Grand Am Rolex - Velocity Worldwide Makes Racing Debut As Wayne Taylor Racing's New Primary Sponsor

DAYTONA BEACH, Jan. 3, 2013: A brand new primary sponsor will adorn the No. 10 Corvette Dallara Daytona Prototype of Wayne Taylor Racing, featuring co-drivers Max Angelelli and Jordan Taylor, as it begins its quest to win the 2013 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series championship – the global customer engagement firm Velocity Worldwide.

With headquarters in New York, London, Dublin and Belfast, Velocity Worldwide has converged all digital and traditional communication channels into a single, unique platform called Darius. The Darius platform helps companies and brands create a continual conversation “eco-system” that enables them to meaningfully engage with and measure all interactions with their target audience.

“This is truly one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been involved with,” said Wayne Taylor, team owner and three-time sports car racing champion who introduced his new primary sponsor and helped unveil the No. 10 Velocity Worldwide Corvette Dallara DP at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway Thursday. “Velocity Worldwide is on the cutting edge of what digital and social media are all about. The company has developed a groundbreaking way of figuring out in real-time what people want. I think it can change the face of racing sponsorship as we have come to know it by providing a mechanism for sponsors to truly measure the impact of their sponsorship to their business. The beauty of this relationship lies in the fact that we have a clear understanding of each other’s brand and what we are trying to accomplish. And they are as passionate about our business as I am about theirs. Together, I think we can make some serious noise in the racing world and beyond.”

Paul Blakely, CEO Americas for Velocity Worldwide, echoed the team owner’s sentiments during today’s announcement.

“I’ve been involved with racing for a number of years now and I’ve yet to see anyone show as much commitment to his racing partners as Wayne,” Blakely said. “To watch Wayne operate, the word passion comes immediately to mind. He’s passionate because he sees first-hand the positive impact he has on his partners’ businesses and I think we connected very quickly because of that. What energizes Velocity Worldwide is seeing the positive impact our work has on our clients’ businesses. I’ve heard Wayne say he can’t guarantee a win, but he’ll guarantee that he will race for the win. Marketing has historically been in that position where it cannot guarantee or quantify an outcome but, at Velocity Worldwide, we’ve changed that. We can now, for the first time, understand in real-time the effectiveness of advertising, marketing and sponsorship programs and fine-tune them on the fly to ensure maximum return on investment for clients. From a racing sponsorship perspective, this is critical, of course, as the bottom-line business benefit of sponsorship can often be intangible, at best. We believe that by aligning Wayne Taylor Racing’s ability to get business done in the racing world with our unique ability to generate and measure the impact of sponsorship at track and beyond that we’re at the beginning of something revolutionary.”

The No. 10 Velocity Worldwide Corvette DP first hits the track Friday through Sunday for the Roar Before the 24 test days on the 12-turn, 3.56-mile Daytona road course. The 12-race Rolex Series season opens with the 51st running of the Rolex 24 At Daytona twice-around-the-clock endurance marathon.