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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE
October 23, 2008
HERB BRANHAM: Good afternoon, everyone. We have a couple of special guests with us today for a very special announcement. To start things off, we'll hear first from NASCAR's chairman and CEO, Brian France.
BRIAN FRANCE: Good afternoon, everybody. We are happy to announce the addition of Camping World into the national series with respect to our truck entitlement sponsor. It's a multi-year agreement. We couldn't be more happy for a variety of reasons.
Number one, the folks at Camping World, which you'll hear from in just a moment, have really made a strong connection in recent years to the sport by various sponsorships and partnerships in and out of events, in and around teams, throughout. They really have a good feel for NASCAR.
Frankly, the other thing that gets us excited is the type of company that they are and the connection they make to the various RV owners and campers who are synonymous with NASCAR events. You don't have to go very far looking around the facilities at a NASCAR race to see all the various people that tailgate and camp and so on. Camping World has become now a very valuable partner for them.
In various stores that they've put up, temporary stores, things they've done to accommodate the campers' needs, they know the camper as well as anybody in the country. So there's a lot of good reasons why Camping World is going to be a good fit for the Truck Series.
So with that I just wanted to welcome them into our national series and make one other comment about the timing for the Truck Series itself. It doesn't take a lot to realize that this series is one of the series that a lot of our fans would tell you is the most exciting, most competitive form of NASCAR racing that we have. The TV ratings are evidence of that, up 19% this year. Of course, it's the premiere franchise for the SPEED Channel, outrates all other motorsports combined on their particular channel. They have treated the Truck Series with a lot of esteem. We certainly appreciate that. Camping World, their respective position, I think that will be a really, really good three-way partnership between us all.
Finally, I would like to mention Craftsman for a moment. Most of you realize that Craftsman has been, first of all, the only sponsor that the Truck Series has ever had. They were the ones that stepped into an unknown division many years ago when we decided to launch a third national division wrapped around the trucks, which was very unique at the time. They believed in the series then and they believed in the series for a long time. They were and will remain a partner with NASCAR, but it's going to take on a different approach beginning in 2009. But I want to give them a real salute for all they've done.
Again, we're excited today to make the announcement. With that, I will let someone else speak.
HERB BRANHAM: Thank you, Brian, for that opener. We're now going to move over to Camping World chairman and CEO Marcus Lemonis.
MARCUS LEMONIS: Good afternoon, all of you. Thank you for being part of this. We're obviously extremely excited to expand our integration into the sport. Obviously we believe that the Craftsman legacy is a tough act to follow. We feel like we have a lot of work to do to maintain the brand integrity and the brand loyalty that they've created. We're going to work hard to do that.
But this was a good fit for our business. Obviously I'm sure some of you are thinking about the economy. But this is a good fit for our business, as we represent about 20% of the entire RV marketplace for us to grow our market share and for us to bring our products and services closer to the consumer. We have seen an unusual amount of success at local store track activation programs, our rental program, our RV sales program, et cetera.
This commitment was one that all 3500 employees were behind. We talked about it internally. We believe that our opportunity to gain market share and communicate our offering, as well as give the consumer really a great place to have customer service was what made this an easy decision for us.
We will continue to support in different ways the partners that we've done business with for the last three years. We still have and enjoy relationships with ISC, SMI, and Dover Motorsports on the trackside. KHI, Kevin Harvick, Incorporated, will continue to be a very, very important marketing partner, strategic partner, for us, not only with what we're doing with Ron Hornaday and Kevin himself.
Our ability to leverage our brand and his sponsorship opportunities and his brand, I would expect that the integration of the two companies will continue for many, many years to come. That's largely driven by what we believe Kevin has done for our brand and what we think he can do for some others.
We obviously have enjoyed a relationship with ESPN and SPEED, and we'll be continuing those relationships as well.
We are pleased and honored to be a part of this. We are very focused on really three main topics; that is, selling more RVs and accessories, helping the manufacturers sell trucks, and providing NASCAR fans and NASCAR themselves an opportunity to fill the stands and have an affordable, fun family experience that we believe is better than any sporting event out there.
HERB BRANHAM: Marcus, thank you very much for those openers.
We'll now go to the media for questions for Brian France and Marcus Lemonis.
Q. Marcus, can you talk about what this sponsorship gives you that maybe you weren't getting out of either the team or track sponsorships.
MARCUS LEMONIS: Well, I think there's two things. Obviously the brand presence that we believe this sponsorship gives us is the opportunity to have more people at least investigate or find out about our brand. We've seen and kind of watched very carefully the integration that Craftsman has executed both online, at track and in the media. We think they've been very effective in building their brand through this medium.
