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[ ARTICLE ]Southern FriedAdvertising: NASCAR MeetsMadison AvenueMax Utsler, Ph.DAssociate ProfessorUniversity of Kansasutsler@ku.edu785-864-0608Stuart Esrock, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorUniversity of Louisvillestuart.esrock@louisville.edu502-852-8161FAX: 502-852-8166This paper was originallypresented at thesecond Ad BowlSymposium, TheUniversity of SouthCarolina, Columbia,SC on January 25,2008.Peyton, LeBron, and A-Rod.Sports stars, like their rock & roll counterparts, often don’tneed two names. For many years that was the sole province ofthe Big 3—football, basketball, and baseball.Now we make room for NASCAR and its array of high profiledrivers who pilot their flashy, loud stock cars through hundredsof left hand turns each weekend during the spring, summer, andfall. So add Jeff, Tony, Jimmie, and Junior to the list of onenamestars. Misters Gordon, Stewart, Johnson, Earnhardt, andtheir fellow drivers and corporate sponsors have figured out thesurest way into their fans’ hearts is through television. And theTV commercial has become just as important to NASCAR andits sponsors’ marketing as Chevys, Fords, Dodges, and Toyotas.Indeed, TV spots have become a primary NASCAR vehicle toconnect drivers and sponsors to the public. Our research showsthat 18 of the 43 starting drivers in the 2007 Daytona 500appeared in at least one commercial. If that same percentage wasapplied to the 2007 NBA All-Star game, 151 players on activeNBA rosters would have appeared in ads (Sandomir, 2007).The drivers have become identifiable and the corporate entitieshave become even more connected to their exceedingly loyalNASCAR fan base. One columnist commented, “The fact thatwe’re talking about the commercials as much as we did about thefinish of the Daytona 500 says a lot about how NASCAR racingis viewed from a business standpoint these days” (Lemasters,2007).For this research project, we compared the visibility ofNASCAR drivers in television ads to the visibility of NationalFootball League players. We use this comparison as a departurepoint to begin to explain the success story that NASCARhas become over the course of the last decade. In this paper,we provide some background on the popularity of NASCAR, acontextual framework on parasocial interaction and the increaseduse of athletes and other celebrities to endorse products, adescription of the method, the results of our study, and finally adiscussion about the findings and future directions for research.BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 13