Q&A: Golden Rule Inspires Golden Opportunities For ProMedia

WOLCOTTLEAD

ProMedia Events founder and President Steve Wolcott, whose company produces the increasingly popular NMRA, NMCA, NMCA West and LSX motorsports series, is a busy man. He’s also a SEMA board member who keeps busy enough honoring his ProMedia ProPledge. But see what B.O., the “Four Ts,” the Golden Rule, the performance aftermarket, and just plain listening and caring have to do with The World’s Fastest Street Cars.

Dragzine: You have a broad spectrum of racing interests under your ProMedia umbrella. How much does that amaze you, considering that drag racing is a subculture of motorsports and that your series represent a subculture within a subculture?

DSC_3018Steve Wolcott: That’s an interesting way to put it. We have our niche. What we’re all about, I like to sum it up in one phrase: World’s Fastest Street Cars. That’s what NMCA is about. NMCA stands for National Muscle Car Association, and we’re really about doorslammers. We’re about cars that started out in a dealership. And yes, they are heavily modified. When a fan comes out to an NMCA event, that ’67 Camaro might have two turbos in place of two headlights and be putting out upwards of 2,500 horsepower and have a parachute to stop and be running in the six-second zone. But they are street cars. They are cars that started out in the dealership. The cool thing is there’s still the relatability to the fan. I think Top Fuel and Funny Car are awesome, but nobody sits there and says, “I used to have a car like that.”

DZ: That’s a huge deal.

SW: That’s our special connection with the fans: they can relate to the cars that are on the track. Another thing is we get a lot of media coverage because their readers relate to the cars. You really won’t find a Chevy high-performance magazine or a muscle Mustang magazine covering NHRA events, but they will cover NMCA and NMRA because their readers relate to the cars on the track and maybe the vehicle features they’ll see.

DZ: It wasn’t that long ago that we saw the fierce brand loyalty and the manufacturer wars in the NHRA. Did you capitalize on that departure?

…they are street cars. They are cars that started out in the dealership. The cool thing is there’s still the relatability to the fan. I think Top Fuel and Funny Car are awesome, but nobody sits there and says, “I used to have a car like that.

SW: I can’t say that we went out and intentionally capitalized on that, but as the vehicles evolved, the real muscle-car / street-car style of racing fell on our shoulders.

DZ: Motorsports is probably the most segmented of all sporting industries. Your series are thriving. Is the relatability to the cars the main reason?

SW: No, I would say that’s one of several. I would also say a robust performance aftermarket that makes products for these vehicles. If you think about some of these companies that make street performance products, what they do is they just make more and more hardcore, and eventually their cylinder heads or intake manifolds or turbo kits are used in racing. But they’re also using that technology they’re developing on the track to translate to better street performance products. That’s really where the big market is for these manufacturers. So they will use the series, like NMCA and NMRA, as test beds for product development, and a lot of that technology transfers into their street performance offerings.

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DZ: That’s where motor racing took root. That’s where we got seat belts and rear-view mirrors and side-view mirrors and a host of other safety features on our passenger cars.

SW: I totally agree. So much development occurs because of what happens on the track.

DZ: People seem not to have made that connection – for decades.

SW: Now, because we’re going more and more fuel-economy-driven, it’s not as much what they’re seeing on the track. But when you talk about performance aftermarket for high-performance products, it always is. And so maybe a little less so from the OEs, but it really always will be the formula for the performance aftermarket. If they learn something about cylinder heads or valves or air flow and it can translate to their street-performance products, absolutely it’s going to, because they’re always looking for an edge to sell more product.

DSC_9907DZ: That’s a noteworthy distinction. Now, with all your thriving racing series, ProMedia seems to be the leading – or maybe only – vertical business/marketing platform when it comes to street-legal drag racing.

SW: We’re, in a way, almost the lone survivor. There are some other regional series out there, but a lot of the big ones you used to see have all changed. We’re the one that’s been able to hang in there and stay true to our formula of great side-by-side racing, great action for the fans, and affordability. But these last few years have really shaken out the industry. And there are a number of folks who are no longer there.

DZ: You have the “vertical thing” going: the racing, the media, the advertising. You seem to be the leading model. East Coast doorslammer factions might disagree, but they don’t have the media entity. That’s a huge advantage for you.

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SW: I would say you’re right about that. We sort of developed ourselves as the Coca-Cola brand, maybe the more dominant brand out there. But we work well with all the smaller regional series. I guess when the belt-tightening happened after the recession, if people are going to race and travel, they want to do it with a place they know they’re going to get the best bang for their buck, treated as professionals, treated well. So I think that’s what separated us from the folks who are no longer around.

DZ: You’ve positioned yourself really strongly in the marketplace. How do you see yourself using this power, of sorts, to benefit the industry?

We’re the one that’s been able to hang in there and stay true to our formula of great side-by-side racing, great action for the fans, and affordability.

