Editorial: NASCAR's Technical School for Scandal

My brother fixes industrial machinery for a living. The range of skills he needs—mechanical, electronic, hardware, software, CNC stuff, as well as troubleshooting abilities—makes that kind of work as technically demanding as just about any job there is. You can’t learn to do what he does in a university. So for-profit ventures like ITT Technical Institute, Universal Technical Institute, New Horizons computer training centers and others fill a needed role. It’s understandable also that during difficult economic times those schools would market themselves aggressively to people looking for new career opportunities. There’s a fine line, of course, between providing educational opportunity and exploiting people’s desperation about the economy.

Universal Technical Institute and its affiliated schools (e.g., Motorcycle Mechanics Institute, Marine Mechanic Institute, and NASCAR Technical Institute are reputable institutions. They have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and I wasn’t able to find any consumer complaints online from disgruntled students. They provide certified technician training programs for major automobile and motorcycle companies like BMW, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Porsche, so UTI is obviously not a schlock outfit.

UTI is also a major advertiser on the Fox-owned SpeedTV cable network. UTI advertises and arranges product placement on SpeedTV shows as well as buys big chunks of time for infomercials. During the Daytona 500 weekend and Speed Week coverage on SpeedTV, UTI ran an ad for their NASCAR Technical Institute in Mooresville, NC. UTI advertises that students get training on the latest technologies and up-to-date technical information from the auto companies with which UTI works. The NTI training may be up-to-date, but the ad that UTI is running is so out-of-date that it makes them look out of touch and incompetent.

UTI stresses successful job placement in their advertising. The NASCAR Technical Institute ad currently running on Speed, though, is oblivious to the changes in NASCAR due to the economic crisis. With all the team mergers, consolidations and technical partnerships, at least 1000 employees of NASCAR teams have been laid off. Jeremy Mayfield raced his way into the Daytona 500 this year with a team made up entirely of people laid off from other race teams. Meanwhile, NTI keeps talking about all the opportunity there is for entry level jobs with NASCAR teams.

The NTI ad features Kyle Petty talking about how Petty Enterprises has six graduates of NTI working for them. Now I like Kyle Petty. Growing up in the shadow of a legendary grandfather and a superstar father, he’s managed to be his own man and has done a lot of good with the Victory Junction Gang camps.

The ad had to have been filmed some time ago because Petty Enterprises no longer exists as a race team. One of the aforementioned mergers was a deal Richard Petty made with Gillett Evernham Racing, which is now known as Richard Petty Motorsports. The Petty race shop has been closed since the end of last year, all the employees have been laid off and the team’s assets have been liquidated. The racing team Lee Petty started is no longer and King Richard is leasing his face and name to George Gillett Jr., who has deep enough pockets to fund a competitive team.

Like I said, Kyle’s not the bad guy. Just like the six NTI graduates that used to work at Petty Enterprises, Kyle’s out of a NASCAR job. He’s not racing at Daytona for the first time in 30 years. I’m sure he doesn’t mind the residual payments from NTI for doing the ad, but it must be a little embarrassing for him to watch the ad while the Speed announcers keep mentioning the economic changes in NASCAR.

UTI isn’t a bad guy either. I spoke to Valerie Monaco, head of public relations for UTI and she said that she’d check with their advertising production team and get back to me. I made it clear that I didn’t think they were doing anything wrong, just that the situation had changed and the ad made NTI look silly. She pointed out that ad buys for events like Daytona Speed Week are made well in advance and as is advertising. I have to say that Monaco kept considerable good humor for someone who was just told that her employer looked foolish.

I’m sure the ad buys were done a long time ago. I’m also sure that UTI wants to keep ad production costs down, but considering how this ad undermines their credibility, I think they’d at least consider pulling it. UTI isn’t trying to be deceptive here, they’re just not on the ball. The people they are marketing NTI to are knowledgeable NASCAR fans and know what’s happened with Petty Enterprises so the ads aren’t doing NTI any good.