UK South East Annual Brighton Convoy & Meet 29th May 2016

[SteveSheldon]

OK everyone.. I will be actively updating this thread until the end of the week, when I should be signed off on everything for this year. At that point I will summarise everything to do with our 2016 event and take a brief look back at what we achieved this year!

We have achieved a lot, for an event that has been running for just three and a half years, and has no financial funding :-)

Just to give you an inkling of things to come - I have been accepting advance bookings from people wanting to attend next years event, and have had a number of locations, and sponsors actively chasing me to work with them.

There are a number of possibilities that I am working my way through, but whichever way it works we will definitely be going up market next year, with a brand new regular venue for our event. This I am hoping will give us a little more swing not just with our current sponsors, but hopefully some new additional sponsors too.

My family, on whom I have depended for a huge amount of support, and a lot of help with things over the past three and a half years, have all agreed that these new potential locations are a huge change and improvement, and will be coming along this time to meet everyone!!

I cannot confirm any specific details 100% at this point, but I know our new look event in 2017 is going to blow the doors off this years event :-) We will have a superb backdrop for photo shoots, coupled with more time onsite, free parking, shopping, location tours and so much more I cannot list yet. All in addition to the usual event features everyone loves so much with the range of Jaguars, socialising, photo shoots, and prize draw!!

Anyone wanting to guarantee their slot in advance, please just drop me a pm, email, or a facebook message, or a good old fashioned tweet.

Please keep an eye on this thread for any latest info between now and the end of the week, and then at the end of the week keep an eye open for the summary for this years event.

Some point shortly after there will be a new thread appearing with all the details of our fantastic Jaguar event for 2017 :-)

[SteveSheldon]

Please note Richard Morgan has very kindly passed me his photos from the day, & they are now available on our Facebook event page, and our OneDrive account if you would like to check them out.

[SteveSheldon]

OK guys, it is official as of now.. hot off the press (or the keyboard) our event has a new venue for next year..

 

We will be retaining everything from our previous events, but making it a day event rather than it's current half day event format, and scaling things up (again).

 

We are booked as an official event at Denbies Wine Estate www.denbies.co.uk for Sunday 28th May 2017. We now have capacity for up to 400 Jaguars in open parking.

 

As soon as I have more info I will update everyone.

 

[SteveSheldon]

I will be summarising our 2016 event at the end of this week, looking back over our achievements and kicking off the thread for our 2017 event.

Currently we have a brand new, highly recommended, venue in Denbies Wine Estate.. with a capacity for up to 400 vehicles - who would also be very happy to become our long term venue should we wish.

We have 37 people who have made advance bookings for our 2017 event.

We have retained a number of our sponsors, and I am following them up currently, some having already responded positively.

Harwoods Jaguar are currently looking into who we can deal with as a Jaguar representative at the new venue.

So, our Jaguar event is still very much on the move to bigger and better year on year..

Please keep an eye on this thread, and the forthcoming thread for 2017 for all the latest

[SteveSheldon]

A quick update for you..

So far we have Autoglym, Scratchshield, Lancaster Insurance, & Rimmer Bros all confirmed as sponsors for our next bigger, and better Jaguar event. Steve from CarSnapped is also hoping to be available for us on the day. I am just waiting on further responses from our other sponsors and current sponsors..

Additionally I am looking into sorting an award plaque or cup (rather than just prizes) for the 'JaguarForums.com Best Turned Out Jaguar' award - which would mean the previous years winner will get to pass the award on to the new winner each year.

You will also get to display it at home for the year as the winner!! Proof to your friends and family that you truly have the best turned out Jaguar :-)

[SteveSheldon]

Just a quick update for everyone.. Carphile.com and MotorMartin who were advertising sponsors for our 2016 event, have officially signed up to support our 2017 event. Many, many thanks to both of them for their continued support.

I have been chasing Harwoods Jaguar regarding who we deal with at our new venue, Denbies, and I am waiting to hear back. As soon as I know this I can start to work on developing a good working relationship to ensure we get the best Jaguar support possible for our event.

I have also been progressing things with our other current sponsors, and a select list, I have, of potential sponsors - more to follow on that as we go.

