[Kevin]

Hey folks, if you haven't you need to! That is tell them about this site, its the best way to help our site grow

1. If you tell them a salesman may come here an join, great example Luke Monroe of Bob Rorhman Subaru. They could be great contributors to the site.

2. Word of mouth! If a dealer tells every person that buys a new Outback, etc about our site... it will grow at a rapid pace

3. It would be good for the dealers as well seeing as how they could probably get some business from our members.


So folks do us all a favor and spread the word about this site around at will. Tell your dealership, tell your mother, tell you cousin Jimmy, tell your pet Ostrich, tell the bee that just stung you because you didn't tell him beforehand

 

[bheinz57]

Kevin, make some cheapy business cards like NSOC and put them on Outbacks. Inviting the Outback owner to visit the site for fun and information. Brian

 

[FMGreen]

Peaty sent me a little Scoobymods cheapy card with the parts he sent last week.
"Hey nice Subaru! If you have net access why don't you visit our web page for Subaru Enthusiasts? Lots of DIY and Modification information. www.scoobymods.com" with his name, a pic of his car and "forester xt".

I thought about making a bunch of them for this place...sob.org...hahaha, sob!
Similar wording I guess, more focused on the Outback community... "Nice Outback!"

Maybe if I get a chance within the next week or so I will try to make some. I could save it as a .pdf so you all could just open it and print them out...but they wouldn't be personalized that way. I'd rather not use Word or anything like that, it is relatively inflexible for design even though most everyone would be able to open/edit/personalize the file. Not to mention I'm a Mac user (my OTHER addiction) and I despise Microsoft products...then again, most PC users hate MSFT too.

I'll keep you posted, reply if any of you have ideas/suggestions.

 

[bheinz57]

Greeny, sounds very good. Have a general card and let it be accessible to all of us. That would be an extremely great idea. Some sort of file we can all print from? Can that be done? I don't know that much about computer stuff. Brian

 

[FMGreen]

Yeah Brian, .pdf files are a universal file format. The file will open with Adobe Acrobat (which everyone should have already) and then you can just print it out.

 

[Kevin]

I've been meaning to make some cards for the site for a while now although I've been far too busy at work and whatnot to get around to doing it. I don't mind if anyone creates promotional cards for the site. The easiest way to get the URL logo is to right click on it, copy & paste to whatever document you plan to use it with. By all means if you'd like to do something like this you have my complete approval.

I encourage you to get as creative as you'd like although don't go too overboard. Professionalism is the key

I will eventually come up with some cards on my own, althought it may be a while

 

[FMGreen]

That's what I came up with tonight, pretty simple. The wording could possibly use a revision. The pictures might be a little lame looking, maybe I should just leave them out all together. I dunno.
It'll look better when printed because it'll be smaller, this was just a screenshot of a zoom.

For those who are intersted, here is a .pdf of a page of 10 cards:
*REMOVED FOR CHANGES*
56k-ers Beware, it's 5MB to preserve quality!

I'm really not positive if the layout is the same as a traditional Avery-type pre-perforated Business Card sheet.

I'd recommend just printing on a somewhat heavy cardstock, tracing in the cut lines, and cutting them out with razor/straightedge or just some scissors.

 

[bheinz57]

Ummm....better spell everything right so we look professional. 'Enthusiasts' Other than that, the cars are going to be too small by the time they are business cards? Very good job overall I may say. From sharp car owners come sharp minds. Brian

 

[FMGreen]

Hahahaha! Oooooops!
That's what happens when I use an application without a built-in spell checker.

The cards are 3.5"x2"...so those cars will be under an inch wide when printed, going without them is a possibility.

 

[FMGreen]

I'm working on Version 2. I'll post a screenshot when it's done.

I'm aiming for 3 versions, and then we can let the board members decide which they like best using a poll.
Or I could just host all three versions and let them download and print whichever they like the best.

 

[CR_TurboGuy]

I'd reccomend trying to do either a solid or silouetted car, that way they look decent in B&W.

Something like this:

Please pay no attention to my horrible graphic skills or lack thereof.

--Josh

 

[FMGreen]

I'm sticking to color. B&W would make us look too much like an unorganized group whereas color looks professional.

