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Advertising Age
August 29, 1988
Monsters on the loose;
Big truck, sexy driver and plenty of destruction packs 'em in -- and mar-keters take heed
BYLINE: By Bob Garfield, Associate editor Denise Frenner coordinated this report on Sports Marketing
SECTION: SPECIAL REPORT; Pg. S-14
LENGTH: 864 words
Never mind free speech and failed collectivization. The difference between America and Russia is in the realm of large-vehicle entertainment.
In the Soviet Union, God help them, there are no monster trucks.
In the U.S.S.R, there is no opportunity for a nice Jewish girl from Flushing (or, say, Minsk) to dress up in a skin-tight jumpsuit; hop aboard a souped-up, $150,000, seven-ton pickup truck with 66-inch tires; jam her stiletto-heeled boot to the floor; crush a stack of junked automobiles and charge 10,000 Colorado Springsians (or, say, Muscovites) $10 apiece to witness the spectacle -- while promoting a chain of mini-marts in the bargain.
I refer to what went on at Colorado Springs' Penrose Stadium not long ago. I refer to Monster Truck Madness. And I refer, of course, to the American Dream.
"So here I am," says Meridith May Doulton, the world's only female professional monster truck driver, "putting the big tires on the big machine and 5-ton military axles with 10-ton ends and 468 Chevy motor. I feel powerful, and I love knowing I'm at the mercy of 750 horsepower."
Is this a great country, or what? When Meridith was a teen-ager back in Queens, she would have been content to be a novelist and teacher. Big deal. Instead, she gets to throttle up the am/pm Boss and take on the Skoal Bandit, the Copenhagen/Skoal Crusher, the Duroliner Giant and other 4x4 leviathans in a battle of automotive muscle comparing in drama to a World Wrestling Federation match or any ninja movie you can name.
We're talking totally awesome. And we're also talking capitalism at work.
"We've been involved with these trucks, oh gosh, four or five years now," says Garnis Hagen, director of field promotions for U.S. Tobacco Co., marketer of Skoal, Skoal Bandits and Copenhagen brand smokeless tobacco prod-ucts. "Basically, what they do for us is build brand awareness. They attract a crowd, many of which are our custom-ers."
Yes, says Joe Tebo, manager of sales development for Atlantic Richfield Co.'s am/pm mini-mart division. "That Boss is tremendous. When we park it in the driveway [of an am/pm store] it creates a lot of interest. It meets our de-mographics."
Thus, an evening of wholsome family fun is also an exercise in consumer awareness. U.S. Tobacco and Arco buy Monster Truck Madness sponsorships, and hundreds of thousands of people in stadiums and fairgrounds around the country get to be awed by 750-horsepower billboards.
"U.S. Tobacco says that each truck generates 97 million gross impressions," explains Seth Doulton, who (with his car-stomping wife Meridith) runs Golden State Promotions, the Santa Barbara, Calif., operator of the Monster Truck Madness tour.
All those gross, gross impressions, the Doultons say, come for a sponsorship fee of $100,000 to $150,000 a year -- which to them translates into a boss crusher of a promotional vehicle and makes them wonder why marketers aren't lining up to get involved.
"We're talking about a [annual sponsorship] price that's equivalent to one collegiate football game," Seth says. "One ad. Not NFL. Collegiate. On a Saturday afternoon, when everybody is out doing something else."
Obviously, sponsorship-wise, Nina Ricci and L'eggs and even Wash 'n' Dry are out of the question. In the macho world of brand-affiliated mutant utility vehicles, a truck called the Moist Towelette will not fly.
The Monster Truck Madness sponsor must be comfortable with a Monster Truck Madness-type name -- like the Hematoma or the Wad O'Spit or some such. To the Doultons a brewery would be just ideal.
Alas, Meridith says, "They get a million proposals a day. And if you don't know somebody, you can't get your foot in the door."
OK, other truck promoters do have beer tie-ins. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, has hooked up with SRO Pace of Hot Springs, Ark. And United Sports Promotions, Kansas City, Mo., runs the Coors Motor Spectacular. But those promoters use monsters only as the grand finale to events that also encompass truck pulls and mud-bog races.
Seth Doulton's guiding principle is that people will pay cash money to see automotive pituitary cases, even if there isn't a mud bog in sight. And he took a cue from auto racing by soliciting sponsorships for individual trucks.
When he had that epiphany, Meridith was neither a French teacher nor a spouse. She was a Los Angeles ra-dio-station promotions director and Seth's business consultant. This was also long before they hit on the most novel gimmick yet -- the monster driverette -- a vocation that is just brimming with irony.
"When I was a little girl," she says, before she dreamed of being a novelist, "I wanted to be boss of the world. I used to play with my little farm animals that I had. One of the farm animals was the boss of the world. And he -- it was a he -- would just make decisions for all the other farm animals and all the other farmers and cowboys and horses."
Well, that never came true. It's a totalitarian dream, frankly, and this is America, land of freedom and mini-marts. So, no, Meridith can't be the boss. But you should see her drive it.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: Photo, The world's only female monster truck driver, Meridith May Doulton, and her Monster truck, the am/pm Boss: "I feel powerful, and I love knowing I'm at the mercy of 750 horsepower", Truckin' Magazine
Copyright 1988 Crain Communications, Inc.;
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