Team identification

[Claude Rouelle]

What the heck is Go Blue Go Fast Go Jacks?

jlangholzj, who are you? Which university are you? Seriously I do not know!

This gives me the opportunity to mention a little advice of marketing and simple university / FSAE brand recognition.

FSAE and FS are international competitions. Imagine you are new and first time visitor to one of these competitions. You walk in the paddock and see team logos such as "Formula Sun Devils", "Lions Racing", "Elephant Racing", "Beavers Racing", "Triton Racing" etc... but you have no idea if this or that team is German, Italian, American etc...

I know that the Lakers are from Los Angeles but that is because I live in the US. But how many Portuguese, Brazilians, Egyptians know that?

Besides Formula Student marketing is not comparable to NBA marketing. Well not yet http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

I am not against the idea of giving your own team a nickname but how can you have other teams, judges, potential or existing sponsors, technical partners, and the public being interested in you if you do not identify yourself properly?

If you are American you probably can situate where Los Angeles, Portland, Boston, Chicago, or Houston is on the US map. But can you show where Padova, Bologna, Esslingen, Nevers, Dusseldorf, Gottenburg, Eindhoven is on the Europe map? And vice versa if you were European, can you tell me where all the mentioned US cities are?

Want an advise? Keep your nickname but also put on your banners and ideally on your letterhead, business card, car, truck, maybe shirts your university name and a simple map of the world (or part of the world) with the line showing the borders of your country and a round point showing where on that map your university / city is located. It helps a lot!

Identify your self! Just be a bit world-ly guys!

[Mumpitz]

I'll suggest the map idea to my team, might clear up some confusion.
Conversations with strangers usually go something like;
Stranger: "Oh you're from Oakland... California?"
Us: "No, Rochester, Michigan"
Stranger: "Rochester, New York?"
Us: "No Michigan, north of Detroit (points to hand which doubles as a MI map)"
Stranger: "oh are you in a gang?"
Us: facepalm http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

[PatClarke]

I absolutely agree with Claude here!

Going a little farther, at some of the smaller events like FSA, the teams are identified in the programme and on the pit wall by their racing nicknames. Like Claude, I don't care what you call yourselves, but all identification should be your university!

A little tip for marketing.

Every marketing manager on the planet has letters come across his desk every day from someone asking for money to go racing. Most of these letters end up in the wastepaper bin.

However, if an application comes from a university team asking for some help to compete in a global engineering competition, your chances of getting help are much higher!

FS and FSAE is NOT motor racing!

Pat

[Edward M. Kasprzak]

I'm glad this subject has come up. The FSAE TTC counts universities as its members--currently over 300 strong. The use of team nicknames without including the school name regularly creates problems when handling registrations or trying to verify an existing membership.

Now, I don't have anything against nicknames like "Lions Racing", "Aixtreme Racing" or "Full Blue Racing", but without any mention of the school name it takes a Google search to determine who these teams are. Since you represent your school why not include your school's name??? It would be nice (and to your benefit!) if it didn't require an internet search to figure out who you are.

[Claude Rouelle]

Yeah.. and I forgot the mention that geographical ignorance sometimes come from judges too.

When TU Graz came to the US some judges asked
- Where are you from?
- Austria
- You mean Australia
- No, Austria
- Where is that?
- ....(embarrassed Austrian students ..)In Europe
- Ah ...? Where?

(Some US judges actually told me they thought Europe was a country....)

Since then all TU Graz cars are called TANKIA: TANKIA 001, TANKIA 002 etc...

TANKIA is for There Are NO Kangaroo In Austria

Good sense of humor from the TU Graz guys http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Claude Rouelle]

However, if an application comes from a university team asking for some help to compete in a global engineering competition, your chances of getting help are much higher!

And of course naming your team Animal XYZ Racing Team will make you look very professional to any engineering technical partners and sponsors http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif .

[jlangholzj]

We're just a little team from South Dakota http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

the schools motto is "go big, go blue, go jacks" Jacks comes from our school mascot.

the other challenge that we always overcome is that if we say we're from SDSU, they automatically go "oh you're from san diego state!" :grumble grumble: NO! ...hahaa.

Whenever we address a company or any outside entity, we ALWAYS...always always always say we're "South Dakota State University FSAE" just for the reason of this thread...identification and clarification....


...i should go change my sig now... :sheepish grin:

[Mbirt]

It's really a shame Rose-Hulman's Rose GPE didn't honor their athletic teams by choosing "Fightin' Engineers Racing" as their team name...

