Dale Earnhardt Jr. tops list of NASCAR drivers in consumer awareness
Few were likely surprised that Dale Earnhardt Jr. topped a list of NASCAR drivers as far as marketability and consumer awareness, but some results from the recent survey of hard-core racing fans by Millsport may have raised some eyebrows.
Millsport’s second annual Davie Brown Index for NASCAR quantifies a celebrity’s relevance to consumer behavior and is calculated in various entertainment categories by Millsport parent company The Marketing Arm. The survey includes questions that examine how many people are aware of the driver, how much the driver influences purchases and how passionate fans are about the drivers.
“What is interesting to us is the amount of separation that Junior has created in his sport and with these fans – it’s unlike anything we’ve seen in the celebrity world,” said Millsport Vice President Ken Cohn. “Fans are at least 20 percent more passionate about Junior than they are the next driver.”
The top five in the NASCAR survey were Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin, Tony Stewart, Jeff Burton and Jimmie Johnson. Also in the top 10 were Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte, Kasey Kahne and Kyle Petty.
Michael Waltrip and Dale Jarrett dropped out of the top 10, replaced by Edwards and Kahne.
Edwards had the biggest jump from 20th overall in the first survey to sixth this year.
The drivers near the top are typically winning or have a name that is associated with a legacy of winning (such as Petty), Cohn said.
Among other tidbits in the 2008 survey, Cohn revealed:
• Tony Stewart jumped in the “appeal” category from 17th to eighth.
• Kyle Busch, even though he won eight Cup races, was not among the top 10. He is among the highest in awareness but among the lowest on what fans think of him, Cohn said.
“We were interested to see if his on-track performance would be reflected in his off-track perception, and it doesn’t seem like that’s been affected quite yet,” Cohn said. “We’re going to keep our eye on that.”
• Joe Gibbs Racing rookie Joey Logano ranked 13th out of 36 drivers on the list of those who were perceived to be overexposed.
“We represent GameStop, who was really the only brand that leveraged Joey this year, and they did no advertising,” Cohn said. “There were a ton of media interviews and stories. What the answer to that question seems to suggest [is] that fans aren’t distinguishing between advertising and media coverage as it relates to exposure.”
• Among three drivers who are expected to break through in the index on marketability are Logano, David Ragan and Brad Keselowski.
Keselowski’s likeability was 13th overall. “You wonder if there is a little bit of a Junior factor going on,” Cohn said about the driver for Earnhardt Jr.’s JR Motorsports team.
• Earnhardt Jr. doesn’t top the list of all motorsports drivers in the company’s separate survey, which was one on general overall awareness among the U.S. population, not just hard-core fans.
Jeff Gordon was the top motorsports driver, followed by Earnhardt Jr. and then Indy Racing League driver Danica Patrick.
Patrick actually was third on the overall rankings among hard-core Indy Racing League fans behind Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan.
