A race car driver from Cedar Rapids predicts more Iowa businesses will soon start investing in advertising on NASCAR stock cars. Chris Horn, who raced his number-58 Chevy in last weekend’s Busch Series race at the Kansas Speedway, says some corporations like John Deere, Hy-Vee and Pella have already made the leap, but others are hesitant.
Horn says “Marketing powers in Iowa don’t see NASCAR as big as it really is. They think of it as a Southern sport and sometimes it’s very hard to get to them that this is real, this is a powerful marketing tool and sometimes it’s a tough sell.” Horn says the new Iowa Speedway in Newton will introduce the sport of stock car racing to more people, even though Iowa already has more miles of dirt race tracks per capita than any other state in the U.S.
He says “From a marketing standpoint, if you want national exposure, this is a no-brainer. You spend somewhere between three and six-million, depending on what kind of package you put together, and you can achieve 15 or 20-million dollars worth of exposure. You can’t get that anywhere else. There’s no other sport, there’s no other venue where you can get that kind of return on your investment.”
