Patrick tops non-mascot endorsers

 

Danica Patrick will start her No. 10 Chevy 37th in Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400 but she’s No. 1 when it comes to drawing social-media followers to her primary sponsor.

In a poll by Synthesio, a social-media monitoring specialist, Patrick was the highest-rated celebrity endorser when it came to generating buzz for sponsor GoDaddy.

Synthesio CEO Loic Moisand told USA Today it’s because she frequently mentions her sponsor on her Twitter account (@DanicaPatrick) and “she appears reachable.”

“I’ve always tried to be very authentic with my answers or what I talk about on social media,” Patrick said after practice at Michigan International Speedway. “My sponsor, Tissot’s the one that said it would help sponsor my Twitter page and launch it, so I was kind of one of the first ones who was getting the sponsors involved in the social-media aspect.”

As well as she performs among celebs, Patrick still was no match for the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Aflac duck or the Geico gecko. Imaginary characters, the study found, drew a much greater number of followers to sponsors than humans.

“They’re not real people,” she said. “I win in the people category.”