How do we increase public awareness of crawling and events?

[ROLANDROCKSHOP]

Social media to spread the word.
Everyone's got a smartphone/iphone..most people are on Fb/tw/inst that are in the hobby and new/younger.

Post a pic to instagram and you can link it to twitter and Facebook all in 1 post.


Local offroad events..ORV/OHV parks.
In tandem with the 1:1 events have gotten our club a lot of attention at Superlift Orvpark.

We will be using another 2 orvparks here in ark this year to spread some Rc love around the state.

ORV/OHV parks will more than likely be happy and welcome a Rc event.

Local radio/newspaper spot/coverage.

Local hobbyshop demo's/displays.

It's gonna take work on the locals part as well as the guys outta state and online to spread the word.

If we just keep to ourselves..our death is imminent.

Im truly amazed at how far the Rccrawling scene has come in the few years ive been apart of it..the tech..the mods..the innovations.

From 9lb+ comp rigs to 3lb featherweightrockhugging SOB's!!
Progress!!"thumbsup"

And I really hated that our comp scene died off.

But weve had the scaler scene blow up..so we are gonna run with it in that direction.
Everyone so far seem's to like the G6 style events..as well as the u4rc races.
We are gonna do a small mini scale comp here this weekend to give the new guys a taste of it and see how they like it.


Passionate people will be needed now more than ever.
Bickering and fighting will only separate us.

Let's do work Driver's!!"thumbsup"

 

[pull'n'pony]

^^^^^That looks awesome Shane. That looks like the kind of stuff to draw in new people. It has a lot of different classes of cars and alot of flash for such a small detail. We run our local comp series at an off road park and everybody that drives by has to stop and check it out and they have never seen such a thing. Most of the comps we run 4 courses with 8 to 10 gates. We run sporty and pro on the same course with the regular gates fairly easy with some challenge and sort out the pro's with the bonus gates. We let everyone run what they have and try to teach them what they will want and what is available. It also let's the new guy's run with the pro's on the same course to learn from what they are doing and help build confidence in what they are doing. I think for the entry level keep it simple and let the people decide how deep they want to commit. Some of us want to push the envelope with custom parts and hours of tuning where other people want to just have fun.

 

[The Violator]

Check out what the Jesse "J Walker Designs" and the East Texas Club put on last weekend. Several RCC vendors participated with the event. Held in conjunction with a hobby shop event. Great way to showcase crawlers!

Anyone see the common denominator to all these pics? ALL SCALERS.



At this point the best hope to keep comp crawling alive is to piggy back G6 and other scale events. Maybe some guys whose first taste of a crawler is a Wraith will get interested. Last comp during the G6 I asked the guy I was running with if he was comping in the morning. He told me he had never seen a comp truck. Scale has blown by comp crawling, and so any chance of it to come back we need scale way more than scale needs us. Quite the roll reversal. It used to be the scale part was after there were no slashes left running at the very end of the night. Adapt or die.


I had high hopes for the trial class, allowing all those cars in the pictures to run gates and have a taste. Who cares 1.9, 2.2, run some gates. Oh well.

 

[Fishmaxx]

What I did when I was just a guy with a truck wanting to crawl with guys like me....

I got on a plane to Colorado to see 1st hand what this comp crawling thing was about. My 1st comp was in Colorado driving with Dirk Diggler, Grizzly4x4, Ace, Pinchflat, and Kaetwo.

I took that experience back home. Tried to find guys in Georgia...had to go to Alabama if I wanted to crawl with more than 1x person. CSR from Tennessee, RxCrawler, and killerTxT were there. We formed SERCRC which became the most dominate club in the history of crawling with 4x National champions as members.

I continued to travel around the region and quickly became frustrated with every club running different sets of rules. I told this to Jason and said we needed a unified set of rules. We needed to get all the clubs together to unify the rules. Jason said he didn't have time and worked alot at nights and slept during the day. My schedule at the time permitted me to make calls. Keep in mind this before unlimited plans...and I rang up several phone bills over $300, but eventually we got a set of unified rules.

When Parker decided to have the Axial West Coast Championship.....I said hey that sounds cool I should go to that , and thinking in the back of my mind maybe I can talk someone to get an event on the East Coast. We were still driving TLTs back them, but Axial had AX10 prototypes at the event. No one at Axial that I talked to seemed very interested in southern rednecks and a east coast event, so I created the TCS East Coast Championship.

Also attended 2x National Trade Hobby Trade Shows to learn more about the manufactures, and tell them about crawling. This was before tablets so I carried around a folder with pictures of my crawler showing them to anyone that would look at them.

Some where along the way I saw a TV show on The Outdoor Channel called InsideRC. I got some info off the credits made some calls and badda bing the came to one of our comps.

Crew planning opening Scene

Anna gets a quick driving lesson from Heavy

Taking Heavy's rig for a spin

Getting ready to interview Fishmaxx

Fishmaxx gets his T-Shirt autographed

CSR gets interviewed for being mid-season points leader

I also unsuccessfully tried to submit numerous articles to various magazines WITHOUT success (I later learned they lean heavily towards articles about their advertisers. If its not about one of them some way the odds are stacked against you.)

