Four in the morning and my week starts now! Got to prepare a short presentation to all the Echo staff to announce we are doing this and explain why a design company is spending some of it's profits to help a guy up in Scotland race an underpowered Austrian motorbike in a race series no one has heard of. Also I've got to recruit a volunteer team of designers and I need an account manager. They're going to have to work on all this around their current workload. - which is considerable. We have to take our new identity and design it into Vikings bike, then we have to artwork everything and the deadline is end of play today! Big day.

Realistically this is the first go and it won't be how we really want it. It's a trial. A learning curve.

But I woke up this morning realising that everyone has a different reason for doing this and that the success criteria for Vikings racing debut means other things to other parties.

Viking
He wants to race and win. He's driven and focussed. Everything is about this, sponsorship is a means to an end.

Superduke.net
All you guys want to see Viking do well and maybe hope that he can take a superduke onto the podium. Also I hope that you can all enjoy being part of supporting one of our own and feel part of it if there's anything you could personally offer to contribute when you can.

Me personally
Both the above

Echo
And this is the reason for the post.....
Echo's prime success criteria for doing this is to raise our company profile. That's why we are doing it. There's a belief that the cash it will cost will equate to a good return for PR opportunities. We also see that it's beneficial for our own company morale and certainly it gives us a chance to apply our design and branding skills to things we've never done before so it's a good exercise to undertake.

But remember guys, I'm answerable to the Echo board and this prime reason for why we're doing this. That's how I got the money and that's what it's for.

So as time goes by, and decisions are made about how things look or what gets put on the bike, please think about this part of sponsorship. We 're not here to promote Superduke.net. We're not here to get more orange on the bike, (there won't be any, I garuantee it) and we might do things that are completely divorced from conventional biking convention when it comes to images and logos. Remember we're a branding company. My designers will see the panels on this bike as just real estate to have fun on. They don't have any preconceived ideas about how you should use this space, and I'm certainly not going to limit their creativity

All the good luck with it today!

Yup. Good luck today.

I'm in business and understand what it is all about. That's why I've never taken money from anybody.

But given that you are all on the same page it should be a win-win.

Good luck again.