Nissan launches dedicated YouTube channel for petrolheads

The worlds of motorsport and internet videos have merged with Nissan as it launches Nismo.TV on YouTube; a channel dedicated to the motorsport exploits of Nissan’s racing division. It will be a behind-the-scenes view of everything from its top racing programmes to its training programme in yet another step forward for original content on YouTube.

Nismo is Nissan’s racing and performance division, responsible for all its race cars and fast road cars, like the manic GT-R and its GT3 brother. But it also has some humble endeavours like the GT Academy. This is a genuine gamer-to-racer program that Playstation racers compete in for a chance to race a real race car. The winners of GT Academy will be followed as they are trained to become real race car drivers. While no doubt a great thing in itself,it also gives gamers around the world a real argument against lazing about playing video games.

YouTube, we all know, is famous for viewing just how crazy a world we live in; from Russian meteors to screaming goats, and every kind of cat you can imagine. Its goal, though, is to be the source of more and more original content because that’s where the gold lies. So this collaboration with Nissan to launch Nismo.TV is a great opportunity to get just that.

Julie Kikla of YouTube said, “We’re delighted to welcome NISMO.TV on to the YouTube platform; working in the content space with Nissan creates an exciting new dimension to our existing motor-sport content offering which is fast becoming a valuable genre.”

Nismo.TV will show the daily happenings of the Nissan GT-R GT3 racers brandishing YouTube on their cars and also what exactly goes into putting a race car onto the track. It will also showcase Nissan’s electric prototype Le Mans project.

Nissan’s Director of Global Motorsport Darren Cox commented, “”By launching NISMO.TV on YouTube we’re creating a new template for leveraging motorsport content and taking it beyond the purist, on a truly global level. This new relationship with YouTube, like our collaborations with Gazprom Neft and PlayStation, shows what a new generation of motorsport-led marketing will look like.

He further added, “Innovation is what Nissan does best and with YouTube we can go out there and break the rules when it comes to engaging with our audience: the current and future motorsport fans. There is no better platform for our content than YouTube so we are excited to see how far we can go with NISMO.TV.”

While sponsor branding on car is as normal to racing as tie-dye is to hippies, YouTube has never been seen on a race car. It may not seem a big thing, but these cars will be competing in a series of races across Europe.

So that makes this not only good for content but also great for marketing on YouTube’s side. At the same time, Nissan is marketing itself further, directing people to its Nismo.TV channel via the YouTube decals. It’s smart, and benefits everyone nicely.