Nissan Micra Cup a fine example of brand activation
Last week, I wrote about Canadian racing star Alex Tagliani. One of the things he said was that in the year 2018, a sponsor is wasting money if he/she/it isn’t leveraging the investment to ensure a greater return.
“It’s no good to just have a sign on a car,” said Tagliani, a veteran IndyCar driver now deeply involved in the NASCAR Pinty’s Series for late-model stock cars, which is Canada’s only national auto-racing championship.
“They have to be involved and working to make sure the sponsorship benefits them. They have to activate the sponsorship.”
If you’re looking for an example of what “Tag” is talking about, you don’t have to go much further than the Nissan Micra Cup, a single-make, low-cost racing series in its fourth year that will start its season next weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park’s Victoria Day Speedfest, which will also feature the Canadian Touring Car Championship presented by Pirelli, the IMSA Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Yokohama, various classes of the Pirelli World Challenge as well as the headliner Pinty’s Series and — of course — the Micra Cup.
Back in the early 1960s, several single-make series were launched, with Formula Vee (for Volkswagen) and Formula Ford being the best known.
It was great PR for the motor companies but didn’t really translate into sales, at least in North America, because it was difficult for consumers to connect a single-seat racing car’s power plant with the engine in their daily driver.
In Canada, the Honda-Michelin Challenge Series changed that.
Launched by Ralph Luciw in the mid-1970s, the series for street-legal Honda Civics went on for 17 years and sold a lot of cars for the Japanese auto giant because consumers would fre- quently read, see or hear about the Civic — often from the race drivers themselves — and be impressed by their power, practicality and potential as a family car.
The Honda-Michelin series was so successful and the concept so brilliant that Porsche and General Motors essentially borrowed the Luciw model for their Rothmans Porsche Turbo Cup and the Players-GM series.
So five years ago, Nissan was planning to reintroduce the Micra to the Canadian market after a 25-year absence.
How to make a splash? Yes, it could be marketed as the lowest-priced new car in Canada — I think it still is: the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is $9,988 — but what else?
Enter Quebec automobile journalist Jacques Deshaies, who is also a motorsport promoter. He suggested to Didier Marsaud, director of corporate communications for Nissan Canada, that a low-cost racing series built around the Micra just might work.
Marsaud took the idea to then-Nissan Canada president Christian Meunier and the Micra Cup was born.
Deshaies continues to be organizer and promoter of the series, which will once again feature up to 30 cars competing in 12 races on six race weekends, starting May 18 at CTMP and finishing up in mid-September at Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant in the Quebec Laurentians.
But Nissan and Marsaud are tasked with making the masses aware of the series and the competition. They are working, as Tagliani would say, to leverage the investment; to activate their involvement.
In an interview the other day, Marsaud talked about whether the Micra Cup has lived up to Nissan Canada’s expectations.
“The series has done everything we thought, and more,” he said. “We originally agreed to be involved for three years but we have just renewed for another three. It is very costeffective and we have found that it has been a big benefit to not only Micra but the Nissan brand generally,”
Marsaud said there are a number of reasons the Micra Cup has succeeded to this point but that its marketing program is right near the top.
“We have a partnership with TSN in Ontario and RDS (the French all-sports network) in Quebec,” he said. “After each race weekend, we have 30second clips of the races that are broadcast in prime time around SportsCentre. We discussed whether it would be better to show the whole race at 11:30 p.m. or later, or should we go for short clips around the SportsCentre news shows.
“We just don’t want the rac- ing fans, who would maybe watch at 11:30. We also want the hockey fans, the football fans to see what we do. It’s a (commercial time) buy — it’s not inside the editorial content of SportsCentre but it’s presented as editorial content. And it’s shown on the air two or three times a day. “We find that it’s building awareness with our target audience, which is not the motorsport fan.”
As well as the 30-second TV clips, Nissan is extremely active on social media — “We have more than 6,000 fans of the Micra Cup page; 6,000 is not big for a brand itself but, for a racing series, that is big in Canada” — and they have a marketing agency dedicated to servicing all of their social media channels — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
“This year,” said Marsaud, “we will have Micra Cup races broadcast live on our Facebook page. We are doing this so that our fans in Ontario can see us at Grand Prix Trois-Rivieres and our fans in Quebec will be able to see the races at Mosport (CTMP).
“We pitch stories to journalists (see Mark Zwolinski’s story on Micra Cup autistic driver Austin Riley in this weekend’s Star Sports section) and we invite a lot of journalists to attend the races,” Marsaud continued. “We do that for two reasons — to achieve our own internal objectives but also to give our drivers exposure for a very low cost.
“The Micra Cup is now a series in which a lot of people are aware and when a driver is seeking a budget (sponsor), he can say to his potential partner or sponsor that they can get exposure on TSN, RDS, on Facebook Live, the magazine and in more than 500 media articles.”
If you own a Micra, and want to go to the races, all you have to do is show up at a circuit where one is being held.
You must first register at micracup.ca but you can then get in for free. Last year, 300 owners took advantage of this offer.
“When you add all this up,” Marsaud said, “when you add the TV activation, social media activation, media invitations, the test drive with journalists where we put journalists behind the wheel of a Micra Cup car, the Micra owners parade, this involvement is high for the Nissan brand. “When you buy a BMW or a Porsche, you expect to get invited to VIP events. But when you buy a car for less than $10,000, you don’t expect that. It is the only way it works as a brand.
“Unless you activate, it will not work.” And where have we heard those words before?