NEW YORK — Ahead of the Daytona 500 on Sunday, NASCAR made a pit stop in Times Square for a world-record-breaking activation as part of its \u201cHell Yeah\u201d rebrand campaign.<\/p>\n
The pop-up saw NASCAR set a record for \u201cloudest billboard,\u201d as certified by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on-site. NASCAR constructed the temporary billboard on the corner of West 42nd Street and 7th Avenue and affixed it with a one-to-one replica of a \u201cNext Gen\u201d car engine, which driver Ross Chastain revved to 133.7 decibels using a pedal connected to the engine via cabling. That cleared a 100-decibel benchmark for the record determined by Guinness World Records\u2019 London-based Global Records team.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our strategic pillars this year is getting NASCAR out in the wild,\u201d NASCAR Managing Dir\/Brand Content Jess Smith<\/a> told SBJ. \u201cFor anyone that has experienced a NASCAR race, it is the most visceral sporting experience in the world. We want to take the energy and the boldness and the rawness of NASCAR and place it in places to expose new people to the experience and the energy of the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n The spectacle drew a small crowd, perhaps one or two dozen, with a mix of casual observers and apparent diehards. Just before the main event, a bystander blurted a question to Chastain about smashing a watermelon — his trademark, post-race-win celebration — which he happily obliged after the display. NASCAR then left the pedal and billboard up for a few hours so fans could experience the sensation as well. NASCAR Senior Dir\/Brand Marketing Tyler Hoke said the racing series could take the engine-embedded billboard activation to more locations later in their season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could reach people, and they could tune in on Sunday. That\u2019s what we want,\u201d Chastain said after the event, answering a question about what he hopes the activation accomplishes. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of opportunity for people to come see us or tune in from home wherever they\u2019re at around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox News livestreamed<\/a> the record-breaking moment — plus lead-in interviews with Chastain and Guinness World Records adjudicator Andy Glass — in a synergy between NASCAR and media rights partner Fox, which is airing the Daytona 500 this weekend. The billboard also included a promotion for the Fox broadcast, which begins at 2:30pm ET on Sunday.<\/p>\n The pop-up itself was technically a recreation of NASCAR breaking the record last Friday in a run-through in Winston-Salem. But all of the necessary weather conditions, technology and witnesses were present for both, as was the triple-digit-decibel engine roar. <\/p>\n Multinational creative agency 72andSunny<\/a> and Denver-based event production firm Guru House assisted NASCAR on the activation, while engine builders ECR and HMS consulted on the technology side. Concept80 developed the \u201cHell Yeah\u201d campaign\u2019s debut ad spot<\/a>, which aired on NBC just after Super Bowl LX on Feb. 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK — Ahead of the Daytona 500 on Sunday, NASCAR made a pit stop in Times Square…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,19546,634,82],"class_list":["post-466827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-daytona-500","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}