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NASCAR sponsor: butt paste

Thursday, April 07, 2005

There's a sponsor in the NASCAR Busch Series which just naturally sets tongues to wagging every time it's mentioned.

The product, which is quite effective at doing what its makers say it does, is legitimate and corporate officials are pursuing their own marketing agenda just as Coca-Cola, DuPont and the rest of the Fortune 500 companies do.

The product is -- get this --Boudreaux's Butt Paste.

It's for real, as millions of babies and their parents will tell you. Some background, if you'll pardon the pun, is in order.

In 1994, Dr. George Boudreaux sold his pharmacy to concentrate on marketing his product, which by then had taken off in a big way.

The product had expanded from treating baby bottoms to a variety of other ailments, including heat rash, acne, bed sores, abrasions, chicken pox, shingles, razor burn, feminine irritation, poison ivy, fever blisters and even chapped lips.

What does this have to do with NASCAR racing? Well, Boudreaux does not advertise his product.

Upon selling the pharmacy, he bought an RV, renamed it the "Butt Mobile" and hit the road to regional trade shows and local pharmacies, pushing his sore-bum solution.

He relied mainly on word of mouth to increase his market share.

At one of these shows, a regional manager at Wal-Mart took on the product for a trial. When the trial period was over, the manager found Doc Boudreaux's product outsold the leading brand by nearly 2-to-1.

Since then, Boudreaux has gotten his product on shelves at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, Target Stores and Walgreen's, and there's an enthusiastic Internet presence for the product.

He still does not advertise, preferring instead to keep up his promotional blitz using sports.

This is where NASCAR comes in.

Some athletes, including the Miami Heat's Shaquille O'Neal, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, former New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears head football coach Mike Ditka and iron-man cyclist Lance Armstrong, have all reportedly used the product with much enthusiasm.

Butt paste is also used to treat male itch (otherwise known as jock itch) in athletes, and several major-league baseball teams keep the handy one-gallon jugs around the clubhouse.

OK, now as we all know by now, there is no better marketing tool in the world of sports right now than NASCAR.

Doc Boudreaux, no man's fool, saw the potential of getting involved with it and began to sponsor a NASCAR Busch Series car driven by former Louisiana school principal Kim Crosby.

Marketing being what it is, NASCAR is the perfect vehicle for an entrepreneur like Boudreaux. You might even say it's the end-all, be-all...but that would be gratuitous.

Demographics don't lie. Families attend NASCAR races, and some of those families have little ones whose tushies suffer from diaper rash.

Word of mouth -- and an abundance of sample packets at each race -- help spread the word around the NASCAR community.

There has been no word on how sales have been affected by the NASCAR sponsorship, but we'll find out in the near future.