By CLLCTV.org Founder, Larry Lundstrom
At first glance, a neon-green dinosaur-themed race car feels like a joke that escaped the brainstorm room. Look closer, and what AO Racing USA and Porsche pulled off is actually a masterclass in modern attention economics, brand semiotics, and cultural leverage.
Racing, like most legacy categories, is governed by unwritten rules: seriousness signals competence, heritage signals trust, and deviation feels risky. AO Racing broke that contract—visually—without breaking it operationally. That distinction matters. The car, affectionately known as Rexy, isn’t compensating for lack of performance. It’s anchored in elite engineering, professional execution, and competitive credibility. When fundamentals are strong, personality becomes a multiplier instead of a liability.
From a systems perspective, this is about signal efficiency. In a feed-driven world, attention is won in milliseconds. Rexy compresses meaning instantly. Dinosaur equals fun. Green equals bold. Porsche equals excellence. Together, they form a symbol stack that’s readable across age groups, cultures, and subcultures—without explanation. That’s not branding fluff; that’s high-functioning semiotic design.
What makes this especially effective is that it doesn’t just appeal to racing fans. It travels sideways into adjacent cultural lanes—gaming, creator culture, meme logic, youth audiences—without diluting the core brand. This is cultural interoperability. The car becomes a node that different audiences can attach meaning to, remix, and share. That’s how brands escape their categories and enter conversations.
What looks like a playful stunt is actually a precision move in modern attention economics. When AO Racing USA rolled out a bright-green, dinosaur-themed Porsche, they weren’t abandoning credibility—they were amplifying it. The performance was already there. The engineering was already elite. The personality simply made it legible to a generation trained to decide in seconds what’s worth noticing.
Rexy works because it collapses meaning instantly. Fun without being foolish. Bold without being unserious. It breaks visual convention while honoring the craft, proving that distinctiveness isn’t the enemy of excellence—it’s the multiplier. In a culture where most brands optimize for safety, AO Racing accepted the risk of being unforgettable. And in doing so, they turned a race car into a cultural artifact.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth most organizations avoid: they don’t lose because they lack quality. They lose because they lack distinctiveness. Safe brands are optimized for internal approval, not external resonance. AO Racing chose the opposite. They accepted the risk of being misunderstood in order to be unforgettable. And because the execution was excellent, the risk paid off.
At CLLCTV, we see this pattern repeat across industries. Attention today doesn’t reward polish alone; it rewards clarity plus courage. The winners are the ones who understand that culture is not decoration—it’s infrastructure. Rexy isn’t a mascot. It’s a system that converts excellence into relevance.
If you’re building a brand, a ministry, a product, or a platform and your primary goal is to blend in, you’re already invisible. Standing out isn’t about being louder. It’s about being legible, human, and bold enough to carry meaning. AO Racing didn’t just race a car—they designed a cultural artifact. And that’s why an entire generation noticed.
The Collective Agency : : Marketing, Creative & Innovation for Faith-Based Impact 