Chasing with Sponsors 2014

[John J. Holt]

Curious how many Chasers are using Sponsors on their chase vehicles. With the event of possible legislative moves towards chasers and chasing how many of you will be adding more sponsorship or media decals to your vehicle and how many will choose to go with clandestine chase vehicles to avoid attention?

 

[Marcus Diaz]

I honestly don't give any effs about what attention I might attract. I have a brand new car that I may look into getting a dome cam for since my car has A/V jacks built in. As for sponsors...I know no one wants to sponsor my sorry ass. Chasing has been and probably forever be nothing but a black hole in my bank account. Anyone that says I can't chase cause I'm not experienced or professional enough can kiss the fattest part of my ass as I drive into the bear's cage.

 

[Will Campbell]

I honestly don't give any effs about what attention I might attract. I have a brand new car that I may look into getting a dome cam for since my car has A/V jacks built in. As for sponsors...I know no one wants to sponsor my sorry ass. Chasing has been and probably forever be nothing but a black hole in my bank account. Anyone that says I can't chase cause I'm not experienced or professional enough can kiss the fattest part of my ass as I drive into the bear's cage.

I approve of this this.

We used to promote live stream with decals/magnets on the vehicles, but in the last couple of years we have gone without to avoid any unwanted attention. A lot of locals storm the vehicle asking about the weather, which is fine to an extent. We decided to completely remove them after we had a chain of about 3-5 "chaser chasers" following us April 14 last year and conducting in general ass-hattery shenanigans on the roadways. Now just need to find a way to make the hail guard look like a luggage rack...

 

[Casey Osburn]

I honestly don't give any effs about what attention I might attract. I have a brand new car that I may look into getting a dome cam for since my car has A/V jacks built in. As for sponsors...I know no one wants to sponsor my sorry ass. Chasing has been and probably forever be nothing but a black hole in my bank account. Anyone that says I can't chase cause I'm not experienced or professional enough can kiss the fattest part of my ass as I drive into the bear's cage.

I strongly approve! Couldn't have said it better myself.

The day a law is passed making it illegal to drive into a storm is the day we need to start a revolution.

Don't think it will happen, though. The biggest concern will be increased road closings by LE.

 

[Jake Orosi]

I would give a sponsor a shot, at least until it became burdensome like with Will Campbell's experience. What is there to lose?

I'm not into modding my vehicle, though; any sponsor that would want funky camera turrets or weather "instrumentation" or rocket launchers or whatevertheheck mounted on my old SUV are right out. I don't drive a Dominator, I drive a Skeedaddler.

 

[Albert Rodriguez]

I honestly don't give any effs about what attention I might attract. I have a brand new car that I may look into getting a dome cam for since my car has A/V jacks built in. As for sponsors...I know no one wants to sponsor my sorry ass. Chasing has been and probably forever be nothing but a black hole in my bank account. Anyone that says I can't chase cause I'm not experienced or professional enough can kiss the fattest part of my ass as I drive into the bear's cage.

good stuff right here. I wouldn't mind doing a ALLSUP burrito sponsorship.

 

[Chance Metz]

Well I would not worry too much. No one will dare tick off the entire storm chasing community will ill advised laws or regulations to control something that polices itself.

 

[Dave C]

I can see both sides, at least from the ideal perspective. Who wouldn't want to have some of their funding provided and be able to chase more often potentially? I'm sure its fun in some ways to be a part of some larger chasing entity.

However, some problems have come with the attention seeking element and limited commercialization of chasing. Its really turning into a sport in some peoples minds- which is a very BAD thing if the public starts to perceive it as a sport played on their roads and in their towns. Having a brand to promote also puts visibility and increased pressure on chasers to 'get the shot'. Another thing I notice that comes with branding is an increasing insistence on streaming, posting GPS coordinates, and twitter updates of location which is probably heavily contributing to these massive convergences of chasers that are both frustrating and dangerous on chase day - and also largely responsible for the attention and bad reputation placed on the chaser community recently (again, in my opinion).

