Kevin Harvick praises latest NASCAR effort to increase driver marketing

This year, NASCAR has a driver incentive program that will boost marketing efforts in the Cup Series and Kevin Harvick is a fan. The Cup Series champion likes seeing drivers make more money and get more exposure to fans.

Kevin Harvick has been around the sport a long time. He lived through the highs of the early 2000s and has seen the sport fall in popularity and TV viewership. Right now, it feels like NASCAR is making the right moves to start growing again.

On Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, the driver talked about the new incentive program. Drivers stand to make tens, hundreds, or millions of dollars. All they have to do is promote the sport in certain ways.

“Well, the drivers need to be in front of the fans more, right?” Harvick remarked. “I think the one thing that we all talked about as this program was being put together over the last couple of years is, how do we build the drivers’ brands. How do we make them rockstars?

“Well, the first thing we gotta do is figure out how to get them in front of the people that they need to be in front of to make them rockstars. Because what’s happened in our sport is, since 2009 really and the financial crisis, and everything that we went through; the way that businesses do business is different.”

Kevin Harvick: Sponsors don’t promote the sport like they used to

Kevin Harvick made a good point. The way of doing business has changed. It can change again, but it will take effort from drivers, teams, and NASCAR. It will also take effort from the sponsors.

Hopefully, with the new incentive program, more drivers are drawn to do promotions. Maybe we can even get the vibe of those old-school NASCAR commercials to come back.

“The sponsors really promoted the sport as I was coming through the sport to be able to grow it and make you have a brand because you were exposed to so many things and different news outlets and media outlets across the country,” Harvick continued. “So, I think what this driver incentive program does is it allows the drivers to get creative with their own brand.”

While things have changed in NASCAR, they haven’t changed a lot. Sponsors are still the lifeblood of the sport. When we start to see drivers participate in more promotional events for the sport we will know if this is a success or not.

In the past, NASCAR has had similar programs. Richard Petty and Kyle Petty tried to finagle the system a bit back in the 1980s by switching car numbers. However, that is a story for a different day. Let’s just hope this program is better than the Winner’s Circle program.