Alan Bartlett WINS Classic Car of the Year

[Jack]

no Tony, not MI5, just the Jowett Mafia!

george

Shhhhhhhhhhh! If they hear us talking about them, we will find a broken crankshaft in our beds...

[Jack]

Alan, just so you can see what works - here is one of your competitors on a totally unrelated site drumming up 20 votes: http://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.php?2 ... for-my-car!

We just need to be better than the competition at this type of activity. Luckily we have a club with several hundred members who are easily enthused

Also worth printing a QR code of the voting link and making it visible asking people to vote for you so that anyone you meet out and about at events in September are easily directed to the site - they can vote from a phone or other device as long as they can connect to the web and have an address.

Jack.

[Jack]

Alan,

Have you tried contacting your local paper? http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/8 ... id=8771420

A story like this in front of a few thousand local people might just generate another few votes for you, a young man from Somerset up against millionaire owners from the rest of the country isn't a bad angle. Most of the local papers would be grateful if you can write a similar story and if you hand it to them with high res images, they'll print it. Ask them to include a link to the competition website as a condition of copyright on the images. Note that our local paper ran this when we got into the top 60, you've got into the top 20 cars in the country!

They might send out a photographer and someone to talk to you about the car, but if you can provide them with the details of the car, a bit of background and a few photos it will probably get into the paper sooner.

Jack.

[Chris Spencer]

At the last execuitve committee meeting I proposed that 'Jack Moon' was elected to a new committee post as the clubs 'Marketing Officer' and was questioned at length as to why the club required such a post - Jack's enthusiam and contining drive / bag of fresh ideas in just this matter of doing everthing to ensure that Alan's car is shortlisted to the NEC - is worthy of the position alone! However, Jack has also brokered many other fresh ideas & inspired others - the position currently is an ad-hoc / unoffical post to see where it went - I would request that you all get behind the idea of the club having a marketing officer on a perminant basis when I propose it at this years AGM.

[AlanBartlett]

Marketing officer, i think thats understatement, he does seem to have quite a lot of enthusim for this sort of thing, along with lots of ideas. I'm waiting for his politcal campaign for pm.

Yes Jack I have a friend who contacted the county paper and am awaiting contact from a reporter. I will also soon get in touch with the town paper, and see if they would be interest in running the story. Though being in lime light really isn't my thing, its all about the car!

[Jack]

Though being in lime light really isn't my thing, its all about the car!

Alan, this is very modest, after all your hard work, but worth remembering that the paper (and the readers) will be interested in the human side of the story, your great-grandfather handing the car down to your dad, and then on to you, make sure you tell them how much work you've been doing in that little garage of yours! Don't be afraid to put on your extrovert hat when discussing the car and the competition - remember they will probably make a lot of notes and choose only some of what you tell them to publish.

There will, of course, be many people who are very interested in the engineering aspect of the car, when they were built, how many were made, its slightly odd engine design, so worth having all of these printed out to give to any journalists at meetings - if they've got it all written down they should avoid any technical errors (I remember a few years ago turning up to see a sign with Amy's car listed as 1948cc and thinking how much fun that would be!) and make sure you have got the link for voting for the car very clearly written down for them.

Jack.

[Jack]

I would request that you all get behind the idea of the club having a marketing officer on a perminant basis when I propose it at this years AGM.

Chris, the odd thing is that I consider it to be just a part of what we should all be doing (and quite a few of us are) to contribute. I can't help much on a detailed technical discussion on a Bradford, but I can contribute to making a lot of noise in order to get ourselves where we deserve to be in the eyes of the media, and give Noel some quality raw material for his role as publicity officer. As a result I don't know if the club needs an official position - my idle thinking while driving around the M25 was that if we make something an official position, everybody else assumes that it is the job of that person and that they don't need to do it too. What I'd like to see is everyone doing this stuff and supporting someone like Alan who has gone out of his way to promote the club, the cars, and himself - in this thread exactly that has happened, which is brilliant.

[george garside]

I eree entirely with what Jack has said and in particular that there is an 'official' bod to do something it will be presumed by any that THEY don't have to do anything & we become a aclub with 'officials' and 'consumers' of club services. This assumtion can even apply to things like the Jowetteer ( of which I was one time editor) . I never failed to amaze me just how few members sent in contributions ( thankfully the same few contributed fairly regularly) and little has changed in that respect. Thankfully we do have a solid core of do'ers that do not hold 'official' offices but there is always room for more.

george

[Chris Spencer]

Jack - I can appreciate your thinking - but for me I just think it's a demonstration of how proffesional the club is perceived outside of the membership when you can direct the oddball enquirey that's neither technical / publicity - but has the potental to raise the profile / further club - to a nominated officer.

I don't think it stops any of us acting in the best interests of the club - for example if I see a opportunity to gain a new member - I would act on that and do everything I could to convert that membership - not just advise the individual to contact the membership officer because it's the membership officers job . We all continue to realise opportunity and act on our own / joint / small collectives in order to better the club. It's entirley your decision at the end of the day - either way I am going to keep throwing the ideas at you.

[Keith Clements]

Ask not what the club can do for you, but what you can do for the club.

[Jack]

An e-mail has now gone out with the e-mail copy of the September Jowetteer to various members of the Exec, including section representatives. Hopefully they will corrale their local members into action and get them voting - I have already had several very positive responses to this online endeavour, so we are giving ourselves the best possible chance.

Alan, if there is anything you need from us regarding the logistics, assistance with any aspect of the publicity or generating more votes please let us know - some of this is just legwork if we can get all of our friends to support us, but also in chasing up all those people who said they would vote to make sure they went and did it.

Do not forget that you have achieved a great thing already in getting shortlisted in the top 20 cars in a competition with hundreds of entries, so make sure everyone gets to hear about that too!

Jack.

[Alf Heseltine]

Hi Alan, you got my vote & well done. Getting you support from the N/East.

Alf.

[AlanBartlett]

Thank you for the continued support.

Ive been getting a few more votes via facebook, and forums along with a few positive responses from out and about in the car and meeting people at car meets.

Any other ideas on what I could be doing Jack?

[Jack]

Any other ideas on what I could be doing Jack?

At this point I think we need to consider the possibility of stealing your clothes and renting you out for hen parties to get more votes There can't be many more people outside the club that we haven't targeted!

If we do all of the above, contact everyone through every forum and social media site we can imagine, then I think we can safely say we've given ourselves every chance. If this doesn't get us to the NEC then there must be a lot of people doing an incredibly good job of promoting their cars in the competition.

Once we have done all of these things, we have to go back to the beginning and go over every website, club, forum, and group of friends and family that might not have heard about it the first time round, or managed to forget to do it when they said they would. This is also (as we discovered a few years ago) a great opportunity to ring through all those mates you've not spoken to for a few years, the more distant relatives in the family, and get back in touch with those clubs you've left over the years as life moves on and let them know what you are up to.

The e-mail to the Exec has received a few very positive responses sharing the good news, so it sounds like our leadership team is right behind you too.

Jack.

[Keith Clements]

Hey guys has someone bought me an Aston and entered it without me knowing......Have a look, one of the shortlisted is me!