Tamayo ready to spread the RACER message

RACER is about racing, not the business of it, but since ours is a sport where corporate connections and mutually beneficial associations are an integral part of achieving success at the pro level, having a savvy and experienced veteran of the motorsports branding and commercial game on your side is a crucial advantage. That's why RACER is delighted to have added George Tamayo, a longtime key player in motorsports brand positioning and content marketing development, to its team as Associate Creative Director and Brand Strategist.

Tamayo is also a partner at Manifest, a boutique branding and creative services agency that specializes in motorsports, and has a wide-ranging involvement in auto racing stretching back some 14 years. In fact, he's been associated with RACER almost right from the start, too.

“Back in 1999 I was involved with Skip Barber Racing School. I started off doing their communications and PR and then leading the marketing department,” Tamayo explains. “There was a great working relationship with RACER on the advertorial side and sponsorship side, when RACER sponsored the Skip Barber National Championship. Although it was, by today's standards, a fairly basic execution of branded content, that is really what that was. The magazine was always a bit ahead of the curve with content marketing and branded communications, well before those were popular buzzwords in the marketing world.”

Tamayo went on to work with a race teams and race events on the promotion and marketing side, earning the trust of clients across the motorsports spectrum

“I worked for the RuSPORT Champ Car team for two years as the commercial manager, and maintained a relationship with RACER through association with its drivers like AJ Allmendinger and Justin Wilson. After that I worked worked independently on marketing and, with Manifest, being the agency of record for events like the 2006 Champ Car Grand Prix of Denver (RIGHT). Since then I've worked with the Red Bull NASCAR team, a variety of IndyCar teams, ALMS, Grand-Am… really across the gamut.

“Then in 2008 I started working with [RACER founder, CEO and executive publisher] Paul Pfanner again on branding and sales positioning documents for clients such as the American Le Mans Series, the USF1 project, and most recently the GP of America project last year.

“So, having the association with RACER for the past 14 years, things kind of came full circle – it's funny, when I first started with Skip Barber, one of the first things I did was the 1999 Formula Dodge National Championship which Ryan Hunter-Reay won, and I was actually the first writer to do an interview with Ryan the racecar driver – he'd been interviewed as a karter but it was his first win in a car race. Now here we are in 2013 and Ryan is the IndyCar champion, and I'm back with RACER again.”

In his new role, Tamayo is enthusiastic about the possibilities for putting his marketing acumen to work in helping to build RACER's brand.

“I see RACER getting more involved in more sophisticated levels of content marketing, custom publishing and brand positioning across all the mediums of print, digital and video, with the magazine as the hub – the anchor to which all those activities are tied,” he explains. “The magazine gives a voice – it's a great content producer. You start to look at all the potential businesses that circle in the same orbit as RACER does, so why not take that  ability to create that great content and storytelling, and execute that on behalf of companies and entities that are active in the motorsport and automotive entertainment world?”