Designs on NASCAR

Holiday Inn is on its second lap with NASCAR.

The hotel chain is about to launch an online contest inviting racing fans to redesign the paint job on driver Jeff Burton’s car, which is sponsored by Holiday Inn.

This is the second time Holiday Inn is hosting the contest. But it’s adding some trim.

A viewing gallery at www.holidayinn.com lets visitors see all the entries, and vote for their favorites. The 10 designs that get the most votes become finalists.

Holiday Inn is also giving its staffers a turn at the draft table.

An employee version of the contest runs on the Intranet for Holiday Inn and its parent company, InterContinental Hotels Group. The overlay lets the firm squeeze even more value out of its sponsorship, and gives staff something in common with guests.

“In a franchisee-driven system, it’s important to engage the staff that interact with the guests,” says Steve Greifer, senior vice president and global lead for promotions at Digitas, Holiday Inn’s agency.

Burton will pick the winning designs. The new paint schemes will be featured in two separate races this season. The winners get a trip for two to the race sporting his or her design with V.I.P. treatment in the pit, including a meeting with Burton.

Also new this year: A tool that lets entrants post their designs on their MySpace pages and other social networking sites so they can drive friends to Holiday Inn’s site to vote.

The voting system serves two purposes: It engages fans more deeply in the contest, and it helps Holiday Inn and Digitas with the judging.

“Last year, people spent significant time building their own cars and viewing others,“ says Roberto Zeledon, Digitas vice president and associate director. “Voting adds another level of engagement-and makes it easier for us to narrow it down.”

Holiday Inn’s brand manager, Doug Dixon, was impressed by how long entrants stayed on the site last year.

“The winner spent almost two hours designing his car,” he says. “That’s great brand engagement.”

The contest runs through mid-July, and the winning designs will appear in races in August or September.

The competition is being marketed entirely online supported by ads on www.NASCAR.com and banner ads on related sites. Last year, those ads garnered a 0.5% click-through rate, better than the 0.15% average for banner ads, Zeledon says.

The inaugural contest drew nearly 24,000 entries, with 41% of those consumers opting in to receive future marketing messages from Holiday Inn. The hotelier is notifying them all by e-mail about this year’s contest.

The sponsorship fits because Holiday Inn and NASCAR share an all-American image, Dixon says.

“Holiday Inn has long been described by our loyal guests as ‘uniquely American,’ ‘genuine,’ ‘open to all.’ NASCAR is known in similar terms,” he says. “Many guests are already NASCAR fans, so partnering with Richard Childress Racing is a great fit for us.”

The company signed on to sponsor Burton last year as part of its brand repositioning under the theme “Look again at Holiday Inn.” The chain has nearly 100% brand awareness, but many consumers cling to old impressions of its hotels from as far back as the 1970s, Zeledon says.

To update that image, Holiday Inn has renovated many of its properties, and began image advertising early last year. Its NASCAR deal — and a similar sponsorship with Major League Baseball — gives the company a promotional platform to reach targeted segments of its broad audience.

“We recognize we’re not hitting every potential customer with this program,” Greifer says. “This is meant to go against an enthusiastic subset of the target audience. To reach families and business travelers, we’ve identified strong behavior-driving affinities and then built interactive promotions around them to get people thinking about the brand again.”

For more information on promotional campaigns, go to www.promomagazine.com

DOOR PRIZE

Best Western International is fielding an online game to ramp up summer traffic.

The instant-win game, called Knock Knock to Win, shows three virtual hotel-room doors that players can “unlock” with a Best Western key. Players pick two to open for a chance to win a $5,000 shopping spree.

The virtual room is used to showcase amenities and the Gold Crown Club loyalty program. Best Western hopes to spur club sign ups and increase room bookings.

The grand-prize package has a $1,000 Best Western Travel Card (good at any of its 4,200 hotels worldwide) and a $4,000 MasterCard gift card. Another 375 winners get a $20 MasterCard gift card.

The game, handled by ePrize, runs through May 25 at www.Knock2Win.com.