Since its inception, NASCAR Digital Media (NDM) has become a leader in NASCAR website design. Its first project was done for Richard Childress Racing, home of 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon (above). (Photo via the NY Daily News)
The technology landscape is constantly evolving, and the team at NASCAR Digital Media has stayed current with the latest trends – adding website design to its extensive list of areas of expertise related to the digital world.
NDM has recently added a skill to its ever-growing list of abilities – doing website designs for two of the sport’s most storied teams – Richard Childress Racing and the Wood Brothers – as well as the Motor Racing Network (MRN).
“We have a lot of expertise in the industry,” said NASCAR Digital Media managing director Tim Clark. “We built NDM from scratch in 2012, and the program launched in 2013. It’s unique to understand how NASCAR is structured and be able to use our knowledge of that in the digital space.”
NASCAR Digital Media’s first redesign project was done in 2016, for Richard Childress Racing, which selected NDM after an extensive search process involving more than ten firms. The revamped RCR website features driver pages, photo galleries, videos and everything fans desire to stay up-to-date with the RCR stable of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and XFINITY Series drivers.
“Our digital efforts have become a major focus for RCR and many of our partners over the past few years,” said Ben Schlosser, Chief Marketing Officer of RCR. “We needed a contemporary website which allows us to fully showcase engaging content for our fans and partners. RCR looked at a number of qualified digital providers and chose NDM because of their proven approach and the compelling opportunities to collaborate on content.”
Continued Schlosser: “The transition to the NDM platform for RCR has been everything we hoped it would be. It allowed us to have a more flexible and robust content strategy and is easy to use for our communications and content managers.”
The Richard Childress Racing project allowed NASCAR Digital Media to gain many new partners, and this past year, NDM focused on a redesign for the iconic Wood Brothers Racing team and continues to see growth in its initiatives across the board.
The Wood Brothers all-new website launched in early February and features a user-friendly experience. The fully customized site particularly saw an upgrade when viewed on mobile devices.
The Wood Brothers management team knew from the start that NDM was the top choice and according to former driver turned Director of Business Development, Jon Wood, “NDM had great content and designers, so there was no better option.”
Since its launch, NDM has seen a growth in both partners and initiatives, taking on additional projects as the organization gains notoriety.
“We’ve been happy with our growth over the years,” noted Clark. “We’ve had a growing number of partners from RCR to the Wood Brothers to tracks like Iowa Speedway and even the Motor Racing Network. The RCR project was certainly the catalyst that led to additional projects.”
Outside of team website design, NASCAR Digital Media also partnered with the Motor Racing Network. MRN launched its new digital presence in the days leading up to the 60th running of the Daytona 500, which was won by RCR’s Austin Dillon.
“With MRN, we realized we could pull together and share resources that we both had to help them ramp up the back end of their operations and improve their content in the digital world,” said Clark. “It was truly a win-win situation for both partners.”
For NASCAR itself, NDM recently finished its first year as the sanctioning body’s content platform and has projects in the works involving NASCAR Home Tracks, the NASCAR Foundation and the sport’s youth initiative, NASCAR Acceleration Nation.
“The youth initiative is certainly unique,” mentioned Clark. “Everyone knows that kids are the future of the sport, so we wanted to build a platform that was geared towards kids and the next generation of NASCAR fans and potential drivers. It’s a different set of goals compared to designing a team website, but we’ve had fantastic communication with our marketing team and different partners throughout the length of this project.”
The momentum on the digital services front serves to showcase as a revenue stream for NDM Media as the company pursues more collaborations and partnerships.
The goal for NDM is to continue to grow. According to Clark, “We’ve had conversations with tracks and teams alike. Anywhere we can fill a void and work with any existing partner or bring a new one on board, that’s a good thing for our organization. We’ll continue to grow, and just how fast we’ll grow will be dictated by the industry.”