Our next event will continue our trend of growing our event, and adding new features.. I am planning on 200 Jaguars for the day, ideally covering at least 60 years of production so please add the 28th of May 2017 to your calendar, keep an eye out for the 2016 event summary appearing on our threads tomorrow, and the new thread starting for our 2017 event

We have the biggest, and best Annual Convoy & Meet event to come You will not want to miss it.. a scenic countryside drive from our usual starting point coursing through Sussex and Surrey countryside to Denbies Wine Estate (which will be filmed ), where we will have an enclosed grassed area set aside for up to 400 Jaguars. There will be the usual features that everyone loves, as well as tours of the Denbies wine estate, tasting sessions and so much more. We will hopefully have CarSnapped onsite taking yet more fantastic shots of the cars and the event, more prizes in the prize draw, and we will be moving the event from it's half day format to a full day! We will likely have a cup or plaque for the first time for the winner of our 'JaguarForums.com Best Turned Out Jaguar' award to be won with the winner passing it on to the next winner in 2018.. and so much more that I am working on for us..

[SteveSheldon]

OK Guys this is the final summary for our 2016 Annual Convoy & Meet event.. after this I will be kicking off the threads for our next event in 2017.

This event started in the planning back in September 2015, with the aim of increasing the numbers to 80 vehicles, with more sponsorship involvement, with a high level of sponsor visibility at the event itself.

Our previous event threads had received up to 20,000 or so hits, and it would have been nice to beat that, raising the visibility of our event.

In the 8 months of planning and development, our event aims changed significantly.

We upped the target number of Jaguars to the maximum we could possibly squeeze into Madiera Drive, with our sponsors offering bigger prizes for our prize draw, a new prestigeous award was announced as the 'JaguarForums.com Best Turned Out Jaguar' which would run every year, & more sponsors than ever came on board.

Towards the day we were actually turning people away because we could not cater for more vehicles at the site, and the Welcome Packs, despite being increased in numbers were still running out in relation to the numbers coming.

This event took us to the very limits of what we could do, with the event in it's current format.. smashing all our previous records.

We had 100 Jaguars, over 60 years of Jaguar production on-site, bigger and better prizes than ever before, our Twitter feed over doubled it's number of followers, our Facebook page doubled it's friends, we started storing our images from all our events at our Facebook page, and a OneDrive account making them free to access and download, we gained an official event photographer in CarSnapped to take superb shots for us on the day, and we gained an official event filmer (is that a phrase? :-)) to film our events features!

As for visibility, we had threads on three Jaguar specific forums, and one general motoring forum and all our updates appeared on all of them plus our Facebook page. We also used our Twitter account to advertise our sponsors (part of the deal for improved sponsorship).

We are now quite well known on Twitter, our Facebook page is regularily monitored by our Facebook friends, our event photo collections are also regularily viewed, and our forum threads in total received over 102,000 views, which is almost five times as many as our last event!

Our event has grown, event on event, year on year, and still this year the general concensus was that people enjoyed the event. We have 5 event sponsors that had agreed to support our 2017 event before our 2016 event had even finished, and within weeks we had just under 40 people presigning for our next event..

This event did have some issues becoming very apparent with this event, as we had reached the absolute limit that our location on Brighton seafront could handle.

The parking costs, parking slots, catering, and the spread of this number of vehicles along the drive all becoming quite big issues, even the risk of sponsors dropping out at the last minute became an issue.

So, we have two options - we either downsize our event enabling us to retain Madeira Drive as our main venue, and continue to hunt for a financial sponsor to cover the costs involved in taking over Madiera Drive.. or we move our event and continue growing it to the size of commercially funded Jaguar events, but keeping our event free for everyone to attend and owned and run by us, the attendees..

I have looked at both options and am pleased to say that I have located a new venue for the event enabling us to keep growing our event.. giving us more Jaguars, more years of production, more sponsors, more prizes, and even a one day format rather than the current half day format. All the details of the new event will be in our new forum threads which I will be starting off shortly..

I believe that we can make our event bigger and better for all of us.. so please set a date in your calendar, and sign up on the new thread and help us make our event THE Jaguar event that everyone should attend..

If you know anyone who hasn't attended before please let them know we are getting bigger and better and get them to sign up for what promises to be a huge grass roots Jaguar event.. as always it will be free to sign up for, & free to attend whilst still giving you great goodie bags, chances at some great prizes that you will genuinely use, plus some fantastic discount codes to help keep your Jaguar costs down.

I am hoping that in this event you have found something you want to be involved in, and that you enjoy attending.. and very much hope to meet you again at our next convoy & meet event in 2017 :-)