Secondly, we think it gives us significantly more B-to-B opportunities. As we leverage the promotion of this in our local and national markets, particularly Chicago and other big key markets, we think it gives us significant opportunity to tell our story.
Q. Are you still a subsidiary of the Affinity Group?
MARCUS LEMONIS: No.
Q. You're a completely separate company from them now?
MARCUS LEMONIS: Yes.
Q. Brian, are there any conflicts with any other existing sponsors that you had to work out with this sponsorship at all?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, not directly. There are obviously some things that are relatively close in category. But, no. It's a rather good fit for us.
Q. Mr. Lemonis, it seems to me obviously economic times are tough here. We've seen a lot of companies actually pull back on sponsorship. I'm curious why and how is it that you're actually able to expand the sponsorship in this environment.
MARCUS LEMONIS: When we look at our entire advertising spend as a company, more than 80% of our entire spend, we're data minors. And the heavy direct mail, heavy catalog and sale flyers, not a lot of TV. And we serve, for the most part, the installed base, the over eight million RVers that exist today, four million of them shop in our stores as we speak.
We know that we have two challenges in the next couple of years. One, we have the challenge of not only maintaining but growing that installed base. But, two, we need to bring first-time buyers to the market. Because of the product offering, everything ranging from RV sales to rentals, we needed a forum where we could spend an affordable percentage of our total marketing spend on branding.
So when we look at the rifle shot, we know we can't afford to buy a TV spot on ABC on American Idol, but we know with the limited amount of branding that we can afford to spend, that we need to keep it so close to where we believe that crossover of consumer is, which is why NASCAR makes sense.
When you visit the track - and there's, you know, six, 10, 25, 35 thousand campers on the ground - you study the demographic of the NASCAR fan, you study the demographic of the Camping World customer, the crossover is really our best prospecting opportunity. Obviously, as we acquire those names through our interaction with that customer, they become part of our installed base, then they fall into our installed base program.
So we weren't finding enough avenues that we could afford to grab prospectors. To us, this is the most affordable prospecting tool because it has the highest level of crossover of anything else we do.
Q. Brian, is there an opportunity here for Camping World to get opportunities in the Nationwide or Sprint Cup Series?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, I think they already do market across our entire fan base. The trucks run a lot of companion weekends. But they're going to have remaining positions. They've been entitlement sponsors at events, I know Loudon and other places, on the basis they work for them.
I think the trucks is just an opportunity for Marcus and Camping World to really own something very, very significant, being one of our national divisions that runs events week in and week out. I won't speak for Marcus, but I believe in talking to him he believes it's a nice complement to the other things he's already doing in the sport.
The whole idea is to impact every NASCAR fan who is going to look at RVing as something that is special to them and a brand that they can trust.
MARCUS LEMONIS: The piece I will add, we'll sell roughly 25,000 travel trailers, fifth-wheels a year. We have a big portion of our floor space in our Camping World accessories stores dedicated to hitching and towing. So when you take a look at the necessity of a truck to pull a traveler trailer and a necessity for our hitching and towing department, it's really an opportunity for us to grow that space and grow that segment.
It really is separate from what we do on the Nationwide side at Daytona, at Loudon and other markets. That's really more of an at-track retail store event environment. We believe although there's crossover in audience, we need to still dabble because there's still some people that don't necessarily watch all three series. We want to make sure we have a fully expanded but affordable program.
Q. Brian, with the economic conditions being what they are, several of the manufacturers have announced that they're going to perhaps scale back their subsidies to the Truck Series. There have been some challenges with truck counts this year. What on the competition side can you do or will you do to boost things up in the coming years?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, first of all, the series is very healthy. Obviously with fuel prices that have been up and down, mostly up this year and the last 18 months, has gotten the manufacturers to have to really look at where they're spending their resources and what vehicles are selling more of today. So we're obviously affected by that. That's a legitimate issue.
So what we try to do, we try to do it anyway, but we'll accelerate the idea of trying to take even more cost out of the series for the team owners should certain subsidies or certain sponsorships might be contracted a bit. So we'll try to make things as easy on the team owners as possible to sort of get through this headwind of both the economy and the manufacturers going through their related challenges.
That's nothing new. The good news for us is we've got a proven model here where the series is from a cost standpoint already pretty reasonable in the grand scheme of a national division, have a lot of value for a lot of sponsors, and is currently producing just great, exciting racing. So we've got a lot to build on and a great foundation.
