- Oscar Mayer will pit all six of its Wienermobiles against each other in a race on May 23 on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway prematurely of the Indianapolis 500, per details shared with Marketing Dive.
- The Wienie 500 can be streamed continue to exist the Fox Sports App and across @IndyCarOnFox social accounts. A partnership with DraftKings will enable fans to enter a pool to win $10,000 by predicting the race’s consequence and answering related questions.
- The race kicks off a brand new campaign, “Summer of Wieners,” with more elements to return this summer. The stunt looks to tie the Kraft Heinz brand to a sporting event that helps mark the beginning of summer.
The Wienie 500 will happen two days before the Indianapolis 500, a race where fans devour nearly 30,000 hot dogs, per press materials, and is meant to mark the official kick-off of summer. The partnership speaks to growing importance of marketing around live sports, including motor sports, as a strategy to engage with ad-wary consumers.
“As a brand known for sparking smiles in disarmingly delightful ways, it’s only fitting that we bring a race of epic proportions to the Speedway and rejoice a timeless tradition: delicious meats and slightly friendly competition to kick off a summer of wieners,” said Kelsey Rice, brand communications director at Oscar Mayer, in an announcement.
The event also represents the primary time all six of the brand’s hot-dog-shaped vehicles can be in the identical place at the identical time in over a decade and can be the primary competitive race for the fleet. Each of the six vehicles can be decorated to represent a distinct regional area of the country, including Chi Dog (Midwest), New York Dog (East), Sonoran Dog (Southwest), Slaw Dog (Southeast), Chili Dog (South) and Seattle Dog (Northwest). The drivers (a.k.a. “hotdoggers”) may even be equipped with custom racing suits and the winner can be treated to a trophy ceremony within the “Wiener’s Circle” complete with a sprig of mustard as a substitute of champagne.
The Wienie 500 is an element of a partnership between Oscar Mayer and Indianapolis Motor Speedway that names the brand the official hot dog” of each the speedway and the Indianapolis 500. The effort is a partnership led by Johannes Leonardo, with content and social by The Kitchen, paid media by Carat and public relations by Zeno.
The race is the most recent in a string of promotional stunts from the corporate involving its iconic vehicle. Past activations have included turning the hot-dog-and-bun-shaped vehicle into an ersatz wedding chapel, briefly rebranding it because the “Frankmobile” to advertise a line of all-beef frankfurters and using the vehicles as mobile billboards to attract attention to gender disparity in Hollywood through the Oscars.
Parent company Kraft Heinz has put Oscar Mayer on an internal platform that appears to balance performance and profitability. The brand achieved a ten% increase in gross profit dollars in 2024, CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera said on the Consumer Analyst Group of New York Conference in February.
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