I went to ihra.com and clicked on the eMax logo to find out. I’m no marketing professional, but I will tell you that having a 20+ second flash introduction with loud music that doesn’t have a “skip” button is really annoying. It made me want to leave the site before I even got to the content. Not what I consider a positive first impression, however, I stayed the course and waited until the “ENTER” button appeared and clicked on it.
It took me a little searching but according to their website, "EntertainMax Worldwide is a global music, multimedia, entertainment and broadcasting company that offers high-quality products and services focused in the areas of pre-recorded music, feature film and TV production, concert and sports events, and merchandising."
Wow! eMax sounds like a pretty nifty company to me. How come I’ve never heard of them before? I’ll bet if we took a poll of 100 people leaving an IHRA national event, over 90% of them still have no clue as to who eMax was or what they do. I know I didn’t. Was I the exception? Did I miss eMax’s marketing efforts at the track?
When NHRA found out they were losing Winston as their title sponsor, they worked hard to find a new one. At that time Gatorade was a well known product, and POWERade a
relatively new player in the game. My perception is that NHRA and POWERade put together an aggressive marketing campaign that was successful because today POWERade appears to be as equally well recognized as Gatorade and likely more to NHRA fans.
Does anyone know who Nextel is the title sponsor for? How about Busch? To further my illustration, do you know what products or services Nextel, Busch and POWERade provide? If you answered these questions with "cell phones, beer and sports drinks," you win the prize and, more importantly, the marketing companies, sanctioning bodies and advertisers have done a good job at building brand recognition.
Can this be fixed? I hope there are people much smarter than I am, with degrees in marketing and advertising and loads of experience, asking some of these same questions and strategizing how to accomplish this.
Personally, I’d like to see a “Jumbo-tron” at IHRA national events. It would be an excellent opportunity for a multimedia company such as eMax to showcase their “multimedia” services while at the same time building the recognition between drivers, cars and fans. In such an audio challenged environment it would also keep the fans informed of the drivers and provide real time results.
From what I understand, there are already “feeds” from the timing system that go to various devices for the purpose of reporting results. It would just be a matter of getting that information to a “Jumbo-tron” and putting it in a format that makes sense.
While the “Jumbo-tron” would certainly be an asset for the Pro ranks, it could be taken a step further. Imagine the possibilities of getting people interested in Sportsman racing.
One of the hardest things to understand about Sportsman racing is both cars not leaving the starting line at the same time. If the average fan could be “educated” in Reaction Time (R/T) and Margin of Victory (MOV) and have these numbers shown to them on the scoreboard they might gain a new appreciation for the Sportsman racers and think “Wow, that guy just won the race by less than ten thousandths of a second!”
I look forward to IHRA’s partnership with eMax and can’t wait to see what the future brings!
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