NASCAR

For NASCAR’s communications team, optimizing its media outreach and relations processes, as well as earned media monitoring, reporting, and analysis, is key to effectively sharing the brand’s narrative with the world. However, as a global leader in sports and entertainment, it was grappling with how best to do so in today’s fast-moving, ever-evolving media landscape. Without the right tools and processes, NASCAR lacked a complete picture of its media presence, risked missing new coverage opportunities, and had less time to inform its wider network of its wins. Now, the communications team relies on Meltwater’s media intelligence and media relations solutions to bring the insights it needs to their fingertips. 

“There are a lot of different prongs to doing our jobs well, from figuring out where we should be telling our story and understanding where it is resonating most to seeing where and how we can tell our story a little bit better,” says Matt Nordby, NASCAR’s Managing Director of Communications. “All the tools in Meltwater help us do that — whether it's researching what media outlets and contacts are covering in real time to getting the data analytics on tonality and impressions — and make informed decisions about how and where we tell our story.”

Meltwater Media Intelligence, Media Relations, and Newsletters

NASCAR uses Meltwater’s media relations solution to scale and sharpen its outreach. “The database makes finding reporters at different outlets super easy, even ones that I may have never talked to previously or that don't have a sound contact,” Nordby says. “It takes one minute to get what I need, and I can move on.” 

The communications team also relies on Meltwater’s media intelligence solution to automate its earned media coverage monitoring and rev up its analysis with easy-to-read PR dashboards and unlimited keyword monitoring. Powered by AWS Compute architecture and storage solutions, the solution scales instantly, ensuring data durability, availability, and usability. Additionally, AWS advanced security features protect data and applications against potential threats. 

“It's really about determining the results after milestone moments like partnership announcements and landmark race events,” Nordby says. “We use the platform and work with the Meltwater team to mine the data — the earned media numbers, impressions, ad equivalency, tonality — and create a consistent algorithm to understand where that story resonated, what the coverage was like, and where else can we go.”

Those capabilities prove essential throughout NASCAR’s many milestone announcements and events each year. One such key event was its partnership with ABB, a global technology leader in electrification, which came on board as the founding partner of NASCAR IMPACT. From the unveiling of an electric race car prototype on July 4th weekend in Chicago through the NASCAR championship in Phoenix in November, the communications team, in collaboration with ABB, used Meltwater to track each piece of earned media. 

Results and Benefits

Using Meltwater media intelligence, NASCAR closed its ABB partnership launch campaign with a comprehensive performance overview, from how much coverage was generated to how many people it potentially reached. “After every campaign, we use Meltwater to take a hard look at the data and decide which areas of different media nationally and locally are best for us to continue telling our story from race to race, track to track, and market to market,” says Nordby. “It was great to be able to figure out where we can continue to leverage our partnerships moving forward.” 

Meltwater media relations let NASCAR’s communications team analyze how much coverage came from direct outreach versus secondary and tertiary articles. Meanwhile, AI-powered sentiment analysis and contextual summaries highlighted where and how its messaging was resonating.“ Coverage is one thing, but seeing if our messages are being pulled through in the coverage is another,” Nordby says. “Our Meltwater reports tell us about tonality and message pull-through. When tonality on a particular topic is down, we're able to see where we need to make adjustments.” 

In the end, Meltwater solutions helped NASCAR determine that the campaign generated more than six Super Bowl ads worth of coverage, including in business and tech outlets that didn’t traditionally cover motorsports. And thanks to Meltwater Newsletters, the communications team was able to easily share top media hits in its three-times-weekly email digest to 1,500 internal and external readers. 

As NASCAR continues to execute, evaluate, and iterate on its comms campaigns, it relies on Meltwater to stay ahead of the curve in today’s fast-paced media landscape. Ready to fuel your strategies in a similar way? See what Meltwater could do for you.