Q. Brian, I know NASCAR has ridden the highs and lows of the U.S. economy for decades. In the broadest sense I was wondering if you would characterize the challenge of this current economy for all three of your series, kind of how you would place it against some other times and share with us how optimistic or not you feel about the next five or ten years for NASCAR.
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, I would tell you a couple things. One, you know, it wasn't that long ago that the tech bubble and 9/11 occurred, which really had, as you recall, a significant short-term but significant nonetheless impact on the leisure activities and sporting events and all the rest, and travel. So that was very concerning back then. We've had various other times where the economy has been very difficult.
This probably to everybody is more significant, at least on the surface. So there is a big uncertainty about people's ability to do all the things that they want to do financially, given the backdrop of the credit crisis and all the rest.
You know, you have to look at it over a long period of time. We're off, but only in sort of single digits as it stands now. We tend to fare much better than other industries thankfully. That's because sports are so culturally ingrained to fans. It's one of the last things that they want to not participate in.
We're fortunate. We are nervous like everybody else. We're taking every precaution we can in terms of getting costs out of our system on behalf of the team owners, on behalf of the track operators. But this is also a time when you can't freeze either. You've got to still be aggressive and still push hard your product. I know Marcus is doing that in his business and we're doing the same.
Q. Brian, is there any consideration whatsoever at NASCAR in the Sprint Cup Series of reducing the size of the field in 2009?
BRIAN FRANCE: No. We've had some events, many events, where we've had to send cars home. Obviously in the last 10 or 12 weeks, you're seeing some of the cars on the fringe there that aren't making it to the events. But still we expect full fields in 2009.
Q. With regard to the fact that we may have one of the four manufacturers taken out through a merger, we also are hearing lots of talk about potential mergers between the secondary teams especially in the Sprint Cup Series, when you talk about trying to make things easier, taking costs out, can you give us one or two examples of how NASCAR can take costs out to make it easier for the teams to survive.
BRIAN FRANCE: Sure. I can tell you a number of them. There's none more significant than the new car. What we said is once you get through the spooling up process of the teams figuring out that they don't need to build 15 or 20 cars per season as an example, and that they can do with far less, because there's little that you can do with the car. There's not the specialty cars, road course, superspeedway cars, so on. That's been proven. So as we go along into 2009, the teams will be building less cars, hiring less engineers or that kind of expertise.
There are many, many other rule adjustments that we can make. What we can't do is tell somebody exactly what their total budget can be. They can redeploy money. They can pay for talent and all that accordingly. But we can take a lot of cost out.
What's important for us is, when we say 'the cost,' what we mean is if you want to spend and extra $5 million on a team budget, obviously it's a free country, you can do it. What we're trying to do is make it where that's an inefficient way to spend your money. You don't have to do that. That lowers the barrier entry for new teams. That makes it easier on teams with smaller budgets to be competitive with the same amount of money.
Q. Brian, I think the numbers that I read estimated a deal like this worth somewhere in the $3 to $5 million a year range. Is that close? And whatever the number is, how much more might you have expected in a strong economy?
BRIAN FRANCE: Of course you know we don't comment on any of our financial arrangements. But there's an economic piece to any sponsorship like this. That was met. Everything worked out fine.
But there's another important thing in these kind of sponsorships that are equally or more important, and that's the kind of company that you get and what they're going to do from an activation standpoint with this sponsorship, how they're going to help grow our franchise that they're going to be sponsoring.
You heard Marcus in his opening remarks, and this is what he told me directly, we have a good relationship to be able to work through this, which is, you know, one of his stated goals is to help grow the franchise and also help the manufacturers sell more trucks. You just can't put a dollar amount on that commitment. He's committed to doing that. We'll work very carefully with him in the future to accomplish those goals.
Q. Marcus, kind of a clarification on something you said regarding the Milwaukee Mile, saying your brand will not be back there. As a series sponsor, I assume you would have to have some presence at the track on a race weekend or, Brian, do we need to make a schedule announcement today, too?
MARCUS LEMONIS: The answer is that our brand in its previous form and fashion will not be back there. Obviously you know about the article that was out this morning. It does not apply at least in 2009, and I would guess hopefully many years to come, does not apply to the Truck Series. That's not Camping World's decision to make, that's NASCAR's decision to make. We're not a party to the decision whether the trucks run there or not.
Q. Brian, I know you said you don't talk about the finances of the deal, but can you at least say whether this was higher or lower than the previous Craftsman deal?
