wolfix said:
I have A Garmin in my truck. The Garmin headquarters is next to the headquarters of the company I work for in Olathe,KS. We have adult cocktails with the GPS geeks on occasion at the local bar, and I have been trying to get a free one for my bike.
Bastards...........As whiteboytrash would say "farking bastards."
I could not live w/o one. I'm sitting in Dalton GA with a few hours to kill and my Garmin located a BBQ place for me............ What a friend she is. I named her Betty.She even talks to me,telling me to turn here,turn there.........
Does it vibrate ?
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Thought this was interesting..... makes you think why Bruyneel couldn't achieve a sponsor ? I mean with his marketing pull why wouldn't a corporate sign up ?
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Spoken like a seasoned marketing executive, Vaughters explained that companies look at the sport in terms of how many impressions the team can get into the various media - news, magazines, television, the Internet - and compare it with how much they would need to spend on traditional advertising to get the same impression on consumers. "Cycling, at its most basic essence, it's an indirect media content buy - it gives X amount of media impressions, and companies look at this as opposed to, say, a Superbowl ad, and weigh the two."
Beer maker Anheuser-Busch spent $26 million for ten 30-second commercials during the 2006 Superbowl to reach 90 million Americans and a billion eyes around the globe. The Tour de France, by comparison, attracts an audience of 2 billion worldwide. While Vaughters couldn't comment on the total value of the Garmin sponsorship, those ten commercials cost about as much money as it takes to fund a ProTour team through the end of 2010. Given those numbers, it's not surprising that companies have come back to the sport so quickly.
Vaughters went on to explain that sponsors aren't as concerned with a team's results as they are with the image that the team projects in association with its name.
"If you win more races, you might get more media exposure, but I don't think there is any direct correlation between winning x,y,z races and getting a sponsor.
"It is important that more people understand that sponsors get involved for positive image and media content, it's not because they want to crush the competition. I don't know that team directors and managers understood that in the past," he mused.
"Riders knew their contract value was based on their wins - and they made a direct correlation. But that's not how the advertising industry works. Now that we have more forward thinking people in the sport who see the complexities, we can give value to the sponsors without a desperate need to win races."
Without the pressure of having to win to keep the team afloat, riders can now focus on the sporting aspect of cycling - and winning is certainly on the agenda for the Garmin-Chipotle team. "Of course we will do everything we can to win races, but there's not a financial connection. We want to win because we're racing, but it's not like we're going to lose our sponsor if we don't. That attitude is fading."
