JowettTalk

Robin Fairservice wrote:Why don't more people know about Jowetts? How often do you see a mention of them in the magazines that deal with Classic Cars? MG's Jaguar's, Aston's etc on and on ad nauseum. I stopped subscribing to "Thorough Bred & Classic Cars" because of the constant repitition of a few makes. I doubt that the publishers of Hemmings over here have ever heard of the make. Will the Jowett Centennial Rally feature any where?

Has the Executive ever sat down with magazine publishers to find out how to get more articles in their magazines? Did Keith ever get a mention of his Javelin taxiing peole like Moss and Brabham at the Goodwood Reviva?. Any chance of an article about the Moss family Javelin? Noel thinks that advertising concerning Jowetts is needed to get articles published; but by who? Should the club retain a PR flack?

How will the youger people ever hear and learn about Jowett's if they don't ever read about them?

That's a tremendously good point, Robin. People won't get interested in Jowetts if they aren't aware of them (I'm forever asked by friends what my car is and having to explain...). One way of making people aware / more familiar with them is through the press.

I don't know whether the Centenary rally has featured in the motoring press over here; I didn't see the article that Jack did, but I remember him telling me about it and it was obviously a really good feature. The magazines such as Practical Classics seem to cover multiple club events on a monthly basis, I'm sure they would make a column inch or two available for our national rally.

I have got a couple of articles in the (very) local press on the back of the Classic Car of the Year competition - I simply wrote a press release and sent it off to the papers concerned, together with a selection of high-res images. The resulting articles are very close to the text that I originally sent them - in both cases I had a conversation with the journalist who 'wrote' the story and they got a few extra details so they could tweak, etc, but essentially I did all of the work for them:

http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/8 ... mpetition/

and

http://www.hemeltoday.co.uk/news/busine ... _1_1001921

What I didn't get was links to the JCC or the website in there - but then I did do it as publicity for the competition and to get votes - but the point is, it was remarkably simple to get the story published. I accept that this was on a very local level, with a local interest angle but I fully intend following it up if we get through to the next round, and will be making sure we get the Club and the website mentioned in those articles. I do hope that these stories may have prompted a couple of curious people to pop "Jowett" into Google though.

Another forum I've recently been visiting is that of Practical Classics magazine. It seems that most of the guys who write for the magazine also frequent the forum; they're keeping an eye out for - and openly inviting - interesting cars / stories for the magazine and I suspect other publications do similar. They have a readers' restoration bit every month - the website is asking people to submit their stories (if I wasn't already in their competition I would have done!). As far as I know they're not after any reciprocal advertising, it's just an easy way of them getting stories, but also making sure that their readership has buy-in to the magazine (my interpretation, not what they say!).

Jack's right - this shouldn't be left to any individual member to do, but maybe there is scope for a strategy and coordination role; someone who has oversight of what publications there are, what their market/target audience is, narrowed down to a managable number that the Club would be interested in featuring in (say a dozen or two) what sort of features they run, and a record of when a Jowett owner (note, an owner in their own right as a private individual rather than the Club) last approached, or was featured in, each of these publications. The Club could then coordinate approaches with articles - written by the owners so that the work is spread amongst the Club. Why not recycle some of the Jowetteer articles?? Plenty of those would no doubt be of great interest to a wider audience!

Harking back to our conversations on this forum not so long ago regarding events that we seem to have been absent from in our Centenary year, perhaps a similar strategy / coordination role could be usefully established for events - not just national events such as the Silverstone and Goodwood happenings, but the major/larger scale local events.

Yes we are a small club with limited resources, but we are also a very friendly, enthusiastic club with wonderful cars which we are rightly proud of. Let's ourselves emulate the "little engine with the big pull".

Amy.

There are only about three Javelins on the road in all oCcanada, and a couple of Jupiters in BC. I was phoned fromToronto and interviewed about my Javelin because I have a small web site with some pictures of my Javelin on it. Here is a link to the article that was written:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-dr ... le1496432/

Robin Fairservice wrote:There are only about three Javelins on the road in all oCcanada, and a couple of Jupiters in BC. I was phoned fromToronto and interviewed about my Javelin because I have a small web site with some pictures of my Javelin on it. Here is a link to the article that was written:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-dr ... le1496432/

That's a really lovely article - great pictures of your Javelin as well. I'm starting to think you're something of a one-man publicity force in Canada!

Robin Fairservice wrote:I am glad to hear of the activity this year in contacting,and getting stories, into the media. I can say I did my bit by writing an article for the B.C. Vintage Racing Car newsletter about sporting Jowetts. Here is the link to this newsletter, "Vantage":

http://www.vrcbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/ ... -20101.pdf

You have well and truly done your bit! This is exactly what we need to do, and when I say "we" - all of us! We can all take this as a good example of a member doing something off their own bat, and making it happen. The photos are good, loads of info, and the kind of article that non-Jowetteers need to see to get to know our cars a bit better.

As they say, any publicity is good publicity. We should all do whatever we can to get noticed. A photo in a magazine (even if it is the Rust In Peace section in Practical Classics, we've got plenty of pics of Jowetts in fields before restoration, we might just get a new member offering to help us save another car!) an article in the local paper, invite a journalist to a social event or section meeting - we could even buy them a pint - it all helps.

Jack.

Well I didn't expect to start such a major discussion! There are obviously various issues brewing under the surface - new forum member treads on thin ice?

To go back to the beginning (almost) and pick up Amy's point, which I fully support. The web is the first entry to anything these days and most younger people will go there first. I also agree with whoever said we may not have all the necessary web expertise (or was it time to do it) in the club - but I would have thought we could buy it in, given that we could expect the website to serve several purposes in the future. I used to do websites at one time but the technology has long since left me behind, however once the framework was there could we not justify the cost for legacy, publicity and technical backup databases?

I appreciate the post from forumadmin and can see more than a few frustrations in trying to keep this all together, but there are obviously people willing to post stuff, given the number of responses on these discussion groups. I just think (as a new boy) that it needs structuring to make it easier for people to contribute without causing hassle for the webmaster, and we need to make it more exciting?

Personally I think selecting a Jowett advert (see other thread) would make a rather good home page...
Flashlight acceleration from 0-60 in 24.3 seconds...

Cheers
Geoff