[Max Trenkle]

When recreating the Tennessee Tech team, we struggled to decide how to name the team. Things we had to consider:

Decision Factors
<LI>Our Baja team (arguably #1 Baja team in the world) calls themselves TTU Baja.
<LI>Our school's website is tntech.edu because Texas Tech already had the ttu.edu domain.
<LI>Texas Tech goes by Red Raider Racing.
<LI>TN Tech FSAE sounds boring.
<LI>TTU FSAE is also boring.
<LI>TTU Motorsports was our final decision.
This way, if we can achieve the success we aim for over the next few years, we can unify the teams under one name. We did everything we could to recreate the team in a way that people could remember us at competition, and potential sponsors would have something to remember as well.

[Claude Rouelle]

he schools motto is "go big, go blue, go jacks" Jacks comes from our school mascot.

1. Who besides you and your school mate does care about that?

2. If I would not asked how many would know?

3. Just of curiosity what (Animal? Blue I guess? Also big? ) is your mascot? What is Jack? Not that I care but I try to understand how "go big, go blue, go jacks" identify with your school and/or your mascot

[Claude Rouelle]

TTU Motorsports was our final decision.

Fine, providing that you show in your banner, documents and email signature what TTU means.

[Max Trenkle]

I feel we have that covered, hopefully anyway. All official documents include a header that reads "Tennessee Tech Motorsports". Same thing for email signatures and the like. I hope the University part is self explanatory.

[Claude Rouelle]

Max, Not YOUR email signature....

[JT A.]

Should we make it bigger? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/376558_10151862171125648_1051294126_n.jpg

[Max Trenkle]

Yes of course! The team's email.
I hope I was not confusing.

[nick roberts]

Jayhawk Motorsports - Where our aero package is sized by the biggest 'KANSAS' sticker we can find that year.

[Moke]

When we were setting up the University of Auckland Formula SAE team in 2003, we spent a bit of time on the name. As we were the first and for a few years the only FSAE team in New Zealand, we felt that we needed to have the Formula SAE tag to highlight the fact we were in FSAE not some other class. Having the Uni name adds some creditability to the team rather than just some young petrolheads. Leaving out motorsport means that we can push the eduction side not just the car side.

Now working for a sponsor making composite parts, we get a sponsorship request nearly every week and the all end up in the round file at the end of the desk. Unless there is something that makes them different.

[Big Bird]

Since then all TU Graz cars are called TANKIA: TANKIA 001, TANKIA 002 etc...

TANKIA is for There Are NO Kangaroo In Austria

At one stage we were discussing calling our car TALOKIA 001, 002 etc, because we had Lots Of the rotten things hopping around our campus at Bundoora...

[TMichaels]

I will not kick in arguing about the team name, as obviously my former team did not make the best choice. Nobody except for people from Braunschweig know, that the mascot of Braunschweig is a lion and no one probably cares.

However, what I often notice is that even in results published by some events, they use the team name instead of the university's name. That makes it really hard to find out who placed where.

[PatClarke]

Tobi,
That was the point I alluded to in my earlier post.

Pat

[Jon Burford]

So as long as they always publish the results with the University name there shouldn't be any trouble should there?
I feel the nominated team name should really feature the university name anyhow, since you are competing under their banner and most of us are heavily subsidised by our respective schools.

Does it have to be so complicated?

[Racer-X]

I personally have trouble when teams just use their school's initials on the car. There are only 26 letters, and 120 cars at Michigan completion, there are going to be conflicts. Like the Florida schools and ones from states that start with M and I need to put their full team names on the car if they want people to know who they are. To the less keen observer U of M on a car doesn't mean a whole lot.

[AxelRipper]

This is why I labeled our car last year GMI2012. First off, there are already too many schools with the initials 'KU' out there. Secondly, no one outside of Michigan has ever heard of Kettering University, but most people at some point have heard of GMI/General Motors Institute.

We've also tried to use this logo in the past, but the school frowned upon it: http://www.raydworkshop.com/ebaystore/img/guns/flint.jpg

[Bemo]

I'm completely with Claude and Pat here. I wasn't very happy about the fact, that at FS Austria this year only the nicknames of the teams were used. But based on a lot of feedback about that, it is almost sure, that next year the school names will at least be added.

I'm also wondering what some people think, when they choose a team name. There is a German team with the name "Team Starcraft". I don't get, how they ever found a single sponsor.
I wasn't involved when our team was founded, but I'm pretty happy with the quite simple "Rennteam Uni Stuttgart" as it tells what we're doing, that it is a student team and where we're from. The logo of our uni is even included in the team logo (that's the round thing consisting of little dots). I guess that's also something most people won't ever care, but it does no harm, showing you belong to a university.

