Family Circle magazine has joined with NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing Inc., to promote a new television series.
The series is intended to build brand awareness, and sales, for both companies. NASCAR boasts 75 million fans, while Family Circle, with its rate base of 3.8 million, claims 21 million readers.
“As with all promotions or events that we do that touch the consumer, it is our hope that we can reinforce the high quality, trusted editorial content that we deliver on a monthly basis and inspire those people to either buy a copy at the newsstand or subscribe to the magazine,” said James Carr, VP, group publisher of Family Circle.
“The bottom line is to leverage our strengths and the strengths of others, and when a partnership makes sense we’re delighted to work with those partners to move everyone’s brands forward,” he added. “The main thing is branding the magazine — it’s what we’re all about in marketing.”
NASCAR: Serving It Up, which will run in syndication from September 2008 – September 2009, is a cooking competition show. Taped at NASCAR events, Serving It Up will show NASCAR fans cooking Family Circle recipes. A panel that includes Family Circle food editor Julie Miltenberger will judge the show’s finale — a nationwide cook-off.
Family Circle will promote the 40-episode series with advertorials in its print magazine. The magazine and NASCAR share similar audiences, interested in family events and cooking. Family Circle has noted the overlap in audience interests before and has featured NASCAR drivers in its editorial pages.
“We’re a very big magazine, and we just try to be creative to have different touchpoints on the consumer,” Carr said. “This is just one more spoke, and when you combine everything together at some level, someone is going to see the show and see a recipe they like and go to the newsstand or to our Web site.”
Major advertisers for NASCAR: Serving It Up will be food and appliances. Creative Arts Entertainment Group will serve as worldwide distributor of the program in all mediums to include syndication.
