Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Tom Kelly once kicked field goals for Wofford College.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 21:42:31 -0500

Kelly, Nextel ready to go
Posted Thursday, December 18, 2003 - 10:13 pm

By Mike Hembree
MOTORSPORTS WRITER
[email-masked]

Tom Kelly once kicked field goals for Wofford College.

On one particularly memorable autumn day in
1966, he booted a three-pointer with 18
seconds left to lift the Terriers to a 9-7 victory
over Newberry.

Kelly's goals have changed. Now he plays with numbers in the millions — dollars
and customers.
Kelly, 56 and a native of Anderson, is chief operating officer of Nextel
Communications, which will become the marquee sponsor of NASCAR's top series —
replacing Winston — when the 2004 season begins.

As Nextel's chief marketing expert and a primary decision-maker in the wireless
phone company's choices of advertising and promotional vehicles, Kelly was a key
player in the NASCAR-Nextel marriage, a 10-year agreement that will change the
face of a sport that has carried red-and-white Winston colors for more than
three decades.

Kelly was graduated from Wofford in 1969. He played on scholarship for the
Terriers after two seasons on the Walhalla High School football team. An
economics major, he joined the then-emerging wireless field in 1993 and now is a
few weeks away from assuming an important position in relation to one of the
country's fastest growing sports.

For Kelly, the bottom line, of course, is building Nextel's subscriber base,
which now is about 12 million. He and other executives at Reston, Va.-based
Nextel have explored NASCAR's numbers, and they see a future that includes cell
phones sprouting from ears throughout the grandstands at NASCAR events and in
the homes of television viewers.

On Wednesday, Kelly met with NASCAR personnel in Reston as the two organizations
continue to plan the rollout of Nextel's first-year sponsorship agenda, details
of which are scheduled to be unveiled in January. Since the announcement of the
sponsorship in June, Nextel has been very quiet, preferring to give Winston a
wide berth for its final months in the spotlight.
That will change in a big way next month as Nextel begins the process of
boosting its name recognition among NASCAR fans.
"We've always used sports as a marketing vehicle for our company based on the
kind of target customers we go after," Kelly said. "We've been in Major League
Baseball, the NFL, the NHL.  Those are all wonderful sports franchises, but when
we began to look at what we do next and the NASCAR possibility came along, we
felt it was a terrific opportunity for us for a lot of reasons.

"One of the most important aspects of that relationship is the fact that NASCAR
fans tend to be two to three times more loyal to the sponsors of NASCAR than
sponsors of any other sport.  And, NASCAR is a sport that's about technology.
Nextel is about a different kind of technology, but we think there's an
opportunity for us to help the sport be operationally more efficient and
effective but also to create a much better experience long-term for the fan."

Although not an avid, life-long NASCAR observer, Kelly said he attended races at
Darlington Raceway in the 1960s and was aware of the talent of South Carolina
drivers David Pearson and Cale Yarborough.

"Growing up in South Carolina, NASCAR was something that was always part of the
discussion and the culture because of Darlington and Charlotte being in the
proximity," he said. "It was always something you paid attention to. Even with
the other sports I participated in, it was always something I watched the papers
for."
In a month, that interest will move to the highest of levels.

http://greenvilleonline.com/news/sports/2003/12/18/2003121821193.htm

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