[Charles Kaneb]

We're always identified by "Texas A&M University - College Station" in results etc.

Outside the US, how well is it known that Texas is in America? I don't think it would take much convincing for us to put a nice big American flag logo somewhere on our car if it would help.

[AxelRipper]

Also amusing that this thread comes up now, as I was looking through the team names of the teams registered for MI and Nebraska.

Here's a list of the more amusing/confusing team names listed (leaving off any that are just the school's mascot (unless its a good one)):

Michigan:
-Ram Racing
-Knickerbocker Motorsports
-High-Octane Motorsports
-Powercat Motorsports
-AUTOMANIA
-TWR-05
-Rose GPE
-Team 1
-MIP
-MRacing
-Shocker Racing

Lincoln:
-CL2
-Edcuderia Canek
-Illuminati Racers
-Schulich Racing
-Team Terasvin
-CU Later Racing
-Team Cal Simraceway
-808Formula
-The Push Starts
-Mean Green Racing
-Amphetamine Motor Sports
-Formula U

If you have one of these names and don't list your school name, No one at all will likely know who you are.

[Owen Thomas]

Schulich Racing is University of Calgary, Alberta (Canada). I find this odd, since I certainly recall seeing our university name in the registration form (required). I suppose I just figured they would label us by school, my mistake.

The name is because that is the name of our engineering school (Schulich School of Engineering), named after a super rich dude who gives money to schools. I guess in Canada we like to name individual faculties/departments, haven't seen much of that in the US.

Also, just for the sake of mentioning, our school name is included in our logo (full text). We have also for some reason gotten the wrong size vinyls for our school name two years running, so the two "University of Calgary" letterings take up literally half of the visible area on our nose cone.

From a marketing standpoint, I think people have raised a good point. People like being assosciated with educational institutes (probably more often than a "cool racecar team") since, quite frankly, it looks good in public. I don't know why teams would rob themselves of this opportunity. I'm not saying we're very successful at getting big sponsorships, but it definitely hasn't hurt to push that we're putting in volunteer hours to represent our school and make better engineers.

[Dean Vendetta]

We have also this Problem. Our Team name is: OWL Racing Team but with OWL it is not meaning the animal. It stands for the Area in Germany we come from called: OstWestfalen-Lippe. After 2 Year there was one Student he asked us why we called us like the Animal, Nobody has think about it before because the name is in our country were clear to understand and also part of our Schoolname HS-OWL (UAS Hochschule Ostwestfalen Lippe). So to get international we now have an Owl as a part of our Team logo ;-)

[Claude Rouelle]

I respect and you should bless the "super rich dude" who contribute to your school budget. Unless his name is Bill Gates, if he is known in your community he is probably not known outside it. Don't be afraid to use his name but make sure you also use your school name and show where Calgary is on the map of the world.

There are 600 + (and growing) Formula Students teams in the world and most of these teams play the game as if it was a village championship. One the (maybe unintended but effective) goals of Formula SAE is about opening students eyes on the world different culture and engineering habits and exposed themselves to a very competitive industrial world. How do you do that without showing who you are and where you are on the map of the world?

Anyway I think I made my case and considering the quick reaction on this forum I bet a few logo stickers and business card will be different in 2013.

[jlangholzj]

Originally posted by Dean Vendetta:
We have also this Problem. Our Team name is: OWL Racing Team but with OWL it is not meaning the animal. It stands for the Area in Germany we come from called: OstWestfalen-Lippe. After 2 Year there was one Student who asked us why we called us like the Animal, Nobody has think about it before because the name is in our country were clear to understand and also part of our Schoolname HS-OWL (UAS Hochschule Ostwestfalen Lippe). So to get international we now have an Owl as a part of our Team logo ;-)

Whooooooo are you? who who, who who?

....I'm sorry i couldn't resist.......

funny enough that song is by "the who" hahaa

[BMH]

Nicknames: While nicknames are good and unique, I still find it hard to know what university a team is affiliated with. For example, I didn't know what university Sooner Racing was affiliated until I read the FSAE book earlier this year.

I am affiliated with Tennessee Tech Formula SAE and I feel that using that name is straight to the point. I honestly wasn't too in favor of TTU Motorsports, TN Tech Motorsports, etc. because we have a very successful baja team, thus when people hear TTU Motorsports, they are going to think of our Baja team more likely. I have personally heard that name being used when I was still attending TTU and students asking if that was the baja team. Plus the formula and baja team aren't a joint effort like at USF. Those are my 2 cents anyways.

