Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

The Indy Racing League recently announced it was hiring a marketing company led by Kiss frontman Gene Simmons to help drum up interest in the low-wattage racing series. Simmons co-wrote a fist-pumping song, "I Am Indy," as the centerpiece of the marketing campaign. The moderator of the news conference announcing Simmons' involvement noted that not only is Simmons a rock star, he's also "long been recognized in the entertainment world as a leader in branded entertainment."

"When the message is clear, you can't simplify it any more," Simmons said. "Kiss, by the way, you can't simplify it any more. If you go see Emerson, Lake & Palmer it's ELP; Crosby, Stills & Nash, CSNY. We're not simplifying a message, we want something that's got a nice point like an arrow that can go far, sleek and hit any target we choose."

It appears Simmons is using Kiss' unashamed forays into branding and marketing as a model for the Indy Racing League. Flak has uncovered what might be a memo written by Simmons describing some of the ideas he has proposed to attract attention to a racing series dwarfed in attention by NASCAR:

TO: IRL PRESIDENT TONY GEORGE
FROM: GENE

Tony:

Like your great racing league, Kiss once was an underappreciated yet ball-shaking powerful force. It took a long while to get the masses turned away from their BTO and their Foghat to love Kiss. But I think if we follow the template my band followed, your IRL soon enough will be recognized as the God of Thunder it really is. Let's shout it out loud!

PART ONE: VIRAL MARKETING

While your organization has a sufficient budget for a multimedia marketing plan, the best way to make yourself look cutting-edge is to have fans independently turning other people on to you. Sometimes this happens naturally; something you need to give it a little push. (That's why many artists now have "street teams.")

I recommend finding some teenage dork in his basement in Terre Haute, Ind., to threaten to attack a local radio station until it starts airing IRL broadcasts. We would contract him to be the start of a viral marketing campaign called the IRL Army.

Also, a small Midwestern town would be a good place to have a parade and a special "IRL Day," with the local high school marching band playing "I Am Indy."

PART TWO: DRIVER IMAGE

It's great that Danica Patrick is so willing to spread her legs in men's magazines. Unfortunately, that's not a long-term solution for making people love Dan Wheldon. So we can do some things to give drivers a little more "personality:"

1. Have the drivers of one racing team appear in public only in kabuki-style makeup. After a few years, have them remove it. Repeat the process as necessary.

2. Have all drivers wear codpieces. Even Danica Patrick.

3. Refer to drivers with catchy nicknames, like "the Cat" and "the Demon" and "the Guy with the Star on his Face."

4. In pre-race driver introductions, have Tony Kanaan spit blood, Sam Hornish Jr. spit fire, and Helio Castroneves sing a touching ballad about having to leave his girl because he has to go do a tire test.

5. Have all the drivers on one team announce they will drive solo for a period of races, just for something a little different.

PART THREE: MEDIA MARKETING

Rather than focus on merely buying TV and radio ads, I recommend we stretch the IRL's reach into various entertainment opportunities that could connect fans with drivers and teams. For example:

1. To accentuate the series' danger, produce a comic book in which the ink is mixed with the blood of IRL drivers. If medics cannot collect the blood at crash scenes, only then we will draft drivers to see a phlebotomist. (We could also produce knick-knacks made out of drivers' bone fragments and car shrapnel.)

2. To accentuate sex appeal, have at least one driver appear on a talk show, such as "The View," bragging that he has slept with thousands of women, and has Polaroids of all of them. This would work for Danica Patrick, too.

3. To accentuate the drivers' bravery, produce a movie in which the top four drivers become superheros to fight a madman taking over an amusement park.

4. To expand further outside your core audience, produce, and have drivers appear in, a holiday special hosted by a vaguely creepy gay man whom old ladies seem to like. Jim J. Bullock would work.

PART FOUR: PRODUCT TIE-INS

This is related to part three, but part four is accelerated (pardon the pun!) once part three kicks in. If you can think it, we can put the IRL's name on it. Lunchboxes. T-shirts. Roofing materials. Aquariums. Home furniture. Office-cleaning supplies. Dreidels. Copy machines. Wrenches. Grandfather clocks. Scythes. Anything.

To show the casual fan how hard-core the hard-core fans can be, I recommend an IRL casket. Now, it might seem like you wouldn't want to accentuate a connection with death, but this is for the fans, not the drivers. An Indy-car shaped coffin, which plays "I Am Indy" eternally, would grab media attention and big, big dollars. Perhaps we could even offer fans the chance to be buried with their favorite driver. Once both pass, of course. Not even NASCAR offers that.

Tony, with such forward thinking, we can making the IRL the colossus that it should be. Please let me know what you think.

Actually, don't. We've got the contract from you, so we'll do whatever we want. Not like whatever you did was working.

Cheers,

Gene

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.