I'm being long winded here. I guess I am opposed to these chasing brands UNLESS they consider and attempt to address the problems they are causing. I would not participate unless I could control and limit those types of negative aspects. I use a regular vehicle that you would be hard pressed to notice except for the cameras. I have a couple small skywarrn magnets that I will not use unless I am spotting for the local Skywarn / ARES net, or in circumstances where it might make me safer or look less suspicious to locals wondering what I am doing. Otherwise, it really feels better to me to chase on the lowdown and avoid attention all together.

 

[Jake Orosi]

Not so sure I agree that branding is responsible for chaser convergence. I haven't been in any high-density convergence events, but photo and video I've seen doesn't seem to show a whole lot of cars with sponsor logos all over them. I can think of a number of other factors that surely have a more substantial effect.

As for getting "the shot" - well, I think chasers impose that pressure on themselves. Chasers have for the longest time been creating their own personal brands via websites and YouTube; and all the "extreme TOO CLOSE etc" footage has come from these people. They've made up their minds about what exactly "the shot" is and they have no problem pursuing it without (or even against) the urging of sponsors, friends, colleagues, and so forth.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

all the "extreme TOO CLOSE etc" footage has come from these people. They've made up their minds about what exactly "the shot" is and they have no problem pursuing it without (or even against) the urging of sponsors, friends, colleagues, and so forth.

Whooaaaa hang on there, don't pin this chasers that have worked up a "professional" look. Some of it is from yahoo locals or people just passing by that are recording something cool to hopefully make all their friends and family proud to have their name read aloud on national news.

 

[Jake Orosi]

Maybe some of it ends up on "dougnormal"s channel next to his cat videos but it's my experience that a lot of this kind of footage ends up posted on YouTube accounts with names like "SuperUltraMegaTwisterChasers" with COPYRIGHT NOT FOR FREE MEDIA USE graphics and watermarks embedded all over them. It at least suggests they're not random normal people who happened to be out running errands in their own town and stumbled upon a tornado.

 

[Dave C]

Not so sure I agree that branding is responsible for chaser convergence. I haven't been in any high-density convergence events, but photo and video I've seen doesn't seem to show a whole lot of cars with sponsor logos all over them. I can think of a number of other factors that surely have a more substantial effect.

I may not have been clear in my post, but I was suggesting that posting locations via streaming, twitter, GPS, etc. is probably partly to blame for the convergence, not the branding or sponsors themselves. For example, we know many of the local chasers or the general public follows other chasers via cell phone or twitter or whatever. Those with sponsors often have streams or GPS constantly published.

I also want to be clear that I am not passing some blanket judgement either on those who choose to have sponsors, or those who want to take a risk to get the shot. There is nothing wrong with those things in basic concept - its when they get out of control or cause issues for others that I start to have a problem.

 

[Jake Orosi]

I may not have been clear in my post, but I was suggesting that posting locations via streaming, twitter, GPS, etc. is probably partly to blame for the convergence, not the branding or sponsors themselves. For example, we know many of the local chasers or the general public follows other chasers via cell phone or twitter or whatever. Those with sponsors often have streams or GPS constantly published.

Now this I can agree with - more so the live GPS than the streaming video. The live GPS seems to me to have very little practical function outside of helping groupies see where all the chasers are so they can come play too. It doubtless plays a large part in convergence. Not the only one certainly, but a great big one.

 

[Timothy Finn]

Personally, if I ever got to a point where sponsorship was a possibility....frankly, I'd still turn it down. Fact of the matter is, I don't want to be pressured into making rash judgement calls to please a sponsor.

Plus, I like going incognito. My gold Dodge pickup blends in with a dumpster fairly nicely, and that's just how I like it.

Bottom line, my truck, my money, my time, MY rules.

Tim

 

[Chris Nuttall]

The live GPS seems to me to have very little practical function outside of helping groupies see where all the chasers are so they can come play too. It doubtless plays a large part in convergence. Not the only one certainly, but a great big one.

Don't be so quick to judge the GPS tracking. When my primary duty is scouring the area for severe weather reports and not as the warning meteorologist, I will check Spotter Network positions, call chasers (if their contact info is available), and asked what they are seeing, especially if they're someone I knew. I'm sure I'm not the only NWS met that has done this.