Checkers Leverages NASCAR Sponsorship with Sweeps

Checkers/Rally's sweeps dangles $10,000 and trips to NASCAR events

Checkers Drive-In Restaurants is leveraging its NASCAR sponsorship with a peel-and-win sweepstakes that dangles a $100,000 grand prize for one of 10 first prize winners.

Consumers can peel a game piece off the bottom of a 42-ounce bottle of Coke to reveal instant-win prizes or food offers and a letter needed to spell NASCAR for a chance to participate in the Double Drive-Thru Challenge Drawing.

Consumers who spell NASCAR then mail their entries to Checkers for a random chance at one of 10 first-prize VIP trips to one of two NASCAR races. Five winners will get a trip the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 in Richmond, VA, on Sept. 10, and five will attend the Ford 400 in Homestead, FL, on Nov. 20.

One of the first-prize winners at each race will be selected at random to receive a trip to NASCAR Champions Week in New York, a weeklong event celebrating the top 10 finishers of the NASCAR Nextel Cup, in December. There, one of the two will be selected at random to choose a wrapped burger. If the burger contains the signature of a NASCAR driver, that contestant will win the $100,000 grand prize.

The sweepstakes is built on a complex template the QSR used last year to leverage its sponsorship of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Brickyard 400, but with good reason, said Checkers VP-Marketing Rich Turer.

"The real motorheads understand the importance of the two races -- Richmond is the cut-off race for the Chase for the Nextel Cup, and the Nextel Cup will be awarded in Homestead," Turer said. "But there's not an American who doesn't want to win $100,000. So we have a first prize that targets NASCAR fans, and a grand prize that targets everyone."

Every instant-win game piece contains a bounce back coupon for free food items. It is the first time the QSR has made every game piece in any of its sweepstakes a winner, Turer said.

The sweepstakes is being promoted through all of Checkers' communications, including TV, print and P-O-P advertising and through messages during broadcasts of NASCAR races.

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