[dmacke]

I don't understand what all of the hubbub is all about. If you don't like a team's name then don't use it. When I talk with other people about another team's car I rarely use the team name. I never say "WOW! Did you guys see the MRacing car?!" I refer to it as "WOW! Did you guys see Michigan's car?!" The list goes on and on. It sounds like everyone is just complaining for the sake of complaining. I can't speak for all the competitions but for the past couple of years the Michigan competition the results are posted with the university name and not the "team name".

[acedeuce802]

Originally posted by dmacke:
I don't understand what all of the hubbub is all about. If you don't like a team's name then don't use it. When I talk with other people about another team's car I rarely use the team name. I never say "WOW! Did you guys see the MRacing car?!" I refer to it as "WOW! Did you guys see Michigan's car?!" The list goes on and on. It sounds like everyone is just complaining for the sake of complaining. I can't speak for all the competitions but for the past couple of years the Michigan competition the results are posted with the university name and not the "team name".
The point that's trying to get across, is that you call the team Michigan, but their business cards may say MRacing. For people who participate in the competition, live in Michigan, etc... they are more likely to know that MRacing=Michigan and everything is fine. But, when a potential sponsor see's their car advertised as MRacing (I'm not picking on them, or even know if they advertise at MRacing, just hypothetical), then it gets confusing. We are not professional racing teams, we are students. I've never understood the nicknames for teams, we are representing our school, right?

[dmacke]

I can see your point with the business cards but when approaching a potential sponsor why not say we are _______ Motorsports from ______ University. In my opinion the FSAE, Baja, etc. teams are no different than football, basketball, etc. teams (except for the obvious fact that football and basketball bring in a bit more money). Small schools have mascots that may not be well known but they still have them. I think as long as the team name has something to do with the school then there is no problem. If a team can't make it clear to a sponsor that they are a university race team then that's the team's own stupidity.

[acedeuce802]

Originally posted by dmacke:
I can see your point with the business cards but when approaching a potential sponsor why not say we are _______ Motorsports from ______ University. In my opinion the FSAE, Baja, etc. teams are no different than football, basketball, etc. teams (except for the obvious fact that football and basketball bring in a bit more money). Small schools have mascots that may not be well known but they still have them. I think as long as the team name has something to do with the school then there is no problem. If a team can't make it clear to a sponsor that they are a university race team then that's the team's own stupidity.
Well put. 100% agree.

[Brian S]

I have to agree about using the school name. I never really liked the nick names while I was in school, and I like them even less now that I am starting to get involved in the sponsor side of things. It is important to know who is asking for money.

The owner of my company and I were recently talking about this. I wanted money for my former FSAE team, and he was trying to decide on who to give money to from all the people asking. The big question I think people get wrong in asking for money is "What does the sponsor get out of it?" A logo on the car? Listed on the webpage? We sell multimillion robotics used in aircraft assembly. I really doubt that a potential customer is going to see our logo on a FSAE car a think, "I should look into what they make."

What we came up with is that the benefit to us is getting our name in front of the students, on the team we are sponsoring. Outside of our industry, most people have never even heard of us. When we look to hire a new engineer, we are looking for a specific skill set which is commonly found on a FSAE team. What we get out of a sponsorship is potential employes who know who we are, and have come out and seen our facilities. Yeah, it's cool to have our logo on a car at a "race", but that's not really the point.

The things to stress are:

1)That this is an engineering competition, where you are responsible for the project management, marketing, design, construction, and testing. That's that you will be doing for the rest of your career, that's what is valuable to a company. Show that you can think through a design, test it, figure out what didn't work (and admit when you were wrong) and learn from it. So you didn't finish endurance last year, I don't really care. Do you know why you didn't? What will you do different next year? THAT'S what I want to know. You figured out what wasn't working, and are doing something about it. The fact that you are building a race car is a nice way for the event organizers to trick you into entering the competition. Don't stress being a race team. You are an engineering team who happens to be working on a race car.

2)Who you are. (to get back on topic) Are you a school that we hire a lot of people from? The benefit to us is in increasing the level of engineers we have to pick from to fill an opening. If we hire a ton of people from your school, we are more likely to sponsor you. We have to know which school you are inorder to decide that.

[Matthew Newman]

I agree with Claude as well. Your team should clearly contain your University's name. This way it allows the team to be seen as a more professional group, especially to sponsors and at university functions. I'm happy if a team has a nickname, but the official name should contain the name of the University.

[Dunk Mckay]

Can I chip in and express the confusion I had when first attending FSG, at some of the names displayed on timing boards and score sheets, etc. All teams were named by the town/city their university is located in.

