NASCAR is Smarter Than You

Let’s face it.  The people who read this site (and for that matter, my own company Goldstar) is pretty Blue State-y.

So when I write the word NASCAR, not only do eyes glaze over, but the Big City Superiority Complex kicks in pretty hard.  It must be easy, some must think, to please the teeming masses in Alabama if all you have to do is put 3o or 40 cars on an oval track and have them go in circles all day.

And I admit, I am not a NASCAR fan.  I am a sports fan and a born southerner, but I never got into NASCAR.  Simultaneously, though, I do respect that NASCAR has taken a backwoods, low-rent phenomenon and turned it into arguably the most popular spectator event of any kind in the country.

I’m also willing to admit that that respect is akin to the kind of respect that people have for someone like Lady GaGa, when they say, “well, the music’s crap, but you have to admit, she gets people’s attention.”  It’s respect slathered over with a frosting of contempt.

And that more or less summed up my feelings about NASCAR.  Until now.

They changed because of something I heard and read about an organization called Hendricks Motorsports.  They are the New York Yankees of NASCAR (alternatively, they are the “Wicked” of NASCAR, and if neither of those analogies works for you, just know they kick butt.)

How do they do so well?  Like the Yankees, it’s because they have the most resources, so they hire the best drivers, but more importantly…

They do the most and best research.

That’s right.  Research.  Millions upon millions of dollars in engineering and performance research.

I then came across this article in Sports Illustrated last year that talks about NASCAR’s own research center in North Carolina.  Here’s a tiny snippet:

“From the outside, NASCAR’s Research and Development Center looks just like any other office building. But the difference is readily apparent once you step through the doors to the reception area.

Managing director Mike Fisher recently took me on a tour to show off current and ongoing projects at the $10 million, 61,000-square-foot facility that opened in January of 2003. It’s a combination machine shop, warehouse and laboratory. And it’s where the future of stock-car racing is being formulated every day.”

More than anything, this reminds me of the headquarters of Cirque Du Soleil, of which I said the following:

“Visit Cirque Du Soleil’s world headquarters in Montreal sometime.  Not only do they have massive (arena-size) rehearsal areas, they also have workshops (ateliers) where they can create any costume item for any performer in any Cirque show worldwide at any time.  They’ve created profiles of each performers exact specifications and can produce a hat for a clown in Macao today and have it to him tomorrow if needed.”

The idea is that in this stock car racing category of live entertainment, someone (actually everyone) is investing resources to make the product better, and then re-investing the results in making it even better.

The winner is the one who’s best at making the product better.   It’s survival of the smartest, and you get smarter by investing in getting smarter.

How many organizations, particularly arts organizations, who are chock-full of high IQs and people with big student loans for degrees from prestigious schools, don’t do anything even remotely resembling this?

Remember that if you’re competing for the mindshare of a ticket buyer, you’re indirectly competing with NASCAR and Cirque Du Soleil, and remember also that they’re improving their product every day.

You may not have their resources, but they didn’t start with their resources either.  Cirque Du Soleil was a guy clowning on the streets of Montreal.  NASCAR was a bunch of gearhead southerners barreling around dirt tracks in the pine forests of North and South Carolina.

But that’s not what they are anymore, because they’ve invested in getting smarter, which helps them make their product better.

Are you getting smarter?  Is your genre getting smarter and therefore better?

Or did you just assume you were already smart enough?