Media Coverage

[Flash]

Just wondering if some of the australians out there could give us some idea of what sort of media coverage the competition gets in Australia. Im another of the guys from NZ, and we are just doing a sponsorship package to send out to potential sponsors. It would great to be able to tell them which newspapers, Tv channels, radio stations (if any?) covered the competition. Also to what level (any front page articles, team interviews etc).

Cheers for your help,

Matt
University of Auckland, NZ

[PatClarke]

Not a lot Matt. A journo was present from Motor Racing, the internal stuff written by Barry Oosthuizen will get into some of the mainstream news and industry papers. Yours truly wrote several thousand words and some pix for RaceTech, probably with more to come. Allan Staniforth was a design judge but also writes for Racecar Engineering, so I expect something there. I gave Stanny several dozen pictures.
You have to remember this is not primarily a motorsport event, rather an educational event, and that rates less column inches in Aus.
PDR

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[Frank]

IMO NOT ENOUGH MEDIA COVERAGE

At this event there are plenty of excellent pieces of well-engineered machinery, and some fairly exciting racing.

I'm starting to think that most motor-racing enthusiasts (of any usual persuasion) would find the competition interesting, if the concept and the machinery were explained adequately and correctly.

It's the responsibility of each team to use the media effectively, and to make sure you have someone skilled with media releases / liaison, and searching / saving / documenting media coverage. The people appointed by your university to do such tasks MAY NOT in fact be the best people, and it's not really a job for undergrad engineering students.

If anyone from SAE-A is listening, I have two questions....

1 Are you using a media information company like "Media Monitors "�, to document media coverage of this event?

2 Would you mind answering the original question.. How many media items have covered this event? (During the months of November and December, perhaps being a realistic window.)

Disclaimer:

These opinions are mine,
and are not those held by the University of Queensland Formula SAE Team,
nor those held by the University Of Queensland, Australia. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

Regards

Frank

[gug]

we managed to get 2 (or possibly 3) 30 second bits on the news (7pm editions) in the months leading up to the event. in one of those segements we broke a driveshaft and had a wheel fall off. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif murphy's law i think...

we were also promised a peice in the news one night, and when we sat down and watched it there was nothing on our car but a section the christmas lights in someones front yard. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_mad.gif it was actually rather humiliating...

somedays i think i must be insane. i am so fascianted by these cars and the technology that goes into them. but the moment i try and explain it to so many people they fall asleep! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_confused.gif i dont get why people arent more interested...

anyway, enough bullshit. im going to try and get a few articles in the local free newspapers, in the hope of impressing sponsors with "look at this 2 page spread on our car and its sponsors in the paper", and just hope they dont ask which paper...

- the problem with the world is stupidity. i'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety lables off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

[Big Bird]

Agreeance and disagreeance with some of the above...

We've found the fact that this is an educational event actually works in our favor compared to other forms of motorsport. No-one wants to read about Joe Bloggs racing his home-made hillclimb car up One-tree Hill. But when a group of uni students pull together to build their own racecar, there's a bit of human interest in there to sell to the tabloids etc.

In Victoria, FSAE's had a bit of coverage recently. The Swinburne and Monash lads both got seperate photo articles in the daily Melbourne papers (Herald Sun??), and we did last year in the Cars Guide supplement and this year in the Educational supplement (no photo though - bollocks). I've seen a photo article for the Deakin team in the local Geelong rag. I'm sure the above lads can give you further info on their coverage. We've also managed a two-minute segment on Channel 9's Postcards (with follow-up coming), plus have lined up articles in Yamaha's world-wide magazine and one of the national car mags.

The upshot of all this is that awareness is growing. Last year when I said I was building a racecar at uni people just looked at me strange, but now there's usually a response like, "Oh yeah, I saw that car with the big wings in the Herald Sun a few weeks back - is yours like that?"

My suggestion if I may. Write to the big NZ papers now and start selling your story. Get a team photo of the crew you have already assembled, (if possible with an NZ race driver - Greg Murphy, Paul Radisich???), and another generic photo of some FSAE cars on track. Write an article yourselves about how you are designing a racecar, you are travelling over here in Dec 2004 to take on us ugly Australians, how competing can lead to careers in high-level motorsport, etc. A good tag that has been used many times is the FPR V8 team, and how they recruited heavily from the Wollongong FSAE team (I'm sure Derek and Des would love to see their names in print again!).

Make it a human story, don't just write technical stuff. Get a journo/arts student to help if you can, there's always some around who are interested in motorsport. You guys are in a good position because you can sell the whole "taking on the Aussies" thing. If you get something in print before you have a car, then that gives the ideal opportunity for a follow-on when the car is done, and shows potential sponsors that you can sell yourself (much more effective than just listing other team's articles in a proposal).

Hope you don't mind my longwinded advice, I'm not an expert by any means. But be confident about what you are doing and someone will write about you.

Cheers, and good luck. Can't wait to see you guys here next year.

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Drive it into a tree.

[Frank]

http://www.uq.edu.au/fsae/Frank/Murray_Valley_Standard.pdf

there's an article we found



Hey Big Bird,

quote..
"Oh yeah, I saw that car with the big wings in the Herald Sun a few weeks back - is yours like that?"

hehehe

oh well, it's better than.. "ohh is that the solar car"

had a great time on the beers with you Big Bird, sorry if i was a bit incoherent.

oh yeah sorry for mistaking you for a Monash person..

Gees it was like the end of a world cup rugby match with all that "jersey swapping".

BTW, we forgot to "see the Bunyip".. have you got a photo?

