This has been touched on it a couple different threads I read recently, but it didn't seem appropriate to go off on a tangent in either of them, hence the new post ...
This is a goal for this year, as it was previously, and I noticed that in Todd's meeting notes he mentioned doing something to attract Mustang and GM clubs to the events - and Glenn mentioned that there are only so many drag racers you can convert ...
Car clubs are not the answer IMO - many have tried and have put in a big effort, for very little return, myself included. You may be lucky to find someone once in a blue moon, but I really don't see it as a good recruiting ground. The reason is simple and that is folks in car clubs already have a strong interest in other areas of the automotive hobby - typically they like to show their car and/or enjoy the social events - trying to interest them in road racing is doubly hard because you are really asking them to switch one car hobby that they are already very much involved in for another.
So the places to recruit potential racers are from the open track ranks, other forms of racing such as the dirt track community, and from those sports car enthusiasts/race car fans who have an interest in fast cars and racing, but are not already involved in the car club scene.
How do we reach these people? Targeted advertising!
- Open trackers can be reached by placing posters and flyers advertising NASA racing at the tracks so that open trackers from different DE orgs can find out about us. More might be done to promote us in this area by a direct presence and/or liason with other DE orgs, either by NASA TX or series directors if necessary?
- Same approach could be used for the dirt track community - there a literally hundreds of racers doing this around TX every weekend, but how many of them know that NASA even exists, let alone much about it? I'm sure if we could get the message across to the community we would attract more to the fold? To me, this should be our biggest recruiting ground. Perhaps some of our ex-dirt track guys like Boudy or James would have good input here?
- To attract people from the general public, we have to advertise in the mainstream media - this doesn't have to be expensive - something like a simple entry in the events section in the big city newspapers would help (like the Dallas Morning News "Guide") - in a city this big where there are hundreds of thousands of race fans who only get to go watch the races with their families twice a year, you can't tell me that you wouldn't get tens, perhaps hundreds of them who would bring their families out and watch grass roots American V8 racing for a fraction of what it costs for a NASCAR weekend! And how many of them could see what a blast we have, and talk to us and find out that they too could do this without having to mortage their children? Americans love to get out with their families on the weekends, but we need to tell these folks that our events are on, or they will just end up back at the zoo again!
Anyway, these are my thoughts - I'm sure there are plenty of other opinions out there?
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Originally Posted by jeffburch
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