Imagine you’re watching the World Cup final, Messi scores the winning goal, and suddenly the announcer says you can tweet to get that ball. That’s what we did with The Hashtag500, during NASCAR’s biggest race of the season. Like any sport, NASCAR fans love the drivers and value everything they touch. So, from the green starting flag (signed by every driver), to the checkered flag (signed by winner Denny Hamlin), we let fans tweet to win drivers’ real gear in real time. Like a piece of Chase Elliott’s broken car when he crashed in lap 18. Kyle Busch’s tires, when they were replaced in lap 30. And Dale Earnhardt’s firesuit in lap 150. Except we didn’t just give this stuff away, we asked fans to race for it on Twitter by typing long hashtags. So for the first time ever, drivers weren’t the only ones racing at The Daytona 500.

We launched the campaign one week before the big race on the social media accounts of the 6 most famous drivers with the biggest social followings. Every day that week (#SunDaytona, #MonDaytona, #TuesDaytona…), a different driver released a short video launching a “practice” race on Twitter for fans to immediately win something personal of theirs. This familiarized fans with the Twitter race mechanic, and was fan engagement in its own right. Each daily practice race was teased on that driver and NASCAR’s channels, and all the teasers and daily practice races themselves were teasers for The Hashtag 500 that was coming up at The Daytona 500. They also encouraged fans to follow NASCAR on Twitter so they’d be alerted on race day, when The Hashtag 500 races were launched every 20 laps on NASCAR’s Twitter handle and on TV.

The Hashtag 500 resulted in a three-fold increase in social conversation and fan engagement compared to last year’s Daytona 500. It generated more than 100,000 tweets and became the #1 Daytona 500-related hashtag. The #RaceForDalesFiresuitContest tweet itself generated 13,000 tweet responses in a minute (the most in the history of NASCAR's Fan and Media Engagement Center), and 10,000 tweets the next minute. Most importantly, the Hashtag 500 kept Avid and Casual fans engaged throughout the race, with each of our Twitter fan races gaining 10,000+ engagements; approximately 20x the typical engagement rate. Finally, follower count grew 100K+ new fans in one week, which set the stage for the rest of the season.