NASCAR and SpongeBob SquarePants. A match made in... wait, what??

So today I happened to notice as I was browsing through sporting events on television that the Nascar Sprint Cup Series race this weekend is the SpongeBob SquarePants 400.

No, that's not a typo.  Yes, that's the official logo of the event.

This one has me scratching my head. 

I have always said that one of the most important strategies for marketing success is to 1) define your target audience, 2) figure out where they make their purchase decisions, then 3) market to them there. 

For example, I recently noticed an online ad on autotrader.ca for a used car dealership. Perfect! The target audience in this case is people shopping for a used car. Those people make purchase decisions based on what they see on that site. So the used car dealership advertises there! Brilliant. 

Presumably, the target audience for Nickelodeon is children. Presumably, the audience at a NASCAR event is primarily adults. In fact, according to this NASCAR demographics study, 100% of fans describe themselves as at least 18 years old.

So why on Earth would Nickelodeon sponsor the race??

My guess is they believe the general brand awareness will trickle down to the children through things like merchandise, commercials on television, and so on. But that's an expensive approach to awareness building to kids...who probably aren't watching the race!

LESSON FOR MARKETERS

With every marketing tactic, think about the proportion of the audience (for the tactic) that will closely resemble your target audience. Start with the marketing tactics with the highest proportion, and work down from there.

Using the examples from above, the proportion of children at a NASCAR race is close to 0%. The proportion of used car shoppers on autotrader.ca is approaching 100%. Dollar-for-dollar, the autotrader.ca marketing spend is clearly the most efficient.

YOUR TURN

What do you think? Why would they possibly do this?