Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

So I left off saying that I don’t think Boris and Jr will be doing any promotions together and here’s why: “PepsiCo wants Mountain Dew Amp Energy to be the energy drink of the masses” - Kenneth Hein, and not SoBe No Fear.

Pepsi is putting huge dollars into the marketing of Amp and Dale Jr. Amp’s sales doubled last year and Pepsi is certain that Amp will become the choice beverage of goal-oriented males 18-34. “Amp is about bringing your ‘A’ game whether it is going 200 miles per hour on the race track or going to your meeting,” said Maurice Herrera, Amp’s marketing director. “Energy drinks were about getting jacked up for the night. Now it’s about busy people who want a boost of energy.”

Pepsi has made Dale Jr the ‘face’ of Amp and has created two commercials featuring Dale Jr that will probably debut during the Super Bowl. One commercial apparently has Dale battling a gorilla and the other has him racing camels with tag lines such as, “Amp yourself” and “Fuel your passion” being used.

Not only that but Pepsi is introducing a Dale Jr 12oz collector can series in the late spring/early summer and apparently will sell them in Dale Jr packaging through WalMart in 8-packs at $11.88 each incorporating Dale’s car number (88) into the price. There will also be 88 Amp Dale Jr show cars touring around this summer too.

“Pepsi spent $10.2 million on media for Amp for the first 11 months of 2007 … (this) year, “we’re going to play big, Amp will get a tremendous amount of focus,” said Herrera” - Kenneth Hein.

With this being said, it is doubtful that SoBe No Fear will be getting any extra funds for promotion which means Boris Said will be limited in the number of races he runs this year again. And with Amp getting a ‘tremendous amount of focus’ and dollars don’t expect to see Dale and Boris working together in special Pepsi marketing promotions in the near future either.

For more info regarding Pepsi’s promotion of Amp please see Kenneth Hein’s entire article at technologymarketing.com, it goes into greater detail than I do here.

Photo Credits: Amp - coolchaser.com and SoBe No Fear - applesource.us

Hey, don’t forget to VOTE for this blog at the CBA’s!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.

Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

Kenny Wallace will be attempting to qualify the Furniture Row car for the Daytona 500. So the Furniture Row team realizes it wasn’t the driver after all, or maybe not. Let me explain.

This is a one race deal, nothing more, and it might not even be that. If Kenny gets the car into the field for the 500 and his teammate Joe Nemechek does not then Kenny has to hand the keys for his car over to Joe and Kenny takes a walk.

As a racer I know why Kenny is doing this - he is a race car driver and he wants to be in the show, but as a fan I hate what the Furniture Row team is doing to Kenny.

You know, this kind of thing isn’t limited to Wallace either, BAM racing has brought back Kenny Schrader to attempt to get their #49 car into the 500 as well. This is simply a one race deal right now, but I honestly don’t see BAM signing Kenny on for the rest of the season.

BAM, like Furniture Row, are looking for the next “great thing” yet they need the experience these drivers have to offer to get their cars into the starting field because their cars are not good enough to get into the field with lesser experienced drivers. Besides, the “next great thing” isn’t looking at driving for a second tier team, they want to sign with a Hendrick, Gibbs, or Roush.

Hey, don’t forget to VOTE for this blog at the CBA’s!

Visit 1800blogger to see all of our industry leading blogs.