I'm sure most if not all of us have color printers and the amount of color used on these cards isn't really gonna drain your supply!

Ver2.0:

I really like my custom graphic at the bottom of this card. The colors really set it apart from Ver.1.

 

[bheinz57]

Very nice, that is a good looking, correctly spelled business card!! Brian

 

[FMGreen]

I printed a test sheet of Version 2's and unfortunately my graphic at the bottom prints out pixelated and ugly. All the pics I could find online were only 72dpi, which translates to fairly crappy prints.

Anyone know where I can find a high quality (300dpi) version of the Subaru logo and of a Gen 1 and Gen 2 Outback?

 

[CR_TurboGuy]

That's one of the reasons I suggested outline form, but if you're intent on going w/ pictures, you might try http://www.logos.subaru.com/ that's Subaru's official site for logos and such for use in advertising.


--Josh

 

[FMGreen]

B&W simply isn't eye-catching. If I were a random Outback driver and I had to choose between a card placed on my car that promoted a website all in B&W vs a card that promoted in Color, I would most likely go with the colored card.

Thanks for the link to that website! How'd you find that? That's a great resource.

It appears that they are pretty strict about the use of their logo, but from what I can tell, My design is within their guidlines.

I might ditch the car pictures all-together in Ver3 and just stick to the SOB.ORG image and a SOA image.

 

[Injektilo]

This seems like a good idea! I thought it might be nice to have the card reflect the appearance of the website.:8:

 

[FMGreen]

I considered that as well, but as you can see I limited it to the title graphic only.

My reasoning is that I'd rather have a card that is still relevant even in the event of a design/color scheme change to this website.

I like your inclusion of services that the site provides, I'll try to incorporate that into Version 3.

Now that I've seen the Subaru Logo's site I can get more detailed with the graphics, while keeping them simple...

 

[Losiho]

My 2 cents.....

I like FM's second card - the colour and the two Outbacks looks neat.

 

[Kevin]

Time to put it in Overdrive!!!

Well guys I have been thinking alot on this subject lately and I think its time to start aggresively advertising this site. Anything that anyone can come up with to help get the word out is appreciated of course. The thing is that I can go around the internet all day and get links to this site, etc but we need to do things externally and I think thats where we'll be winning the game.

One idea I just came up with is simple, easy, and I'm sure any dealership would probably go for it. All it really takes is some of the paper cards that a few members made, by paper I mean that these slips can just be printed off rather than making a standard business card. What I'd like to do is to make a card/slip that promotes this site to people that pick up brochures in the showrooms. The thing is you just make a sheet of these slips, cut them out, and ask the dealer if you can staple them to the brochures. Then everyone that comes and gets a brochure will see the slip and hopefully check out the site. If stapling doesn't work just ask to leave some slips on thier brochure stand and distribute a few slips to every salesman as well regardless. I'd say to take no less than 50 slips with you to a dealer. They don't have to be color either for those of you who may have concerns about color printing the slips killing your inkjets although it of course would be nice to have them in color.

The catch for the dealer is you can tell them that if they allow us to do this, everyone that comes to the site and asks about their dealership... well we'll tell them to buy from them or something along that line. If there are other dealers in the area and they ask if you are doing this activity are their dealer as well, well I don't really know what to say about that other than that you could tell them that you haven't been there yet and may not (or won't) go there if they allow you do this. Just try to convince them that you and everyone else here will help to earn them buisness. Heck tell them to come on the site and talk to me as I'm a former salesman. I don't see why dealers wouldn't love sites like this, its a great way to extend their business reack to new customers in that a member might be more inclined to by from a dealer or salesman who contributes to the site

As far as the cards/slips go I like injektilo's card design and message it puts out. It needs to be modified with a new message to the likeness of:

Interested in a Subaru? Well come and check out one of the greatest Subaru resources on the internet,

Subaru Outback.org (logo)

This site is not just an Outback webpage but a huge resource for everything Subaru related. A great wealth of knowledge and experience awaits you!

Below Message- -forums- -gallery- -dealer ratings- -chat-

IMO, all that together would get our message across to a great extent. We could easily have 1,000+ members by the end of the summer with the great rush people will be making to the lots to see all the new 2005's. Please interject any and all thoughts you may have on this matter ASAP

Thanks! Kevin