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March 2022 - Time for new ideas

All of the various setbacks, both recent and more chronic: Ukraine, sinking ships, supply chain issues, and the confirmatory online forum news of widespread difficulties receiving allocations. All of these had now shifted our mood. Where the beginning of February had been all about the excitement of guessing when during the next month would we be experiencing the thrill of allocations, the beginning of March was about accepting the reality that our allocations were probably not coming soon, and maybe not coming for a fairly long time. On March 3, 2022, Luke voices a thought that has been rattling around in the back of our minds for the last few weeks: "Good thing we have practice being patient. Lots of unknowns out there, so stay the course. If it ends up with us not being able to go until next year, so be it. I'm not anywhere near contemplating the idea of trying to find a used 718!!!!".
Luke's Thoughts
[on new ideas...]
A bit of a mental reset is happening now. I find myself shifting gears too, pun intended. I really do think it's a question of when and not if we will get our cars. But the security of an allocation would be lovely.

I have to say that it lifts a small burden off my mind to not be thinking about this every moment of every day. We will get them when we get them.

All in all, generally a positive mindset. It's comforting to hear Andrew also believe that eventually this will happen. As he said, my original early message was I can't imagine ever owning a Porsche, and as he said now, I can't imagine not owning one!

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this moment, check out his blog post)


But our mood varied wildly from day to day; the next day, Luke voiced a different sentiment: "Glum thought of the day: What will I do if I can't get a 718??? At some point the S2000 will need replacing?? Tell me that Ukraine notwithstanding .... we're gonna eventually get our Porsches ....". And with recent talk of the upcoming end of the gas-powered Porsche 718 era (the next generation is slated to be a pure electric vehicle), we even start to worry a bit of about getting the cars at all: Andrew: "I don't know how long this current dark period will last, but given that we are both #1 in our respective GTS lines, I believe we will get ours before production really ends. There will be a 2023 model year for sure, we know that."

Luke's public sentiment (as voiced in his thoughts sidebar here in this section) bely the underlying anxiousness of the above text messages. We put on a brave face but there is definitely some worry underneath.

As our new reality set in, we started to think of what we could do to maximize our chances of success. We thought back to something Christina said in our February meeting, about not being entirely sure that we would be able to get our allocations together - a central pillar to the whole idea behind getting two cars together. We did extensive research, and learned that it may be possible for Porsche to hold a car after production for a certain period of time before a European Delivery date - perhaps four or five months at most. With that possibility, we started thinking that if one allocation came along, that we may in fact accept it (rather than pass and wait for both of our allocations to come paired). We may then have been able to negotiate with the Porsche European Delivery department to hold that car, once built, for a period of time - and then hope to hell that the other allocation came through before Porsche decided they could no longer hold that first car.

But how to get our hopes and dreams across to the right people? Just asking our dealership to do it would be doing what probably every other buyer was doing right at that very moment. How could we differentiate ourselves? Maybe ... maybe, some sort of media presentation. Something that was a nice tidy summary of who, what, when, why. And maybe that presentation could or would result in the right person saying "yeah ok, maybe these guys should get their allocations together. Let's make it happen".

This whole idea was a contingency against a prolonged delay in getting our allocations, or - heaven forbid - that we never get them. And we realized right from the get-go that the success of a media presentation was probably a long shot, that probably it would make no difference at all. But ... nothing ventured, nothing gained. So with that said, how could we improve our chances of having our story be heard? And how might we structure that story such that people would *want* to help us out?

From that line of thinking emerged the idea of a true "media initiative". Of us actively marketing our story, our journey, as something that either Porsche or Porsche's fanbase or the car enthusiast community in general, might be interested in following, reading, supporting. Maybe they would think "The GTS Chronicles" was a story that had legs. And maybe, in turn, that might help nudge Porsche to perhaps actively help us get our cars, in a way they might not have otherwise. Maybe they'd hold a first car for a month longer if necessary. Even that little action might be important for us. And maybe, maybe they'd even want to help us tell and share our story - wouldn't that be cool?
March 2022 - The Pitch

"The Pitch" - that's we started calling our half-formed ideas about a media initiative. "The Pitch" was multi-pronged: we would generate some sort of story brief, both as a few paragraphs of text and also as produced video short. It would briefly delve into our motorsport enthusiast background, describe our progression through time, to this point of getting two Porsches together, and all of the associated passion and joy and excitement. At first we intended only to send it to the Porsche European Delivery department and also to our dealership. I quickly whip up a graphic to represent the idea:

"The Pitch" - the initiative to promote interest in the story of The GTS Chronicles.


About a week into March, we had a rough outline of a script. We originally thought it should be about five minutes long, but soon we came to realize that it needed to be much shorter. No one was going to listen to two car geeks drone on about their boo-hoo Porsche story for five minutes. Even half that was probably too long.

Here's a snippet of summary from one of our very first list of "Pitch" notes:

Final Product Should be:
- short (<5 minutes)
- to the point - we must maintain the viewer's focus/attention
- some narration (or maybe not)
- us seated, talking - and as talking, interleaved clips show.
- probably no music
- Narrative:
- "we are not X"; "we are not Y"; "we are not Z"
- etc etc etc
- "what we ARE is?.. "
- our backstory
- journey to here
- what we want (two allocations together)
- what we've been doing to prepare
- why this is important to us
- why we're worried, why we made this video
- not asking to jump any lines, just asking to get cars together (done with the later allocation, if necessary)


Iterating over these ideas over the next few weeks resulted in the development of a more usable script:

A snippet of version 5 of our GTS Chronicles "Pitch" script.
(click here to see the whole v5 script)
March marched on. We continued to refine our script, and we started crafting a "The Pitch" video from it. Along the way, we also started to define a logo that would - in a nutshell - define The GTS Chronicles. We came up with a graphic that shows two Guards Red stylized 718 silhouettes (modified from the standard Porsche outline graphic), one a Boxster and one a Cayman, coming together to form a sort of hybridized combo-silhouette. "The two cars coming together into one shared story". This animation (or the resulting merged image) eventually became the core part of the visual titling of all of our GTS Chronicles presentations, videos, posts, emails, notices, stickers, and business cards.

An animated version of the core part of what we think is a concise and self-explanatory "The GTS Chronicles" logo.
Late-March 2022 - Some Positive Signs

Towards the end of March we started hearing some good news on the production front. Apparently Porsche had found an alternate supplier of wire harnesses from Austria. Production was slated to restart for all product lines at the beginning of April. On the forum front, we were now paying very close attention to who had reported getting allocations, for what, and how long they've had orders. We were trying to get a sense of the pulse of production, of the rate of allocations-being-given. To help us roughly predict how much longer we might have to wait.

April 2022 - A Draft Pitch

By the beginning of April we had a very rough cut of a pitch video. It was full of gaps and weird audio, many awkward sections, has some cringe, and it is too long. But, it was a start. I'm slightly embarrassed to post it, but for the sake of telling the complete story, here is that initial pitch video:
Initial rough draft GTS Chronicles Pitch Video (v2.1.1)
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