I did this all BEFORE I had any official title or permission from Jason or Badger. ;-)

The point of all this is not to toot my own horn, but to say the best way to make something happen is not to come up with a list of ideas for someone else to execute. Come up with you own ideas an execute the plan to the best of your abilities. When someone criticizes your plan give it some consideration then move ahead"thumbsup"

Lead by the example of doing.... not by criticizing or suggesting stuff for someone else to do.

I wished I could still travel around like did before the bubble burst $$$. Didn't hurt my wife was a frequent flyer with 1,000,000 Skymiles, but its really not necessary with all the technology we have these day....some of which you guys already touched on.

If you want to promote RC Crawling spend less time here pondering its demise and whos fault it is, and more time telling some new about RC Crawling.

EXAMPLE: Vistaprint will basically give you 500 Business Cards with your screen name and rccrawler.com on them....everytime you take your crawler out have a dozen in your tool bag.

EXAMPLE: Post cool pictures and videos of crawlers on your Facebook.



LAST BUT NOT LEAST HAVE FUN!


Starting this year its be my goal to make events fun for me personally....because when it stops....so do I!

 

[JeremyH]

A little bit of devil's advocate here....

Anyone see the common denominator to all these pics? ALL SCALERS.

Not every place in this country has as easy access to as awesome comp spots as Arizona does. Northeast and Southeast Texas are among that list. There are very few comp crawlers in the ETX club because they have very few places to run them."thumbsup"

 

[JeremyH]

If you want to promote RC Crawling spend less time here pondering its demise and whos fault it is, and more time telling some new about RC Crawling.

EXAMPLE: Vistaprint will basically give you 500 Business Cards with your screen name and rccrawler.com on them....everytime you take your crawler out have a dozen in your tool bag.

EXAMPLE: Post cool pictures and videos of crawlers on your Facebook.

Agreed.

I also like to send PMs to users that I see who list their location in my area, but that I havent met or seen at local comps. I make sure to invite them to the next GTG.

 

[C*H*U*D]

Don't forget the free advertising...newspaper articles. A few summers ago, Colorado had some pretty nasty fires. The CrawlSpace donated all entry fees for the weekly comps to the Red Cross. A local paper found out, showed up to do some interviews and take pictures, and boom...instant exposure to thousands who had never heard of crawling before. It also helps to have a sexy driver in the pictures "thumbsup"

If you are doing something helpful for the community, let the local papers know.

I like the business card idea too. I always have people coming by to check out what I'm doing. I'm going to start handing out cards directing people here.

I also pledge to make at least one crawling related tweet per day. More free exposure. Maybe I can get my follower count up :mrgreen:

 

[Erik D_lux]

Looks like there was much more interest when all the cars looked like supers! :shock:

 

[Fishmaxx]

Looks like there was much more interest when all the cars looked like supers! :shock:

I would have to check the date, but I don't think 2.2 crawlers existed yet. :shock:





EDIT: Found a picture that proves other wise, Supers were still king then and that why the filmed them for the show.

 

[The Violator]

Looks like there was much more interest when all the cars looked like supers! :shock:

I think the key might even be closer to when they looked like cars. Not jumping on the bodiless killed crawling bandwagon.

 

[ROWDY RACING]

I think the key might even be closer to when they looked like cars.

That was the thought behind no bodiless in 2.2s, and the creation of trail class.

 

[wings_of_fire]

Anyone see the common denominator to all these pics? ALL SCALERS.

nailed it "thumbsup"

people appreciate fun.

 

[Whiplashdjs]

Get kids with school? Rc Science projects!

 

[Duuuuuuuude]

Don't forget about stopping by 1:1 offroad and motorcycle shops. Print some flyers with your club info, local hobby shop info, dates and times of gatherings, some cool pics of local rigs, etc etc. If they drive the real thing there is a damn good chance they'd like to drive a mini version as well, or at least come to check it out.

 

[C*H*U*D]

That was the thought behind no bodiless in 2.2s, and the creation of trail class.

What really got me fired up when I first saw RC Crawlers was the roll bars and cages. Honestly, I think the more functional lexan bodies are hideous, and look more like spaceships than anything you would see driving around in real life.

 

[JeremyH]

What really got me fired up when I first saw RC Crawlers was the roll bars and cages. Honestly, I think the more functional lexan bodies are hideous, and look more like spaceships than anything you would see driving around in real life.

I once saw one of these on the trail on 38" swampers:

 

[C*H*U*D]

I'd like to see that in 2.2s "thumbsup"

 

[Ohioskills]

I was recently at Summit Drag strip and they had a lil setup there and I had no idea till there was about a hundred people around it and asked the guy who put it together you ever heard of rccrawler.com and he said no so maybe do a lil more around 1:1 events

also loved the big dudes all tattooed up carrying lil monkey bags with a bunch of kids lol

 

[RcBro]

300 drivers at axial fest.....


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[Fishmaxx]

300 drivers at axial fest.....


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Not slamming Axial, but an executive at their company said they dropped the USRCCA qualifier known as the Axial West Coast Championship in favor of Axial Fest to focus attention on their product, so I doubt they want anything at their event that takes away that attention since they discontinued the XR10.