MBI Awards Nominations open

MBI70.gifYou might have noticed the “Motorcycle Bloggers International” logo on my site. MBI is mainly a forum for motorsports bloggers, but the public face of MBI is the annual “MBI Awards,” awarded to people, organizations, websites, and manufacturers related to motorcycling (and scootering, of course.) This year, the nominations have been opened to the public so if you want to give someone props, or rip someone’s head off, please do. You can also sign up for an automatic reminder when it’s time for voting, I’ll post reminders here, too.

CDOT contacts Chicago scooterists

This week, I was approached by a Chicago Department of Transportation consultant looking for input for a report about scootering in Chicago. If you’re interested in participating, and you’re a scooterist and a Chicagoan, please contact me at illnoise(at)2strokebuzz(dot)com and I’ll email you the relevant information. This is a fantastic opportunity to have our voices heard, so please drop me a line.

VespaUSA, the internets, and missed opportunities

Ex-Vespa-blogger Crystal Waters points out at Girlbike that even the marketing community has picked up on Piaggio’s failure to support the official Vespa blogs. ClickZ’s headline, (“Two Years After Launching Brand Blogs, Vespa Forgets Them,”) is misleading, they were forgotten about ten minutes after CooperKatz patted themselves on the back for inventing the idea. Still, even though both blogs were frozen in time with a depressing lead post about Vespa’s lack of enthusiasm, the VespaUSA site linked to them until yesterday (presumably the links were removed as a result of the ClickZ story).

Another punchline comes from a VespaUSA visitor who requested a catalog online and waited three months for it to arrive. As of today (January 3, 2007), the VespaUSA site launches a pre-Christmas promotion popup page. The front page features four “news” stories, two dating from June 2006 and at least one (possibly two, it’s unclear) featuring an expired promotion. Neither PiaggioUSA nor VespaUSA’s site mention a 2007 lineup, or the most-anticipated scooter of 2007, the MP3 (which amazingly remains without a name for the American market). One has to imagine that the majority of hits to a motorcycle manufacturer website in January are going to be people looking for new model info.

Canadian Scooter Corp. announced their 2007 Vespa/Piaggio lineup in mid-December (featuring the MP3, but no Vespa S!), but their site is also woefully out of date, featuring “news” from May 2006 and nothing about the new models.

If Piaggio as a corporation doesn’t have the reaction time or resources to keep their own sites up to date, (simply a fact of life for some bureaucratic corporations), the two Vespa blogs were a perfect way to spread information –on their terms–in a more timely manner. That’s why it’s even more depressing to see that they couldn’t muster the little effort required to communicate with their own (volunteer!) bloggers. With so many scooter bloggers, “official” and otherwise, doing their work for them, you’d think PiaggioUSA would be able to capitalize on their own hype, rather than abandoning every initiative they start. Once again, I ask, what the hell do Vespa’s marketing people (in-house and at CooperKatz) do all day? There’s very little evidence of marketing at the national level, in the past year they mustered nothing but an occasional PR-fluff newspaper story, the “Open Letter to Mayors,” the Vespetition (their master opus, maybe a week’s worth of work) and a handful of ads in national scooter magazines. Meanwhile, they’re awarding dealerships to anyone who asks, so they can say their “sales” are up. Perhaps their “marketing” is all at the dealer level?

Thanky New Year

My week off is over, and I’ve got a typical backlog of news stories to post tonight, but in the meantime I just wanted to thank everyone for reading 2strokebuzz, it consistently blows me away how many people choose to waste their time here. 3Q06 traffic has been incredible and when I see more hits, I post more, so everyone wins.

I’ve got a few changes in mind for the site, but I’d also appreciate any other comments or ideas, if something about the site annoys you or doesn’t work, or if you’d like to see more features, now would be a good time to let me know (via email or in the comments) and I’ll see what I can do.

For the last couple months, I’ve been toying with the idea of accepting advertising. After coming up with a good plan that would probably be fairly lucrative, I reverted to my juvenile and retarded notion that accepting advertising would be a compromise of whatever little ‘integrity’ I have, so for now, anyway, I’m ditching the idea. Instead, I’ve decided to put more effort into merchandise, hopefully that will bring in a few bucks and you get something to show for your support. Our store is empty at the moment, but look for some new t-shirts soon, and more merchandise down the road. Again, I’d love suggestions!

As always, we love submissions from readers, and if you happen to work for a scooter manufacturer or dealer, we’d love to hear from you, whether it’s official news or product releases, or you have some insider news you’d like to share anonymously.

Anyway, there’s a lot to look forward to this year, thanks so much for everything, it’s a great feeling to have so many friends around the world, Have a safe and happy 2007 and please keep in touch!

Bryan