While many NASCAR drivers struggle to achieve mainstream relevancy, 21-year-old racer Hailie Deegan is making her way as one of the top marketable drivers in the sport. Even though she races in the Craftsman Truck Series and not in Cup, Deegan is a name many people know who aren’t necessarily NASCAR fans.
Sure, some of that comes from the fan support she receives as an attractive young woman racing in NASCAR, but Deegan puts in the work, uploading videos from the racetrack and her day-to-day life on her YouTube channel, as well as creating engaging posts on TikTok and Instagram.
Just about every Cup driver is on some form of social media, but their social media presence varies. Some are engaging and show their personality, while others clearly use social media merely as a means for promoting their sponsors.
Deegan was on Monster Energy’s Unleashed podcast, discussing the lack of personality some drivers show. While it’s theoretically ideal that every NASCAR driver goes out and shares their personality through various forms of media, Deegan realizes that it only works if the driver wants to do that.
“I think there’s two different points,” Deegan said. “I feel like drivers, as a driver, you have to want to. In all honesty, NASCAR fans are the most devoted fans, some of the most devoted fans. When they like someone, they are going to stick with that person their whole life. And I feel like what drivers lack though for new fans and, say a dad that was committed to being a Jimmie Johnson fan, well his son now is going to be watching racing a little bit, he could be devoted to being an Alex Bowman fan.
And it could go down better, I feel like generationally, but I feel like what doesn’t help it is the lack of personality being shown. People like to relate to other people, and it’s hard to relate to someone and care about someone’s career if there’s not much there, not much being shown of them, and them saying anything. So I think that there’s a big lack in that.
“But also with the people that do want to do stuff, and help the sport out. I feel like I’m one of those people, and I would love to be more invested in with NASCAR of ideas and giving my opinion on different things, but there hasn’t really been a moment where they’ve reached out to do that.”
Deegan talked about her YouTube channel, where she posts a vlog after each race. Deegan felt like those things make her a bit more relatable to fans to not only root for her but be emotionally invested in watching the race as well. Deegan has no issue with providing her input to NASCAR, but she felt that things are a bit too formal in NASCAR offices at the moment.
“People get to watch the race in live time and they go, ‘Okay, in a day or two, I get to watch her video to see all the behind the scenes of it,’” Deegan said. “And so I feel like that’s such a cool way to drive people to watch the race because they get to see it beforehand where, before the YouTube video comes out, and what happens before we kind of tell our side of the story and stuff. So I just think that there’s, I wish I could be more involved in NASCAR, and help them out with it.
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“I think [NASCAR] have to be willing to hear you out, and I think that that’s kind of the, I think there’s too many, maybe buttoned up people over there for them to go, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’ Everyone kind of, they want to do their whole presentation, and their pitch, and their storybook…I feel like, ‘No guys, stop trying to script everything so bad.’ Stop sending people to go film an Instagram story of a Cup driver walking to the grid and go, ‘Time for the race.” That’s lame. Stop doing that.”
People, in general, don’t like being “sold” something. Sometimes that’s the case, not just in NASCAR but sports social media in general. If you’re a soccer fan, you see a bunch of “calm before the storm” posts that it’s a cliché at this point. It’s like there’s an inauthenticity sometimes, and people tend to notice that.
Deegan’s advice to help improve the situation is for NASCAR to allow influencers like her to have a voice in the planning stages and not rely as much on what is learned in the classroom.
“I wish people took more advice from the social media influencers themselves, and less of the same people that are going to college,” Deegan said. “Going through their textbook, going up business marketing. And going up, do this, do this, do this, and they all do the same thing. Make the PowerPoint, make the storyboard, and it’s just like, it’s all the same, it’s so cookie cutter that I feel like people need to actually see like, ‘No, this is working because this influencer has literally applied it and it works, showing the numbers right here.’ Let’s take advice from them, and less textbook of all the same thing.”
Coming at this from the collegiate point of view, it’s best to have a mix of people from both worlds. Marketing, especially social media marketing, evolves rapidly. It wasn’t long ago that many corporations rolled their eyes at having any social media presence, but now it’s standard. And we’ve evolved from Myspace to Facebook to Twitter to Snapchat to Instagram to TikTok, so the standard for communicating with others has changed many times over the last decade.
You can know all about social media, but if you cannot connect with people on social media, what you learned in the classroom means nothing. There’s still a place for college-educated people to run a social media and marketing department, but if NASCAR wants to reach out to younger people, it wouldn’t hurt to listen to the 21-year-old with three million TikTok followers.