SW: It’s just an opportunity to improve our customer service and show our racers we care about them and appreciate the fact they choose us as their way of spending their valuable vacation time, their valuable discretionary dollars. We don’t lose focus of that. We try to make sure they have the best experience possible. They’re very family-oriented events. We’ve been going now for a couple of years to Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, one of the best motorsports facilities on the planet. And we learned about really true customer service from them. The last couple of years we’ve rolled out our ProPledge customer service initiative.

DZ: Let’s talk a little about that. What is that?

SW: It’s just like the Baders’ B Guarantee. We want to be able to guarantee that they’re satisfied with their experience. And if somebody ever has a problem, we listen to them. When it comes to our racers, we listen to them. We do our best to give them a great experience and a safe racetrack. We’ll listen to them when it comes to rules. We’ll be transparent in our decisions. It’s stuff people want to see if they’re spending tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a race car – that they’re going to race at a place that’s fair and they’re treated well. Unfortunately, it appears to be a bit of a novel idea out there, but it’s what all great businesses should do.

DZ: It seems like a matter of common sense. Why is that so uncommon?

ProMedia Event Director Rollie Miller.

ProMedia Event Director Rollie Miller.

SW: We were talking about doing a track operators seminar, one hosted by ProMedia. And I asked Bill Bader if he’d be willing to speak and maybe share some of his secrets of success. And I said, “But maybe you don’t want to, Bill. That’s kind of one of your competitive edges.” He said, “Steve, everything we do is out in the open. Anybody can come here for an hour our two and get what we do.” For some reason, people see it but they remain blind to it. Maybe they don’t want to put the extra effort it takes, because when you do a customer-service initiative and you publish it, you’ve got to actually do it. I get called and get e-mails all the time with both “attaboys” and “Hey, this was a problem. You’ve got to work on it.” I reply to every one of them, and if it’s something I can’t answer, sometimes my national event director will reply to it. But we answer every one of those and try to make sure people know that we’re not blind to what happens. We do recognize when it comes to events there’s a thousand moving parts. Sometimes it’s not all perfect. We can improve.

DZ: Your approach sounds very much like that of the new PDRA, and like your operations, that one seems to be working fabulously well after the ADRL and X-DRL collapsed. The racers trust the owners – the owners are the racers. They want fair, honest, safe racing.

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SW: The reputation of the ADRL at one time was they were for the racer. They were the golden boy for quite awhile, when other series, like ours, were rolling along, doing everything the right way but not getting near the publicity. That’s where it gets kind of frustrating as a promoter. We live by the Golden Rule. We treat others the way we want to be treated. If I spend my money somewhere, do I want to be treated well? Of course. If I make an investment in my race car, do I want to know that I can race there for a number of years and that the racer checks are always going to cash and that the rules are going to be fair so we have good parity and competition? Absolutely. And when you don’t live by the Golden Rule, things fall apart. So much stuff is common sense.

DSC_5613What we have to do is put ourselves in that person’s shoes and understand that maybe he convinced his wife this race car was going to be lots of fun for the family and they spent a lot of money on it and they’re using their vacation time. So they’ve got this investment and they’re going to be passionate about it. And there’s no reason we can’t process what they’re telling us, get some good input, listen to them, make sure they know we appreciate them, then whether we make a decision in their favor we communicate with them. There have been times when we talked to somebody and they’re not totally happy. We’ll say, “I’ll tell you what – can we give you a free entry for the next race?” That just means the world to them. They feel like you cared. And there’s not enough of that – you don’t see enough of that stuff happening out there.

If I make an investment in my race car, do I want to know that I can race there for a number of years and that the racer checks are always going to cash and that the rules are going to be fair so we have good parity and competition? Absolutely.

There’s a saying from this guy on talk radio: “Happiness is a choice.” And this is what I thought was really interesting . . . He said, “Being unhappy is like going out in public with B.O. [body odor]. Everyone agrees nobody should go out in public with B.O. If you’re going to be around people, you have an obligation to shower, wear deodorant, whatever. Happiness is the same thing. You can be unhappy, but if you go out in the world unhappy, it’s as though you are going out with B.O.” I thought, “You know what? That’s brilliant!” You’re going to set somebody’s tone. At our events, when we have our team meeting, we always say, “These are our customers out here. They’re spending their discretionary dollars to race with us. Let’s make sure they have a good time. Greet them with a smile. Hand them a ProPledge flyer. Parking, we don’t want anyone waiting in line. They’ve already waited a little bit in line to get in. Let’s park them fast, get them to registration, let’s process them within five minutes so they can go and get their car teched so they can start having fun.

We really do live by that sort of mantra. This ProPledge customer-service initiative . . . has just transformed [things]. People are bragging again about racing with our series. They’re proud of it because they know people are starting to realize around the country you’re treated special when you go to a ProMedia event. You’re not just another racer. That’s one thing that’s very important to us, that all racers get treated the same. It doesn’t matter what class you run.

DSC_9933DZ: Are your series more participant-driven, geared more for the racers, sponsors, and manufacturers rather than hardcore-profit-driven?

