ski123, I think your point is probably valid, although I don't know for sure what work has been done on the promotion end of NAE.
I'll admit the contrast appears to be rather stark.
Have you been to the Bloodhound SSC website? Directly below the picture of the car there is a countdown clock sponsored by Rolex. Click on that link and you can find a dealer who will sell you a watch that costs more than the amount that the NAE team is trying to scrape up to test at Edwards.
But when you click on the sponsor's links on the NAE site, it looks like a bunch of business cards cut and pasted into a program for a community theater production of "Our Town". Same goes for the Aussie Invader site.
While I know that the NAE team is fighting for every penny they can get their hands on, with respect to media coverage, I don’t think it’s all just money. I suspect a lot of it is cultural and historical.
Great Britain has always been keen on international records. Of the six 200 MPH Club members who established their records before WWII, five were British. The 1950's saw MG and Austin Healey using Bonneville as their summer vacation destination and if you go through the FIA records, you'll see a lot of endurance records from the BMC teams still standing.
The BBC covering this rivalry between the Aussies and the Brits is just continuing a pattern of practice that goes back to the first playing of “The Ashes”.
The American approach to LSR has more often been more individualistic, and expanding on the ethic/myth of the do-it-yourselfer with promotional skills. Andy Granatelli and Mickey Thompson come to mind, and it would certainly be nice if the NAE team had the self-promotion talents of either of these two men. But with Granatelli and Thompson, their racing efforts were integral to their business efforts, whereas NAE doesn’t sell oil additives or poorly designed headers.
From a press standpoint, the NAE team is behind the curve. We’ve all read the articles in “Hot Rod”, but that’s preaching to the converted. I want to see an article in “People”, or a report on the “NBC Evening News”.
So perhaps a good PR firm could make a difference. They would be calling the news outlets, the feature writers, faxing off the press releases, arranging the meet-and-greats at Pep Boys, pestering the 60 Minutes team, working the RC Cola limited edition cans deal. They would also be chatting up the sponsors they already have about cooperative efforts to help promote the sponsor’s products with high profile NAE related events, where the sponsor’s vendors and customers could also take a look. It can be done.
And it is an unending effort.
The big advantage that the NAE team has is that the car has actually turned a wheel on the ground, and that needs to be capitalized upon before it’s eclipsed by images of the Bloodhound being packed into a cargo bay on its way to wherever.
An apt phrase I picked up from Dr. Goggles was, "Punching above their weight". I'm pretty certain he was talking about another English speaking country where folks drive on the left hand side of the road, but the phrase rings true. And in what needs to be drawn as an international challenge, the NAE team needs to stand up and declare itself the greatest – a bit more Cassius Clay, a little less Henry Cooper.