Our social films starred the NASCAR drivers (portrayed by stunt doubles) reenacting the events of The Chase in a set of epic foot chases. We took the traditional highlight film idea and flipped it to make racing even more exciting. So when Brad Keselowski lost an engine at Talladega, he was eaten by a bear in our wilderness scene. Matt Kenseth’s dramatic elimination in Phoenix became an epic jet ski wipeout in open water. And Jimmiey Johnson’s 7th NASCAR championship win in Miami became a fearless leap off the roof of a beachside hotel into the pool below. These action-packed films brought the story of The Chase to life and left fans hooked and wanting more. Some fans even claimed it was more exciting than the actual racing.

The NASCAR Chase films ran on NASCAR’s social channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube) as well the channels of drivers, teams, sponsors and tracks. Five films were released over the duration of 10 weeks. Each 2-3 minute film was released after each round of The Chase, recapping the major highlights of that round. To make the films relevant and topical, we shot and edited each film after a round’s final race (in some cases 12 hours later) and aired the film a few days later before the next round began. We shot four separate versions of the victory film with the four drivers remaining in the final round so that we could air the final victory film in real-time immediately following the championship. We also optimized the long form films for TV and short social gifs and trailers to stoke excitement and get fans to watch the films.

The Chase social films set an unprecedented engagement rate for NASCAR, acquiring 13.2 million total videos views. Of those views, 8 million were from unique viewers and there were 158k likes, 8.8k comments and 46k shares. The films reached a younger, more diverse audience and sustained engagement throughout The Chase like never before. 1/3 of all views came from millennials and the most engaged audience of the campaign was our bull's eye target: males aged 18-24. Our content reached across every age group and multiple languages, proving consumable for a wide range. At least 500k of the total views were from the Hispanic audience with Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, and Arabic speaking fans also represented with more than 1K views each. NASCAR’s social films were covered by outlets like Digiday, NBC Sports, Sports Illustrated, and Fox Sports with over a combined 54 million unique monthly visitors to the coverage pages.