When a sponsorship proposal goes too far...

So some of you might have seen the Sponsorship page we had on the corvette webste, I figured we would use it as a way to promote some of the sponsors we currently have, as well as look for future sponsor partnerships. Partnerships, that’s a keyword for the story below…

Yesterday evening I was sitting out in front of an office building waiting for a DotNetNuke User’s Group meeting to start, apparently I had sent out conflicting times in the meeting notice, so some people thought it was at 6 (as I did) and others thought it was at 6:30. Anyways, while sitting outside of the office building I decided to check my email on my phone, so off to www.gmail.com I went.

The first thing I see is an email from this website, someone had submitted the form on our Sponsorship page. Always a good sign when someone fills out a form talking about sponsorship information. Well, you would think at least.

Here’s a copy of the email I received, unedited.

"I ran across your little website today on lunch. I think your little red corvette is so cute! I understand that you are looking for some sponsors. As a St. Louis native you may already be familiar with our fun new social networking site, Out In St. Louis. A lot of our members are interested in cars and motorcycles, so we are looking for a spokesperson that is active in St. Louis to help us spread the word about our site. We would be interested in putting decals on your car and getting banner ads on your website. My budget for something like this would be only about $5,000. Maybe $10,000 if you rub me the right way. I hope that would be enough to help. Check out our website at outinstlouis.com and send me an email if you would like to get involved.
Ciao, Daniil”

To be honest, I see money and my head starts spinning with ideas. Though a few things struck me as odd before I noticed the $$$. "I think your little red corvette is so cute!", alright, this must be a chick, so I guess "cute" isn't so bad. The name of the Web site "Out in St. Louis", interesting, I guess they're trying to promote the nightlife.... The next thing, "Maybe $10,000 if you rub me the right way", ding ding ding, wtf is that all about? Some girl being friendly? The next thing, the domain of the website, "outinstlouis.com" I made a comment to my good buddy Ian who was standing there with me, "wouldn't it be funny if...." Then I click on the link on my phone.

On a small Samsung Blackjack you don’t see much of the site, so I scroll down, and down, and down, till I finally see a headline that confirms my suspicions, “Local Gay Headlines”. Interesting, here are the thoughts that ran through my head.

Alright, so a gay website wants to sponsor me and my racing, I think I can live with that.
Well, I can live with that if they don’t expect me to run decals on my car on the street.
I’d run just about anyone’s decals on the car for races, assuming the price was right

I then send Nick a txt message, filling him in on the latest sponsorship news. He responds with “Oh my, should we feel honored? Maybe they saw a picture of me with my shirt off” Sorry Nick, prolly didn’t want me to post that, but too late, I just did :)

I head to my meeting with thoughts racing through my head of how I could use $10k to make the car faster!. I leave the meeting to head home and pick up Natalie so we can go purchase her a new vehicle (so we can park the pickup and leave it for only towing use). I tell her about the email, she’s somewhat shocked that I was actually considering the whole thing. Then when I told her the “funny” parts of the email she states that someone is hitting on me! I told her who cares, I’m married, I’m not gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that) so why should it bother me?

After leaving the dealer with Natalie’s new ride we head home, me still with thoughts racing in my head of what Nick and I can do with a $10k racing budget. I get home and compose a reply to the email I received. I try to put together a reply that doesn’t leave me wide open, but definitely conveys that I am open to different options for sponsorship. Here’s the content of that message.

Daniil, Thanks for the email. I'm interested in seeing what kind of arrangement we might be able to work out. I'll try to put together an email for you tomorrow with some ideas and see what you think.
Chris

I immediately get an undeliverable message, so... I guess I should taken that as a sign right there, but me, being the gullable guy I am goes to the website and fills out a "contact marketing" form, I paste the content of my email, along with the original email, hey maybe Daniil just typed in the wrong email address.

So this morning comes around, I get up and see if I have any email responses on Gmail, no dice. I head to work, when I get to work I tell nearly everyone about the email I got last night. I think it’s funny, that a gay website would propose sponsorship for me, but hey, like I said $10k for a racing budget is $10k for a racing budget. Everyone thinks it’s funny, though only one person, my boss, mentions “what if it is just a friend f’ng with you”.

That sets off a trigger in my head, it must be Eric from here at work. He helped work on the 240Z, he would totally put an email like that together. So off to the server I go, I start digging around in the server logs to see who it might be. I had a conference call with Chad Hobson this morning www.chadhobson.com, I had already told him about the email, and I start thinking, it might be him doing this as well.

After the conference call I hop back online and send James Elterman a quick IM, he’s online, he’s got a lot of sponsorship stuff for his car www.shimmysideways.com, he might get a kick out of the email. Little did I know.

He plays it off, amazed at the proposal, just about that time though I manage to track down the IP address of who submitted the form. A quick little search in www.arin.net/whois tells me who owns that IP address. Funny little coincedence, I know someone that works for the IP address of the submission. An even funnier coincedence, I’m talking to that very person on IM…

So I send James another message, “Funny, it looks like someone from your employer here was on my sponsorship page last night” James replies with “Funny, hey I gotta go. Caio, I mean, uh, bye”

So… I’ve been had! James Elterman, that nice guy everyone knows, is not the nice guy we all thought we knew! He’s a trickster, someone who will play with your inner emotions!

Well played James, you totally had me, definitely got some good laughs, from me, at me, for me… But you are now warned…

As for sponsorship for the Corvette Z06, I guess I will have to keep looking for more opportunities. So far I do have two sponsors, www.solotime.com and www.ultrashieldstl.com have both been great supporters of the project.