Dive Brief:

• Oscar Mayer will pit all six of its Wienermobiles against one another in a race on May 23 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in advance of the Indianapolis 500, per details shared with Marketing Dive. 
• The Wienie 500 will be streamed live on the Fox Sports App and across @IndyCarOnFox social accounts. A partnership with DraftKings will enable fans to enter a pool to win $10,000 by predicting the race’s outcome and answering related questions. 
• The race kicks off a new campaign, “Summer of Wieners,” with more elements to come this summer. The stunt looks to tie the Kraft Heinz brand to a sporting event that helps mark the start of summer.

Dive Insight:

The Wienie 500 will take place two days before the Indianapolis 500, a race where fans consume nearly 30,000 hot dogs, per press materials, and is intended to mark the official kick-off of summer. The partnership speaks to growing importance of marketing around live sports, including motor sports, as a way to engage with ad-wary consumers.

“As a brand known for sparking smiles in disarmingly delightful ways, it’s only fitting that we bring a race of epic proportions to the Speedway and celebrate a timeless tradition: delicious meats and a little friendly competition to kick off a summer of wieners,” said Kelsey Rice, brand communications director at Oscar Mayer, in a statement.

The event also represents the first time all six of the brand’s hot-dog-shaped vehicles will be in the same place at the same time in over a decade and will be the first competitive race for the fleet. Each of the six vehicles will be decorated to represent a different regional area of the country, including Chi Dog (Midwest), New York Dog (East), Sonoran Dog (Southwest), Slaw Dog (Southeast), Chili Dog (South) and Seattle Dog (Northwest). The drivers (a.k.a. “hotdoggers”) will also be equipped with custom racing suits and the winner will be treated to a trophy ceremony in the “Wiener’s Circle” complete with a spray of mustard instead of champagne.

The Wienie 500 is part of a partnership between Oscar Mayer and Indianapolis Motor Speedway that names the brand the official hot dog” of both the speedway and the Indianapolis 500. The effort is a partnership led by Johannes Leonardo, with content and social by The Kitchen, paid media by Carat and public relations by Zeno.

The race is the latest in a string of promotional stunts from the company involving its iconic vehicle. Past activations have included turning the hot-dog-and-bun-shaped vehicle into an ersatz wedding chapel, briefly rebranding it as the “Frankmobile” to promote a line of all-beef frankfurters and using the vehicles as mobile billboards to draw attention to gender disparity in Hollywood during the Oscars.

Parent company Kraft Heinz has put Oscar Mayer on an internal platform that looks to balance performance and profitability. The brand achieved a 10% increase in gross profit dollars in 2024, CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera said at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York Conference in February.