Our team is "Brunel Racing", our university is "Brunel University", our university's brand/logo features the words "Brunel University London" (used to be "[...] West London") and has always featured prominently on our car. However at FSG we are "Uxbridge" because that is the town in our address. I am pretty sure that the majority of Brits would not really know where Uxbridge is, let alone the rest of the world. Being called "London" would be equally confusing as we are not the University of London, and there are dozens of universities located in London anyway.

I also had problems identifying results for UH Racing (Univeristy of Hertfordshire), their university is named for their county, however the town/city in which they are located is Hatfield, and such is the name to look for when trying to find their results at FSG. I am sure we are not the only two.

This is only a small gripe, but something I've wanted to express for a while. This seemed like the right place and time.

[Markus]

I wonder how our team should be named to clearly let everyone know where we come from while keeping it pronouncuable?

Our school is "Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences" in english and "Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu" in finnish.

As you can see our team name contains the name of the school but it doesn't give any hint that it's a school or where it's located. The word isn't even english so get's mixed quite a bit.

We try to use "Helsinki UAS" abbrevation quite visibly but to be honest most of the people don't know what UAS stands for (especially in US or Finland). Furthermore we try to stand out at the competition so people will check where we come from...

So regarding the naming all suggestions are welcome. We'll start with the clear classic of:

"Formula Student team of Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland"

[Freddie]

We gave our name and logo some consideration as to this very matter; ELiTH stands for "Engineering at LiTH", where LiTH is the tech department of Linkoping University. It was also the name of some older engineering projects at the university, regarding vehicle development, so we had some help from that when we started to make the different parts of the university to know about us. We actually didn't want to use the FSAE/FS names, because if we at some point in the future decide to either expand or change direction, we would like to keep our name and hopefully good reputation.

Our logo, on the other hand, is a nod to the city of Linkoping, which also use an orange lion as their symbol. If anyone saw our car at Silverstone or Darmstadt you could see the city logo on the sides of the front as well.

We also use the university name, competing as Linkoping University and having both name and logo on our shirts. And just to show off, we have a small Swedish flag and personal names on the collar of the shirt. Makes it all more easy to remember who you've been talking to.

[Max Trenkle]

In reply to Brian S:

At my university I am trying to make FSAE much more like a business than a team of engineers. I want any person with any major on campus to be able to join the team, find something they can work on, and therefore amplify his or her education, as an engineer would.

Beyond the business students that do the obvious business stuff, we also have a girl who is studying health and fitness, who is currently researching professional driver training. After we choose the drivers who will go through training, she will implement a mandatory diet and exercise regiment in order to optimize drivers' mind and body. Yes this is primarily an engineering competition, but there is much more to have when you include everyone else. Everyone can gain from FSAE.

[Racer-X]

Originally posted by Markus:
I wonder how our team should be named to clearly let everyone know where we come from while keeping it pronouncuable?

Our school is "Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences" in english and "Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu" in finnish.

As you can see our team name contains the name of the school but it doesn't give any hint that it's a school or where it's located. The word isn't even english so get's mixed quite a bit.

We try to use "Helsinki UAS" abbrevation quite visibly but to be honest most of the people don't know what UAS stands for (especially in US or Finland). Furthermore we try to stand out at the competition so people will check where we come from...

So regarding the naming all suggestions are welcome. We'll start with the clear classic of:

"Formula Student team of Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland"

I think Helsinki UAS works everyone knows (or atleast they should know) Helsinki is in Finland. Just as it makes sense for teams for a team to use cities like Detroit for example.

If you were to say use Helsinki UAS as your "official" name that appears on the side of the car and on results you could also use "Metropolia Ammattikorkeakoulu" elsewhere on the car. People should be able to figure that out.

[Lorenzo Pessa]

About names...

My team (E-Team Squadra Corse - UniPisa) had a long discussion about team name at its second year.
The name was chosen at the first year when in only 9 months the team was capable to bring a moving car to FSAE-Italy.
There was no time to build a decent bodywork and the decision about name was not accurate.
The name is half in english and half in italian. "squadra" means "team" and "corse" mean "racing" so the full name in english sounds a little bit silly: "E-Team Racing Team". No one knows what really means "E".

At last we decided to maintain it because it was our name for sponsors and local media. "UniPisa" was added two years ago to better identify we are coming from the city of the leaning engineer error of the millennium.


The real problem we had about names was not about the team but about the competition: Formula SAE.
Automotive world knows well what SAE is, the rest of the world no!
Many times approaching sponsors and media we where forced to talk about Formula Student.
In this case "Student" works better than "SAE" ;-)