Corona firm Lucas Oil furthers brand on TV

2/24/2010
It's a familiar scene for the 20 or so producers, editors and cameramen who film races on dirt, track and water for the company.

Forrest Lucas, the founder and owner of Corona-based Lucas Oil, in a production studio with producer Trevor Hocking, right, in Corona.

And for Forrest Lucas, the founder and owner of Corona-based Lucas Oil, that scene could eventually inspire an auto shop customer to buy his brand of automotive additives.

"I wasn't watching the commercials, I was skipping over them," Lucas said.

So he created programming he thought people would watch. Like the race cars and speedways he owns and sponsors, he attached the company's brand name to almost anything he could.

"It's the best advertising in the country," he said.

The studio's walls, covered in the company's logo and pictures of extreme racers, are just hallways away from a white-coat lab where the company's products are developed and an assembly line that fills containers with the stuff.

Lucas has said that 25 to 30 percent of his company's budget is spent on sponsorships and advertising, including the hefty 20-year $122 million contract he signed with the Indianapolis Colts to have his company's name on their stadium.

From the stadium to sponsoring NHRA drag races to building his own race tracks, Lucas said it's all for one singular purpose: to sell oil.

On a recent Monday, Lucas peeked into each of the offices in the company's television studio where undoubtedly the sound of engines filled the room.

"He got us the best toys we could want," said Trevor Hocking, a producer.

Hocking's company, Synergy Studios Inc., used to have a contract to film commercials for Lucas Oil. When that business began to falter in 2007, Lucas bought it and brought it into his Corona headquarters with one editing bay and Trevor as the sole editor.

Three years later, the television studio has 10 high-definition editing bays and 20 full-time employees. And Hocking still helped film and edit 300 original hours of races last year.

They aren't shooting NASCAR races or NHRA drag races, though. Most of the races that Lucas Oil films are races that wouldn't otherwise be aired on television but have a niche audience.

There's the Lucas Oil Off-road Racing Series, the Lucas Oil Motorsports Hour and more, featuring dirt races, demolition derbies, even bus races.

"Some weekends we have upwards of five or six events," said Dave Wonser, studio manager.

Lucas is building a drag strip for boats near a ranch in Missouri, the first of its kind, set to open in the summer. The track will be more "fan friendly" because the stands can sit closer to the water, he said. It should also be safer for drivers because they'll be able to keep the track's depth at six to seven feet, allowing for quicker rescues, he said.

And his production company will be there to film it.

Lucas Oil buys or barters for the time for the programs to air on the Speed channel or Versus network and then sells the advertising and sponsorships to other companies including partners in what the company calls "Team Lucas," which includes Riverside-based K&N Engineering, among others.

Extra footage gets posted on YouTube and the company's site in the hopes they will become viral video clips passed around to other race aficionados.

The company's Web site gets about 1,500 unique visitors a day, not a windfall, but that amount usually doubles after an Indianapolis Colts football game and the Lucas Oil brand name is top of mind among Web surfers.

In the end, "that's what it's all about," he said.

Selling oil.

Reach Kimberly Pierceall at 951-368-9552 or kpierceall@PE.com
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