It's All a Matter of Perspective

This is the weekend of the Daytona 500 and long time friends and clients will remember that in 2005, JCM was one of the sponsors on the 27 car of Kirk Shelmerdine in the Daytona 500.

For those that don't know the story, here it is:

We bid on the sponsorship on eBay after hearing about the promotion on the radio. We were not the high bidder but Kirk was willing to let everyone pay what they had bid to be on the car (there were four of us).

Shelmerdine's claim to fame was that he was Dale Earnhardt's crew chief and he was from the Dover, Delaware area.

We got a lot of mileage (no pun intended) from our sponsorship and many of our clients followed the Speed Week festivities closely to see how we did.

In one of the televised pre-race practices, Kirk's motor blew up and the cameras followed him around the track as his car billowed smoke. After the commercial break, they interviewed Kirk in the garage area with the car and our logo behind him.

In the televised qualifying race, as Kirk raced for the remaining transfer spot, he crashed on the backstretch with another driver eliminating his chance to race in the 500. The TV cameras focused on his car (and our logo) as he spun across the track and came to rest in the infield.

Our clients called and e-mailed, wanting to know the inside story and talked about it for months. Every once in a while someone still mentions it.

The Newark Post got the headline all wrong (see above), we got TV time for our logo, buzz with our clients and it was a fun thing to talk about with employees, vendors and friends. Yeah, it would have been great to have see Kirk actually race in 500 but that would have just been the icing on the cake.

Kirk tried again this year and just missed qualifying for the Daytona 500 but you have to admire his perseverance....GO KIRK......2011 will be your year!