and picked the 2019 All-Star race to settle up. The brand engaged its hardcore fans to help design the scheme, taking to Twitter to crowd-source recommendations on what should go on the car.
The week ahead of the All Star race, Busch unveiled the new millennial-pink scheme through a coordinated PR and social push with still photos of the car and a video with Harvick, as he examined the car for the first time having no idea what anything meant. With emojis and sayings such as “Busch AF,” the campaign played into the authentic generational divide storyline both in NASCAR and wider society, but in a fun and playful way.
Despite losing the bet, Busch still made good on its sponsorship of Harvick by helping drive conversation around their guy in a way that could not have been done if he won back in 2018.
The end result was...lit. The news of the Millennial Paint Scheme became one of the most-discussed topics leading into the All-Star Race with over 22,229 social mentions and over six thousand tweets using the hashtag #MillennialCar.
NASCAR is an insulated media space, with stories rarely breaking out of endemic circles. However, the highly relatable story and visually stunning car broke through in PR, with the image of the car and story of the bet landed in major sports titles like Yahoo! Sports, Golf Digest and Sporting News as well as trades including Adweek and AdAge.
Busch and Harvick’s bet payout was hard to ignore on AND off the track, generating 68 editorial impressions and 45 social posts from media, resulting in more than 300M media impressions across editorial and nearly 23M across social.