SW: We know who we are. We bring in a lot of racers and a solid fan base. We don’t do free tickets — everyone pays to get into our events. And they’re knowledgeable. So our sponsors love ’em. When they walk down the midway, they actually ask, “Do you have a camshaft that will improve the performance of my car?” They’re not just looking for stickers and don’t know what a camshaft is. So the sponsors are happy. Our racers have people to race in front of and a lot of media attention. The formula works really well. Of course, we have our products, as well. We’ve got our web site and our magazines.

DZ: How can you fill the grandstands?

SW: At our events, the primary driver is spectators. It’s kind of Bill Bader’s philosophy: If you build the back gate, you’ll build the front gate. So we’ve always built the back gate. Our challenges tend to be when we go to Route 66 Raceway [at Joliet, Ill.], which can seat 55,000 people, we don’t look very full. But when we go to Bradenton [Fla.] or Bowling Green [Ky.], people are climbing all over each other. It’s packed. The challenge we run into is those mega-facilities. We put in a good amount of people, and our average spectator [count] is going to be somewhere between 15,000 and 17,500 for the weekend. It’s not an NHRA national event, which is 50,000 or 60,000 for a weekend.

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DZ: The NHRA sometimes has trouble reaching those numbers, too.

SW: People are still hurting out there. Even though the economy appears to be getting better, it’s not always better for our core fans. We see it in two-day ticket sales. We used to sell a ton of Saturday and Sunday tickets. That number has dropped off, and it hasn’t come back. They’re still coming. They just not necessarily coming for two days.

DZ: You’ve massaged your classes, and that has paid dividends for you, it looks like – most notably with Pro Mod, Radial Wars, and Coyote Stock and LS Stock.

People are still hurting out there. Even though the economy appears to be getting better, it’s not always better for our core fans.

SW: Those have done great. I’ll give a lot of credit to my tech staff. A year ago, our Extreme Street class was in trouble. This year we’re looking right now, a year later, where we might have five cars racing consistently last year, we’re looking at as many as 20 cars some events in Extreme Street. And that’s a function of getting the rules right and communicating with the racers. I kind of call it hand-to-hand combat.

My tech director, Dave Werremeyer, calls each racer and talks to him. He finds out: If you’re racing with us, why? If you’re not, how come? What do we need to do? What would bring over a few more cars? Then when he gets some input, he has to call the other people it’s going to affect and say, “Look, were thinking about doing this. Here’s why. Would you support that?” He’s literally on the phone all day long. My tech staff has done a great job, reinvigorating some classes and building new ones. We’re really excited for the future.

DSC_0352DZ: You’ve made some key personnel additions recently, hiring former NHRA Safety Safari manager Rollie Miller as National Event Director and Camee Edelbrock as Director of Marketing. How has that enhanced your operations?

SW: That’s part of what’s great about our series. We’ve got these people: Lynwood Dupuy [Competition Director] and Gene Bergstrom [Director of Event and Field Operations] used to work for NHRA. They’re recognized names out here, with decades of experience. Camee’s got decades of experience. She came in here guns blazing. She knew what we were all about and jumped right on it. She knows how to communicate what makes us exciting: World’s Fastest Street Cars.

DZ: It sounds like you’re in your sweet spot.

SW: Yes, totally are. We’re in a good position.

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DZ: Is ProMedia at the best place it’s ever been?

SW: You know, I don’t know that I would say that. There was a time when people were credit-card racing and money was free-flowing and everyone had access to credit. We’re back on the upswing. There’s momentum. We’re starting to grow exponentially. We’ve had slow growth the last few years after bottoming out. Now I feel like we’re at the point where it’s starting to roll again. That’s how I would describe it, but I wouldn’t say we’re at our apex. I think we’re working out way back.

Like IHRA President Scott Gardner, Steve Wolcott is a self-professed Bill Bader protégé. And their successes and favorable “customer-satisfaction ratings” prove that sometimes the simplest, most basic approach is the most effective. It all starts with treating people right. That doesn’t cost a dime, and it shows the racers and fans that in this sport of drag racing, we’re all in it together.

Said Wolcott, “We’re creating a lifelong memory, creating something that is special. That might be his only time in the winners circle or it might be one out of 100. But he’s going to remember it because we got the music cranking, we’ve got photographers taking pictures, we’ve got nice awards. They leave there saying, ‘Thank you so much. What a great time.’ That’s what makes it real special, when you create those memories. And they’re our show! What would we do if they don’t show up?!”

About the author

Susan Wade

Celebrating her 45th year in sports journalism, Susan Wade has emerged as one of the leading drag-racing writers with 20 seasons at the racetrack. She was the first non-NASCAR recipient of the prestigious Russ Catlin Award and has covered the sport for the Chicago Tribune, Newark Star-Ledger, St. Petersburg Times, and Seattle Times. Growing up in Indianapolis, motorsports is part of her DNA. She contributes to Power Automedia as a freelancer writer.
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