Regards

Frank

[Marc Jaxa-Rozen]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>oh well, it's better than.. "ohh is that the solar car"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Man at least you don't have people asking "Where are the wings?" and "Isn't it a bit heavy to fly?". I'm dead serious.

We're an aeronautical college, you see, so every once in a while some dumbass at a public exhibition attempts such a link between the nature of our school and the very obviously four-wheeled vehicle in front of them. I don't know how they do it.

Marc
École Nationale d'Aérotechnique

[PatClarke]

One thing I will say to you is to play down the Racing Car bit and play up the Educational bit when looking for sponsorship.
During my days as a Sales and Marketing manager, I had at least one proposal cross my desk every week from some hopeful who wanted me to bankroll his racecar addiction. Now I am a fan, yet I just threw them all in the bin, so imagine what happens with someone who has no interest or even dislikes motorsport.
However, a feelgood proposal like Educational purposes is far easier to sell to a marketing manager.
This is why I recommend to all treams that they leave out phrases like "Race Team" from all their documentation.
Good luck out there
Regards
PDR

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[Big Bird]

Mr. Frank,

Re: the solar thing, we often get mixed up with the Aurora solar car that RMIT is involved in too. I actually had some Environmental Engineers hassling me earlier in the year, they wanted our FSAE car for an alternative energy expo at Monash. It took me a good ten minutes to convince them that the car actually ran on petrol. Then they got upset at me. We also get year twelve students looking at our car on Open Day and asking if it is solar. Good grief. These guys will one day run our nation....

Cheers for the beers mate, it was a damn fun night. I owe you one, just need to find an excuse to trek up to Qld. No need to apologize for being incoherent, having read your posts on these forums I was ready for it....

I think we got some photos of the Bunyip. I'll try to track them down for you. To those of you who didn't catch the Murray bridge Bunyip, you've missed out on of the great tourist attractions of all time. Classy stuff, right up with the Giant Koala at Dadswells Bridge. If I can't find the photos, for the price of a beer I can do a pretty good impression of it.

Cheers,

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Write it off two weeks before the event.

[Flash]

Thanks for all your input. Interesting point about the educational angle, might have to look at some alterations to our proposal. Any thoughts on wether we should try to go from both the racing angle, through the motorsport community and publications, playing up the technology (considering there's still a reasonably large formula V field over here), and the educational side in the general business and public? Or do you think this might confuse some people so to speak?

I think the Kiwis taking on the Aussies factor will definitely be our ace, the media over here seem to love that type of thing.

Geoff (and others): Thanks for taking the time to reply, im always keen to at least listen to any advice, no matter how long winded. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Cheers

Matt
UOA, NZ

[Dipper]

Thought I'd add another angle that nobody has mentioned yet.

Don't over look the value of in-kind media sponsorship. Befriend people in the local TV newsroom and at the local newspaper.

Our team was able to get a great deal of local media coverage because we made contacts in the newsrooms. I thought it was crazy at first when my teammate in charge of publicity roped me into a meeting with the local TV station. The idea of asking them for publicity like you would ask a machine shop to help machine some parts was foreign to me, but it was extremely effective in the end. The TV station didn't give us an exclusive story or any money, but they did give us a name in the news room, a contact to call when we had formal events worthy of news coverage. This worked like magic! We called them up the morning of our event, and without fail, they showed up with a camera and a reporter.

With publicity it seems to be much more about who you know rather than what you are doing. So, my advice is to network and develop contacts in the media if you want its support.

Victory is Today!
Justin

[PatClarke]

Hello Justin http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
PDR

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[Big Bird]

"Any thoughts on wether we should try to go from both the racing angle, through the motorsport community and publications, playing up the technology (considering there's still a reasonably large formula V field over here), and the educational side in the general business and public?"

Honestly Matt, I'd still push the educational aspect even to the motorsport community. That way you are making yourself distinct from all the other racer-boys chasing sponsorship. Those in racing circles love to hear about new engineering blood coming into the sport and developing their skills - it's a lot more interesting than hearing from another 16 year old go-kart racer wanting to become famous.

Another idea that worked for us - hold an information night and invite anyone you can think of in the local auto/motorsport industry, or even local businessmen who are interested in racing. Make some presentations about FSAE, show off some neat FEA plots of parts you have designed (great for the wow factor), talk about the plans you already have for the race-car, show some CAD models, discuss a boit of theory (not too much to bore the audience, but enough to make them think "wow, these guys are good"). Most of all get around the room and talk to people. If you look professional enough then the local trade will want to help. Do this a few times through the year so that your friends and supporters feel as though they are "inside circle" within the team. Start now - get the locals talking and thinking about you. this sort of involvement can really pay dividends when you need something done in a hurry / done cheaply.

As for inner circle, don't forget to invite uni staff to all this sort of stuff, especially the workshop staff. You can never overestimate how often you will need workshop help in the build phase of the car. Make them feel part of the process now. There has been a long history of staff vs. students in this comp, as the OH&S issues are horrendous. Listen to the staff, share ideas with them, treat them like your mates and you will find that doors will start opening for you.

Justin, great advice mate. So obvious yet we never thought of trying it.

Cheers,

Geoff Pearson
RMIT FSAE 2003

Design it. Build it. Write it off two weeks before the event.

[Frank]

Quoting Big Bird

"As for inner circle, don't forget to invite uni staff to all this sort of stuff, especially the workshop staff. You can never overestimate how often you will need workshop help in the build phase of the car. Make them feel part of the process now. There has been a long history of staff vs. students in this comp, as the OH&S issues are horrendous. Listen to the staff, share ideas with them, treat them like your mates and you will find that doors will start opening for you."

VERY VERY TRUE, this the most important advice

and never burn bridges with them... even if they are pricks sometimes