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April 2022 - Dealership Silence

We had not heard from Christina. It had been six weeks since our "things are really slow, supply chain issues, not even sure if your allocations will come paired" meeting. Although we were starved for information, we also do not want to be "those customers" that continually bother and pester. She said she'd let us know if she had news, and to honor our side of it, we were trying to be patient. We resolved to schedule another meeting with her after two months had elapsed since our last touch-base. We thought that was more than reasonable.

Late-April / Early-May 2022 - Spring Training

The beginning of April also brought warmer weather and the ability to continue with our camera/auto/mounting/recording practice. We set up shop in the corner of a huge parking lot near our city's big sports arena. Lots of space to try things out and (in the absence of a sports event) no one about.
Getting ready to test
Getting ready to test
Learning about Gimbals
Efficient side mountings...
The Rigid Invert
Drone VR
Makeshift Soundbooth
May, 2022 - The Pitch Progresses

We continued to iterate on the GTS Chronicles Pitch video. Trim. Re-record. Cut. Splice. I set up a makeshift sound booth in my photography gear room in order to reduce echo and reverb and get the smoothest and clearest audio recording we can. I spent many late nights rendering, sending to Luke, discussing, re-rendering, and then sharing and discussing again. We found it really tough to create something that was both concise but still said all of things we wanted to get across. Something visually interesting but not overly gimmicky. And formulating the exact ask from Porsche (or whomever) was probably the trickiest part. What were we really after, when all was said and done?
Working on the spiel
By the end of April, we'd produced a much more polished version of the Pitch Video. We shot quite a few bits of new fill segments, with us either in front of the camera or doing audio fill in the background. Overall the audio was much better, the background music was in place and suitable, and the pacing was good. It was still too long, still had fat to be trimmed. And no doubt the narrative needed further work. But it was unquestionably a lot closer to what we wanted to disseminate. Have a look for yourself, if you are interested, at version "5.2" of the GTS Chronicles Pitch Video. Ultimately there were many more revisions to follow, but this represents a much more mature state of the pitch:

A more polished GTS Chronicles Pitch Video (v5.2)
May 2, 2022 - A Change of Hands

In general, we'd started to notice what appeared to be a change in tone from Christina and, by extension, Porsche Centre London. Email replies were no longer of the immediate snappy variety, like they were back in 2021. We didn't have enough data to go on initially in 2022, but now, well into spring, we felt we had accumulated enough data points to confidently say that the tone had changed. And then, on May 2, some interesting news. The Porsche Centre London dealership had been sold - to a Canadian auto conglomerate called "AutoCanada". A corresponding email from Christina seemed to position this sale as a great thing and that there were many changes that were really exciting.

News article announcing the sale of Porsche Centre London - our dealership - to an automative conglomerate.


May 5, 2022 - Deploy the Pitch

At long last, nearly two months after iterating and improving, we felt we had a Pitch video that was ready for external consumption. We went through a few days of "internal feedback" gathering, where we asked friends and work colleagues to give us their feedback. Based on that, we made a few more tweaks. On May 5, version 7.2 of the Pitch Video - our "release version" - was ready for release. It was a bit longer than we would have liked (3m43s), but we felt it captured and said everything we wanted to say and show.

The "release" version of GTS Chronicles Pitch Video (v7.2) - May 5, 2022


We had thought long about who we could reach out to with our polished video pitch. Obviously we'd send it to Christina and Porsche Centre London. But because of the nature of our orders - twinned with European Delivery - we were really wanting to show this to the Porsche European Delivery contact for Canada. We eventually determined that this was Michael Maternicki, working out of the Porsche North Toronto facility (twinned with the associated dealership) - and so we'd send a carefully-worded email to him.

We also wanted to seek input and advice from the online influencers that we most respected; by now we had watched countless "drips" (Porsche 718 reviews), and we were quite familiar with the larger online car enthusiast community. We selected a few of the best of these: Mark and Jack from Savage Geese; Henry Catchpole and Carfection; Misha Charoudin and his Nurburgring channel.

We send our pitch to and solicit feedback from a number of prominent online influencers and sources.
We spent several days crafting custom emails and postings to each of the above. Each with an invitation to watch that was tailored in some slight way to what we knew of that particular contact or channel. With all of the uncertainty and silence surrounding our orders, it was invigorating to be reaching out with content that we genuinely felt excited about. We felt a small kernel of hope that all of this work could really end up helping us, and also maybe allow us to reach a new level of storytelling that would be beyond the usual web page content that I churn out.

May 9, 2022 - Unsettling Interactions

We also attempted to get in touch with Christina but again she was quite slow to respond or was simply not available. On May 9, she finally responded. Her thoughts on our video was that she found it ... "fun". More importantly we finally managed to arrange a time, and then attempted to set up our usual Zoom call details. Unexpectedly, however, Christina told us that "for privacy reasons they [the new owners] wanted them [webcams] to not be in usage anymore. Would a phonecall do?"

We were taken aback by this. No video calls? Security concerns? Phone calls only?

The absurdity of this no-video rule shook us. It may at first seem like not much of a deal, but it spoke volumes. For one, it felt like a BS explanation. I mean, what security concern? were they worried about sensitive documents being readable in the background of the video feed? Would that not easily be solved by ... not having anything sensitive in view of the camera? Or did this mean that the new owners did not trust their employees? I mean, what was going on here - it seemed absurd. No video calls, in this day and age, and with Covid and all? C'mon.

