As the official sponsor of the No. 48 Hendrick Chevrolet in the NASCAR Cup Series, Ally knows that one of the most exciting and talked about passion points for NASCAR fans are the paint schemes. Fans love to banter, exchange predictions and opinions about every paint scheme on the cars of their favorite drivers, and how each driver’s sponsor can get creative with truly unique paint scheme designs
In an effort to tap into this passion, Ally created a first-of-its-kind digital fan experience where fans could design their very own custom paint scheme with the chance for the grand prize winner’s design to be brought to life and actually wrapped on the Ally 48 car for a race later that season.
To help us bring this idea to life in the most authentic way possible, Ally partnered with Danny Koker, owner of Count’s Kustoms and the legendary “Count” of Las Vegas car culture. Thus, Koker’s Garage opened its digital doors.
The primary goal of the program was to drive a deeper connection with NASCAR fans during a key milestone - the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs - to ultimately drive more fandom and love of the Ally 48. Ally wanted to break through the clutter of other brand sponsorships and encourage positive fan conversation, regardless of their driver performance.
To bring this Koker’s Garage to life, Ally created an interactive microsite where fans could design their custom paint schemes to enter the sweepstakes. The program was promoted through an entertaining and educational social video content series that enlisted celebrity judges Danny Koker and Alex Bowman, driver of the Ally 48 car, to help pick a winning design in 2 weeks.
Once the winning design was selected, the Ally 48 car was wrapped in the custom paint scheme, which proudly showcased the fan-designed paint scheme during the 2022 South Point 400 in Las Vegas.
To create the interactive microsite, Ally worked with their partners to design and build a web-based creation studio that was dynamic to offer real value and entertainment to the fans. This studio allowed NASCAR fans to design and save up to 5 paint schemes for the Ally 48 car. The design process broke the car into 8 primary zones, featuring 26 detailed sections for customization. Some sections had up to 50+ color and pattern options, in addition to dozens of decals designed by Danny Koker. In total, the Koker’s Garage customization tools could produce more than 1 million possible design combinations.
Danny brought his unique knowledge and expertise of car culture and design, while Alex connected the Ally 48 and NASCAR fans with this awesome opportunity and a grand prize of not only having your design selected, but to experience a VIP weekend at the track to see their design brought to life.
Both judges were featured in the Koker’s Garage social content series, which featured tips and tricks about designing a killer paint scheme that is authentic to the country’s most popular car culture in Las Vegas and to NASCAR.
Ally encountered an unforeseen challenge ahead of the Las Vegas cup series race where the winner’s design was intended to be featured. Ally 48 race car driver and competition judge Alex Bowman was injured and would no longer be the driver racing at the track. An event like this would typically spark negative conversation on social, or significantly decrease conversation and engagement. However, thanks to this debut paint scheme, Ally racing social channels continued to see high impressions and engagements when the backup driver hopped in the driver seat to proudly race the Ally 48 car with its new custom paint scheme..
The social content series drove the highest overall organic engagements (25.2K total) and impressions (442K total) on the Ally racing social accounts in 2022. At the end of the two-week submission window, Danny and Alex narrowed down more than 2,234 submissions and chose 2 finalists.
When Ally put the final 2 designs on Twitter to let fans decide the final winner, nearly 2,000 fans voted to determine which design would be brought to life on the Ally 48 car on the track in Vegas.
Both online and at-track, a key indicator of success was the noticeable excitement from fans with Danny Koker’s involvement in the campaign. NASCAR fans and car enthusiasts alike flocked to Danny at the track for a chance to meet the icon. Danny’s involvement truly melded these two worlds of NASCAR and car culture, and fans were incredibly excited for the chance to meet with him at the track. The campaign was so successful on Ally’s social channels that Ally is already exploring how to build off of this campaign for another version of Koker’s Garage in 2023.
