Of Sponsorship and Prizes

This thought had actually hit me while I was looking at the colorful electronic billboards in New York.

Colorful electronic billboards scream for your attention at Times Square

Then I forgot about it until two things happened today.

1) We met up with Jon (we call him Jonker). Jonker is studying in Havard University in Boston, while taking a sabbatical from work. He brought us on a tour of Havard and also joined us for lunch. Somewhere in between that, he asked me,"How come you guys don't have any sponsors for yout trip?"

Jonker has no friends in Boston. If you are in Boston, make friends with him!

2) On a semi-related note, I just found out that there's something called the Singapore Blog Awards going on in Singapore. Prizes are alright, but what I would really like is to drive more traffic to our blog; to share our experiences with the many thousands of our compatriots who, for whatever reason, cannot bring themselves to make a similar trip like this. So, win or not, it really seems like a possible platform to get some publicity.

I know billboards (advertising), sponsorship and winning awards are different sets marketing tools, but they just clicked together in my mind, and made me think of what are the possible sponsorships we could really use for this trip.

Here are the top 5:

Hotel/Motel chain(s) across the US and South America - We've been staying in a hodgepodge combination of Econolodges, Super 8s, America's Best Value Inns, Travelodges, as well as the rare Hyatt, Hilton, Doubletree and Best Western. Just make sure you remember the complimentary internet access as well, so that we can blog about our stay!

Car Rentals - So far, we've tried Hertz, Enterprise, Fox, National and Avis. Again, would be nice to be able to stick to just one company. These rentals, combined with the one-way drop off fees are killing us!

Photography - I think most readers have realised that there's a marked difference between the photos Yi Lin takes, and what I take. We have already posted an entry on the gear we are using here. The wife could always use a good telephoto lens and flash unit for her camera in addition to her wide angle and kit lens. I could always upgrade to a DLSR as well. Would-be sponsors should note that there are also plans to go underwater when we hit the Carribean and South America!


Clothes - The wife is usually decked out in Nike, courtesy of Jennifer's never-worn-before-hand-me-downs. I'm usually in Giordano and my trusty Adidas walking shoes. But repeated hand-washing of these clothes mean that they wear out a lot faster than we would like. And frankly, it would be nice to have cold-weather outfits and beachwear too!

Domestic Flights - Have taken United Airlines, Southwest and Jetblue so far. As we move down the East Coast of USA into the islands and South America, we'll probably be flying a bit more.

My response to Jonker's earlier question was that when we first started out doing up this blog, we had totally no idea how well-received it would be. Added to the fact that we are only minor celebrities (upcoming face of Marina Bay, remember?), it was highly unlikely that we could have secured sponsors at that time.

But the time seems right now. We've got a pretty decent blog going. We've also had plenty of experience with all the motels, car rental companies and airlines to make sensible and decent comparisons. I think there's a lot of credibility here now.

So, dear readers, if you know of anyone who might be interested in any forms of sponsorship, please introduce them to our blog. The easiest way to do that is to probably click on the Facebook link below and share it on your profile. Help our trip last!