BRIAN FRANCE: Again, there's a number of components to it that are different than the Craftsman agreement, that have different advertising and different other activation commitments. Some of those are subjective in nature. We couldn't comment anyway.
What's important is that we're real pleased that the financial commitment is a marketplace deal for both of us, that Marcus would not have made this commitment unless he was convinced, and he had a long opportunity to examine it, too, that there was good value. We wouldn't have made it either because we had some other alternatives and options if we didn't think they were the best partner. That's what we've come up with.
Q. Marcus, you alluded to the economy. You look at motorhome sales, down 54% in June, 56% in July, 65% in August. This isn't just a down year; these are really bad times for the sector. I'm wondering timing-wise how this jibes with that.
MARCUS LEMONIS: Well, I'll be very candid and tell you that our numbers on the motorhome side are down just barely double-digits on the motorhome side. That I think speaks volumes to what we've been able to accomplish on the market share side. Our business on a whole is down about 9%. The motorhomes are down a little bit more than that. We obviously feel some of that slowing.
But as I told Brian, as all of you get to learn our brand more, motorhome sales are one component. When you look at our brand, travel trailer sales are clearly three-to-one. We sell three-to-one travel trailers to motorhomes. RV rentals is a significant contributor. Accessories, things like grills and generators. RV service and collision repair is one of the biggest financial contributors to our business. We have a loyalty club where 750,000 members pay $20 a year to belong.
Although motorhome sales are extremely important, just like any other category in our business, we have other components first. Then secondly, our business is down one fifth of what the industry is performing at.
Q. When you said 9% down, is that sales? Is that year-to-date?
MARCUS LEMONIS: Total revenue year-to-date our business is down 9%.
Q. Marcus, can you give a timeline of how this deal came together. The sponsorship has been open for about a year. Were you interested immediately or is this something that developed more recently?
MARCUS LEMONIS: I spend a lot of time studying the marketplace. Most of the marketing for our company does go through me. I really treat it like a science. Over the last three, four years we've taken baby steps in getting involved in kind of finding out what things make sense for us and what does not make sense. We learned very quickly what partners can give us a significant return on our investment.
The Craftsman Truck Series has been clearly by far the best return for the investment. When I looked at the crossover, walking the campgrounds at some of the tracks, looked at the crossover of the number of travel trailers compared to the number of motorhomes, then I looked at the amount of hitching and towing that could go along with the number of trucks that were parked in the parking lot, it just seemed to be a natural fit.
Our brand would never need to have the global brand presence that the Cup Series has. This gave us just enough to accomplish what we needed in the mainland to grow our brand.
I will tell you that I've been looking at it for about nine months and have had really great dialogue with several key senior management folks at NASCAR. I spent a lot of time talking to people like Richard Childress and Kevin Harvick about it, getting their advice.
At the end of the day, all of our partners, including track presidents and people that we sponsor with, all believe that it was a great fit for us.
It wasn't a matter of a last-minute decision. It was something that was fairly plotted out. We wanted NASCAR to make a decision that best suited them, which is why in the last 30 days there were a number of candidates they were considering. We were glad that we were given the option and the choice.
I think Brian really clarified what's not being echoed enough today. The deal is not about the dollars and cents on its purity. If it was about the dollars and cents, we would not have been, in our opinion, the winner. It's about what we can provide to fans at the racetracks and how our product so tightly integrates with what we do.
I think, secondly, our commitment to the auto manufacturers, helping them sell more trucks by allowing them point-of-purchase materials, activation at our stores, was important. I think our willingness to allow companies who step up and sponsor teams within the Truck Series the opportunity to put their product in front of our customers, whether it's on the shelf or demo'ing or advertising in our magazine or catalogs, it really was a global package.
Our commitment is, if you make a commitment to a team or if you make a commitment to the sport, we are going to give you an opportunity to put your product, if it makes good business sense for both sides, in front of our three to four million consumers that we talk to on an annual basis.
We believe we control the marketplace with this consumer. We believe our brand dominates it. We know that there's a number of companies who are looking for an affordable mechanism to tell their story. We believe the Truck Series, along with our involvement, will give you a number of companies, whether it's Turtle Wax, whether it's a tool company, whatever it may be, a battery company, tire company, whatever it may be, we believe that our product, along with the Truck Series product, gives companies a great return on investment.
And we think we would like to help those companies understand how to best leverage that investment. We know that we have performed better than most in this arena. We're comfortable sharing what kind of tips and techniques that we've used to kind of maximize our thing. We hope to lend that advice to other people who are considering getting involved.
