Thoughts on Sponsorship
The soft drink, Vimto being consumed in West Africa!
Vimto, a fruit drink manufactured in the United Kingdom, not so easy to find in the highstreet stores these days. The big boys with their aggressive marketing and endless budgets make life difficult for the lesser known. Nothing new there, in all walks of life. But going back to Vimto, it's still a popular drink in Africa.
In 1983, adventure cyclist Nick Sanders cycled from Cairo to the source of White Nile in the hills above Lake Tanganyika wearing a jersey with a VIMTO banner on it.
He planned his journey. He would go, with or without financial backing but in his research, he identified an opportunity to provide Vimto with a cheap form of advertising. He knew that Vimto was a very popular drink there. He took the advertising direct to the people.
This is how I have started and how I wish to continue with getting some sponsorship on this here blog.
I go places, write my story and hope some one will give me a small payment or a few free nights accommodation in return for a bit of promo. 'Some-one' is a restaurant, cafe or guest house relevant to my story. My area just now is Karakol. I would like businesses in Karakol to sponsor me. There's probably a term for this, let me know if you know it.
I will write my story even if no one will sponsor me.
I'll give you an example of how I don't wanna do things.
Last year at the hostel here in Karakol where I work, a Spanish couple had contacted my boss and had asked for 3 free nights in exchange for some promo. They boasted that they had 21k followers on FB and this that and the other. My boss accepted. He was naive.
They went to a few places around here, Jeti-Ögüz being one of them and they duly took some photos, wrote a story, half heartedly mentioning the hostel that gave them free accomodation for three nights.
There modus operandi is to find someone to pay for their vacation in return for an all too brief a mention on their website and FB page.
They go only where they can get stuff for free. They are twats who travel and want everything for free without giving little or nothing back in return.
Bull shitting your way for a free night or 3 on the basis that you have 21k followers on some social media network is ~not~ how I want to operate.
What people fail to understand is that out of these 21k followers, 20,900 are people who never travel, have never even held a freaking passport.
As my dear friend Annabel pointed out, it's sad when a blog is deamed good or bad, based purely on the number of SM followers you have.
Going back to the Vimto story. Nick Sanders did that journey in 1983. The photo at the top of this page is from 2013. That's 30 years later and the brand Vimto is still in my mind. Had Nick been sponsored by his local pub, back in Glossop, the one and only time I have been to Glossop in 1990, I would have no doubt been sitting in that pub with a plate of Ale Pie and chips, washed down with a pint of bitter and not chinking Vimto bottles with my friend Susie outside a small store in Banjul, Gambia.
The very act of eating a plate of pie and chips could have changed my furture forever. Had I stayed an extra night in Glossop, to give time to digest such an awesome meal, I may have changed my route as I walked through England and Scotland and never visited a certain hotel and never met Nicki who is the one who introduced me to backpacking which resulted in my first trip to Australia.
But then had I not met Nicki I may have ended up doing my travelling on a bicycle, following the tyre tracks of my hero, Nick Sanders from London to Timbuktu, via that small store selling Vimto in Banjul.
Going back to the Vimto story. Nick Sanders did that journey in 1983. The photo at the top of this page is from 2013. That's 30 years later and the brand Vimto is still in my mind. Had Nick been sponsored by his local pub, back in Glossop, the one and only time I have been to Glossop in 1990, I would have no doubt been sitting in that pub with a plate of Ale Pie and chips, washed down with a pint of bitter and not chinking Vimto bottles with my friend Susie outside a small store in Banjul, Gambia.
The very act of eating a plate of pie and chips could have changed my furture forever. Had I stayed an extra night in Glossop, to give time to digest such an awesome meal, I may have changed my route as I walked through England and Scotland and never visited a certain hotel and never met Nicki who is the one who introduced me to backpacking which resulted in my first trip to Australia.
But then had I not met Nicki I may have ended up doing my travelling on a bicycle, following the tyre tracks of my hero, Nick Sanders from London to Timbuktu, via that small store selling Vimto in Banjul.
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