• by Karl Greenberg , March 18, 2015

U.S. oil filter brand Fram has launched a new web and mobile site that will feature videos of athletes in racing and Ultimate Fight Championship (UFC), which the brand sponsors. The company says it launched its "Team Fram" athlete sponsorship program in January with ultimate fighters Johny “Bigg Rigg” Hendricks, and Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone; and Justin Barcia and Weston Peick, members of North Carolina-based Supercross and Motocross team Joe Gibbs Racing.

Hendricks is the former UFC welterweight champion and two-time NCAA wrestling champion from Oklahoma State.  Cerrone is the number-three ranked UFC Lightweight contender. 

Part of the effort is a new website, TeamFram.com, that includes a series of videos called “Done Right,” featuring interviews with the athletes and racers, and a raft of other content with which the site will be populated in coming months.

“We want to create an experience for fans to engage with the Fram brand in ways that speak to their interests and carry out [the brand’s] ‘do it right’ mentality beyond what consumers today know about our filters,” said Rich Fleming, VP of sales and marketing at the Lake Forest, Il-based company, in a statement. “The launch of TeamFram.com is just one way we’re aligning our community outreach efforts with the new ways fans are consuming media: through video content online that’s inherently shareable.”

The company says new "Done Right" videos and Team Fram fan content will be added online throughout 2015.

Fram, which was a unit of Honeywell's "Consumer Products Group" until 2011 before being spun off to holding company Rank Group, last year launched a brand campaign from Dallas-based The Richards Group. The effort, with an “Oil Change, Done Right” motif has included TV ads where “do it right” is demonstrated by how not to do it. One shows a UFC fight in progress, except one of the athletes is wearing oven mitts. Besides the Octagon and the dirt track, Fram has also activated at Summer X games, including last year’s event in Austin, Tex.