Q. How specifically will you activate this sponsorship? Fans are familiar to seeing the Craftsman name. How are you going to put the Camping World name out there at races?
MARCUS LEMONIS: We'll obviously still have the windshield decal, which is fantastic. We appreciate the opportunity for Victory Lane. What we're most concerned about is creating an environment outside the four corners of the track, in the campgrounds and in the parking lots of those environments, whether that's offering a special NASCAR weekend package on the rental side or having our store at the track where people can buy chairs and grills and exhaust protectors, whatever they're called, we want to bring our product. We've done that in almost 11 tracks across the country. Our goal going forward is when the track thinks it makes sense for us to be there, when we think it makes sense for us to be there, to have a store at track where people can get the convenience items they need once they're engaged and are there for three or four days.
Our activation is about experiencing our product, and our activation is about allowing people to take our product to the racetrack to make it more convenient. Because, generally speaking, there's not a hotel. The race drivers use them. The team owners use them. The NASCAR officials use them. The fans use them. The product integration is probably out of all the companies that sponsor NASCAR today, I've been able to kind of come to the conclusion that our product, other than the truck itself and the tires that make the truck go, our product is the most fully integrated product that exists at the track other than beer, soda, the obvious.
So it's about activating at the track and making the experience for the fan better. If the experience is better, that particular track sells more tickets. If they sell more tickets, then they obviously can promote the event more. If the event gets promoted more, on and on and on and on.
We really believe that we have seen our presence at the tracks grow. We've seen the return grow. That's how we plan to activate. It's about making the experience better.
Q. Brian, one issue I hear in talking to truck owners and teams a lot is the purses are too low. Is there a plan to increase purses in the future?
BRIAN FRANCE: I think if you ask any driver or car owner in any series in the world about the prize money, they would probably give you an answer that it's too low. So it's not surprising to hear that.
Frankly, we want to increase the purses. That means the economics of the sport are growing. It means there are more people in the stands, more people watching television. That's the path we always want to be on. But, of course, we balance that with the realities of all the other stakeholders that have to live within the economic pie that is created.
But not surprising that you would hear that.
Q. Brian, Marcus mentioned earlier there were other candidates. We've all heard some names bandied about especially in the last month or so. What was it specifically that made you and your partners at NASCAR decide this was the right fit for you? How competitive was this whole situation as far as other companies wanting this sponsorship?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, we had a fair amount of interest. That went up and down a little bit through the summer with all the various economic announcements that were being made. But we did have some pretty good opportunities to look around the horn.
Where we landed today is where we should have landed. It was nice to hear Marcus, he and I went to dinner a few weeks ago and plotted out where this series could go if we were partners together. He made the right points to me. Hopefully we made the right points to him. I think we ended up in just the right place for this series.
Q. You have all three series now fully sponsored again. Everything is looking pretty good in that regard. Both the insurance industry and the industry that Sprint is involved in have been hit pretty hard by the economy. Is there any concern the other series sponsors may not be able to or want to fulfill their obligations?
BRIAN FRANCE: No. They're not to that level. Obviously we watch if they have challenges in either their industry or their specific business. We're mindful of that, as we will be with Marcus in the future. Their brands are on our series. It's not just another sponsorship deal that's out there; it's far more important to us. We're mindful of what is going on.
But in our view, all three companies will get through this challenging time and they'll probably all be better companies in the respective space at the end of the day.
Q. You've had all three of your top series undergo name changes the last couple years. Is there any concern about that, especially in the fan identification area?
BRIAN FRANCE: Yeah, not by design and not by choice. We would prefer there's lots of longevity with our entitlement sponsors. For various reasons, it sort of worked out that way. That's the bad news. The good news is we ended up with three very good companies who have long-term commitments and made their own decision that it's a very, very good business fit for them. And it's working.
In the case of Nationwide and in the case of Sprint, it's undeniably working even when a lot of other things in the economy or in their business may not be working as well. My hope is that Marcus will see that and it will be reflective. That's how good partnerships are judged.
Q. Marcus, how long did it take you to decide to go ahead with this deal and were there any assurances you sought to make this investment easier?
MARCUS LEMONIS: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. It took me about two, three months to really kind of, once I got close to the finish line, to punch it over the goal line. It was a lot of wrestling with our store managers. I had a lot of dialogue with people in the field. I talked to a few consumers about what they thought. Then obviously our senior management team wanted to weigh in, kind of make sure that we were doing the right thing.
