2016By Ken Fang on

This past Wednesday, NBCSN aired the 2001 Pepsi 400 from Daytona under the title #NASCARThrowback. Re-airing a two-hour version of the race and airing tweets from drivers, team owners, NBC’s announcers and viewers, the #NASCARThrowback became the top trending topic on Twitter an hour after the broadcast began. As viewers watched the final minutes of the race which Dale Earnhardt, Jr. won, several active drivers including Kylc Busch, Joey Logano and Kurt Busch tweeted as well as did NBC’s on-air NASCAR team of Jeff Burton, Dale Jarrett, Steve Letarte, Kyle Petty, Rick Allen and Rutledge Wood.

NBC says in the final moments of the #NASCARThrowback telecast, more than 400 tweets per minute were made by viewers, drivers, teams and even Earnhardt Jr. himself. The re-airing of the Pepsi 400 with the social media element was an offshoot of last year when NBCSN aired classic NASCAR races in the run-up to last year’s Coke Zero 400 which marked NBC Sports Group’s return to the sport.

NBC Sports officials noticed that Dale Jr. was tweeting along with the races on his own so this year, NBC decided to make the social media aspect part of the programming for this year’s #NASCARThrowback. Jenny Storms, NBC Sports Chief Marketing Officer told Awful Announcing that the division decided to take it a higher level to make it a special piece of programming and that’s how #NASCARThrowback was born.

“I would attribute a lot of the success to multiple things,” Storms said. “One was the pure engagement across NASCAR, the governing body, the teams themselves, the actual drivers themselves, and then the NBC Sports talent. I think that was enormous in driving so much of the conversation especially with consumers throughout the evening and it really made it like we were all having a giant viewing party together.”

The increased Twitter activity helped to drive ratings to an 86% increase in NBCSN’s ratings for #NASCARThrowback as compared to last year when NBCSN aired a classic NASCAR race in the same timeslot on the same day last year.

Storms pointed that there was 18,000 tweets during the two-hour #NASCARThrowback which aired from 8 — 10 p.m. ET. She said as she was monitoring the tweets during the broadcast, she felt the success was not just from the network promotion, but also the promotion from the drivers and the team’s making the discussion “become this flood of conversation and mentions and it was really spectular how people were really engaged and talking to each other and really enjoying how their tweets were showing up on air.”

Storms says by making #NASCARThrowback the number one trending topic on Wednesday night was “a tribute to the NASCAR fans and the entire family of NASCAR,” proving that everyone could come together to create a big event.

Based on the success of Wednesday’s #NASCARThrowback, Storms says NBC Sports is looking into at putting together another event, but she notes that the 2001 Pepsi 400 lent itself perfectly to the interaction and social media integration as people tweeted pictures of them watching the race and tweeting their emotions of seeing Dale Jr winning the race just months after his father had died months earlier on the same Daytona track. NBC will look for another race that can match or come close of the emotions of that race and can also bring in the social media element.

Now focusing on the present, NBC will take over the second half of the NASCAR Sprint Cup season with tonight’s Coke Zero 400 race at Daytona. It has used the campaign “We’ll Take It From Here,” since the end of May to signify that NBC picks up the rest of the races from Fox as of tonight.

Storms says the upcoming Rio Olympics will be a great promotional tool “where we will have the opportunity to expose those Olympic viewers to NASCAR through our promotional efforts and to maybe engage some different demographics and some different folks” to the sport.

Lastly, Storms notes that after tonight’s race, some of those in attendance at Daytona will see some members of NBC Sports’ activation team wearing green “Tune in for Kentucky” t-shirts handing out drawstring backpacks with bottled water, a granola bar and S’mores with all type of messages advising fans to tune to NBCSN next week for the Sprint Cup race at Kentucky Speedway.

So the marketing of NASCAR on NBC goes into overdrive today as the Peacock runs through the second half of both the Xfinity and Sprint Cup Series to the end of the season.

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013.

He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television.

Fang celebrates the four Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.

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