Don't get us wrong we love the fact that both Radio Shack and Nissan are sponsoring Lance Armstrong's Pro bike team...we just don't understand why.
From a business point of view it seems to make very little sense as this recent editorial in the investment web site Alpha Found points out:
"Despite nearly half a year having passed since the sponsorship announcement, there is no evidence of “Team RadioShack” on the company’s consumer or investor relations Web sites, nor in the stores we visited.
There are no photographs, no videos, no merchandizing, no promotions, no mutual branding advantage – unless you go to a source other than RadioShack.
If you Google “RadioShack Lance Armstrong”, RadioShack’s own marketing doesn’t even appear in the top 5 results. When it does show up, it’s merely the July 2009 press release.
Incredibly, if you search “Lance Armstrong” in RadioShack’s consumer site, you get three results – for a biographical book and LIVESTRONG wrist bands. If you search for “Tour de France” you get a list of product manuals that have nothing to do with the great race.
The official team Web site is an empty canvas. You cannot even link to the RadioShack site from there! [Note: Team RadioShack pointed its domain to interior pages hosted by LIVESTRONG after this story was published."
Today the folks over at team RadioShack web site posted photos of the team's new Nissan European and Tour de France car. In case you are wondering it is called the Nissan Qashqai 2.
It is similar to the American Nissan Rouge, but as you probably already know you can't buy the Nissan Qashqai 2 in America...or even pronounce it.
Which just makes us wonder why Nissan sponsored an American bike team and gave them a European only car?
It seems like a huge waste of a great opportunity to market a car to millions of American cycling fans that they will never be able to buy.
"Hey Charlie, what's that car behind Lance Armstrong," we can already hear million of American cycling fans wondering?
"Why that's a Qashqai 2 Sam, and guess what...they don't sell it over here."
Doesn't Nissan sell a car in Europe that is available in the States, you might be wondering?
Of course they do and it is called a Murano...which is basically a slightly bigger Qashqai 2.
Like we said before, don't get us wrong we love that fact that both RadioShack and Nissan are sponsoring Lances new team.
We just don't get it from a business point of view.
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