Toyota Disqualified Me
A few days ago I visited Toyota's "Sponsify" contest site out of curiosity. I had seen a quick clip go by when I was casually (and distractedly) watching the Daytona 500 race.
I'm neither a huge Toyota fan nor a fan of any of their NASCAR drivers. But, I thought it might be interesting to pay the site a visit, design a car, and submit it to their contest. After all, they were offering the opportunity for the design to show up on an actual car at the 2010 All Star Race, a shotgun ride, a five night stay surrounding the event, racing apparel and more. Why not try? My design was disqualified, however. Apparently, my design includes "potentially copyrighted or trademarked material." Well, duh. It is MY copyrighted material. I designed my car around my Audio Gumshoe podcast theme. I chose Michael Waltrip in the number 55 Toyota. I figured, "what a great way to get the word out about my independent music podcast." Result: REJECTION. They don't like that I used my own images, I guess. But they do offer the opportunity to upload them. It's okay, I would have had to do a huge rally for votes if the design had been accepted and made it into the final 10. I hate begging for votes. I never did that with Podcast Alley or any of the other services that recommended that I solicit popularity votes for my show. I can't see that I would go very far doing it for the contest. Thanks, Toyota. It was fun playing in the site, but I'll pass on the contest. Now, I'm off to root for Mark Martin in his Number 5 GoDaddy.com Chevy (Oh, Mark, why'd you have to stop driving a Ford?). The car image in this post is the design that I submitted. I thought it made for a fairly cool looking car sans all the co-sponsor stickers that would typically adorn the side panels.