I think that the assurances that I received were really more from the economy and our business. I want to be very clear about that. We believe that the economy, from our perspective, is in a bit of a funk. What we know for certain is Americans aren't going to stop going camping. It's not just going to go away. It's not a pastime that's just going to fade away.
Gas prices are not as influential as one would thing. General consumer confidence is. When I started looking at survey reports, which kind of ranks my different operations across the country in comparison to our competitors, I was hearing from vendors and lenders how we were performing, I really felt like we were starting to gain a lot of traction on our competitors. We made an acquisition of a rental company this year. We needed to not only grow that market share, but I had new product offerings that I needed to be able to communicate across the enterprise.
Senior management in NASCAR gave me the assurance that this was a great forum and that they would do their best to not only help me communicate that message but that the media partners like SPEED, like FOX, like ESPN, would do the same.
I think, lastly, as we try to provide new and exciting opportunities for consumers to experience our brand, the assurance was that I would find and meet new people and I would find and meet new customers. That was enough for me to put me over the edge.
Q. Brian, can you talk more generally about how not only NASCAR but teams as well are going after sponsors with such a difficult economic environment. Do you see new ways or approaches that are being tried because of all the economic pressure?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, I mean, they're just being more aggressive. Listen, I think the number is going to be close to between 80 and 100 million dollars of new money that is predicted to flow into NASCAR from a team sponsorship in '09. Now, that's lower than we've traditionally had as a rate of increase. But nonetheless, with the backdrop of the economy we're living in today, it's fairly good.
Most of the teams in the Sprint Cup level are well-funded. There are obviously some teams that aren't, but there are always teams that aren't. Some of that is based on performance, not necessarily the economy. So teams that tend to perform consistently well tend to do very well in the sponsorship area as you would think.
But is it tighter? Are teams looking to be more creative? Sure. Are teams nervous or not hearing from their current sponsors about doing one thing or another thing differently or less? Sure. That's just the nature of it. Every industry is looking around trying to get more value, trying to get more out of something that they're already doing or may do in the future. That's just the nature of dealing with and depending on corporate America to the level that NASCAR does.
Q. Are you concerned there is so much talk in the garage of merging teams as a sign of the pressure that's out there?
BRIAN FRANCE: No. That's been going on for a while and for various reasons. Teams have had alignments. Richard Childress did his engine alignment with DEI over the last year or so. There's various things that are going on and that historically have gone on, whether teams line up as a vendor relationship, get engineering. Toyota's changed the model a little bit in terms of how their teams share information.
What's important is look at the quality of competitive teams that are present in NASCAR. Just a few months ago or less, we kept hearing there were too many good teams, too many well-funded teams, too many sponsors that may have to go home. It's a cyclical situation. We'll deal with it as we always have.
Q. Brian, there's been some talk about whether or not they will limit the number of trucks a team can have. Is that a possibility? Are we perhaps looking at a spec engine down the road?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, there's not any plan to limit the amount of trucks at this point. Although, with the Truck Series, the manufacturers are particularly hard hit because of high fuel prices in those type vehicles, the pressure on all of our manufacturers. We're going to try to accelerate items, as I said earlier, that can be very impactful to our team owners. We may take some more aggressive measures that we typically wouldn't have taken just because we think it's prudent to do that today.
I can't tell you what all they are. I know that Steve O'Donnell, his whole group, Jim, the people back in Florida, are really, really looking at this. We will come back with some intelligent things to do. It's things we should be doing anyway.
Q. Marcus, I have two things you're going to answer or not because they're proprietary. Would you mind sharing with us the number of years of this deal and would you mind sharing with us the percentage of your marketing budget that now goes to NASCAR, whether that's the east, west, this series or title sponsorships. I know those are sort of touchy, but...
MARCUS LEMONIS: The term is multi-year. If NASCAR determines they want to communicate that, that's fine. But it's multi-year. It's more than four.
Just about 6% of our total spend is in that arena. That's primarily all of the global branding that we do. About 6% of our marketing spent.
Q. Is on NASCAR?
MARCUS LEMONIS: Yes. NASCAR and NASCAR-affiliated programs.
HERB BRANHAM: Brian and Marcus, thanks very much for joining us. We had a great turnout for a great announcement. We appreciate your time.
BRIAN FRANCE: Thank you and good afternoon to everybody.
MARCUS LEMONIS: Thank you.
HERB BRANHAM: Thanks to all the media for participating. As always, we appreciate the coverage.
End of FastScripts
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