Now, as two guys waiting for their sportscar allocations, we were quite concerned. Was this change of tone on Christina's part part of this change of ownership of the dealership? Maybe all of the personnel at the dealership had been given new marching orders and we were starting to see the result of that? I mean, was the sale of Porsche Centre London to AutoCanada possibly bad news for us...? A perusal of their mission statement as an organization revealed that one of their key initiatives was to drive flow into their service departments. That got us thinking .... did that mean they would de-prioritize purchasers that were out-of-towners? Were we starting to get a sort of de-prioritization, a corporate cold-shoulder? If so, that would potentially be very bad news for us. It was more important than ever for us to have a catch-up meeting and glean what we could from this new situation - even if it was just over a scratchy, awkward 3-way cellphone call.

We held the call later in the day on May 9. The tone was pleasant and we held our tongues regarding our thoughts on the dealership's new so-called "privacy stance". We got a chance to talk with her about the changes at the dealership, the likelihoods of our orders turning into allocations, and we even mentioned that possibly we'd be willing to add a couple of options. We were starting to think that maybe our problem was that our builds were not "rich" enough?

Our conversation regarding the doling out of allocations did actually reveal an interesting (and disturbing) point: namely, that the dealership looked at several factors regarding who to give allocations to, with one key one being: "how many people has a particular customer referred to us?". Now, as out-of-towners, just how would we make these referrals happen? And if we weren't existing Porsche owners - which we weren't - that likelihood of being able to refer was even worse. And did that mean ... did that mean that this concept of a "place in line" - this cherished #1 to which we had been emotionally clinging ... was that not entirely strictly honored? Could others with "better overall prospects" or "more revenue potential" ... could they skip over us in line? And was all this new policy associated with the ownership changeover? Nothing was clear - and no clarity was being offered. Luke effectively communicated our frustrations and our fears in this text message following the phone call:

<rant> Kind of annoyed at the idea that they ask themselves "how many people have these guys referred to us?" Unless someone recommends us, and therefore we get cars, how would we ever be able to check that off? How would a new person ever be able to get in without knowing a Porsche owner. And if we aren't Porsche owners, how can we refer anyone? Just have to hope it's a small factor in their minds. Anyways... </rant>
May, 2022 - Positive Feedback

We were bummed and fearful after our call with Christina. Fortunately, we had started to get responses from the release of our Pitch Video (and associated letter). The first of these was from prolific Nürburgring YouTuber Misha Charoudin. His tone was friendly and he got to the point right away - which was basically "what precisely are you asking of Porsche?". The second response was from the Carfection guys. They took the time to write us a long and detailed and supportive email. The core of their response mirrored Misha's ... which was that we needed properly define the "what" of our ask:

It's the problem we face with every single film we make and we don't always have an answer. If your video was on YouTube, what would the title and thumbnail be that would make someone click on it. Why do you click on the videos you watch? Was it the title? Was it the Thumbnail? Both? What caught your eye? What question do you want the video to answer? What new information will it give to you? What about it might be interesting or exciting to watch? If you can think of a title and thumbnail combination that would make you click on the video, and work backwards from there you could put together a treatment of this same road trip that would be a very appealing video or series.


The responses from Misha and Carfection lifted our spirits greatly. They had taken the time to watch and digest and respond, and were upbeat about what we were doing. Actually supportive. And they were big presences on the internet, and that also made us feel seen. We were honored to have received responses.

The feedback continued the very next day, with a response from Michael at Porsche European Delivery Canada. This was perhaps an even more thrilling development, as this was a response from someone in the Porsche organization itself. And instead of a simple "that was fun" response, we got an answer containing actual engagement:

Hello Mr. Lavigne and Mr. Ward,

I want to apologize for the delayed response. I was excited to read your story and watch your video, and began doing some internal research as to the best contacts here at Porsche. The days seem to have slipped by while gathering some feedback.

Would you have some time to have a call to go over your request and what you are looking for? That way I can get the right contacts involved.


Whoa. That was a fantastic response. From someone other than an increasingly uncommunicative dealership, no less. And someone who actually worked directly for Porsche. And he wanted to meet?   Awesome.

(and also, we noted wryly, there was no problem at all with a Zoom call. Security, eh? pfshh).

The very next day we held a Zoom call with Michael at Porsche ED. We described ourselves and what we wanted to do (which was to essentially storytell our Porsche dual-ED experience in a grassroots way, and distribute it online when we were done). He was very enthusiastic about what we described, and was happy to promote it on to Porsche. Afterwards, we were on cloud nine, and sent a heartfelt thank-you email to him:

"Hey, Michael Thanks for meeting with us today. We appreciate you giving us time out of your day to speak to us and learn more about what we're trying to accomplish. We are quite stoked about this whole story idea. Hopefully we can get it to come to pass! ...Andrew and Luke"


We now felt that we had a little momentum of sorts on our side. We wanted to build on that momentum; really show to everyone that we were serious about putting in maximum effort to create something interesting and joyous and shareable. Michael had suggested that a focused social media feed might be something Porsche (and others) would more readily notice. We thought that was a great idea.

Running with Michael's idea, we decided to create a specific "GTS Chronicles" Instagram feed, complete with official logo, along with a companion standalone web page hosted on my own webserver and reachable via a custom GTS Chronicles-specific domain. The Instagram feed would act as a place where we could post short, succinct updates on the progress towards our goal of a dual-Euro-Delivery experience. We'd organize the posts in the format of a timeline, from the start way back in the summer of 2020, forward to ... well, who knew 'till when?
May 13, 2022 - Beefing Builds

All was not entirely rosy in our minds, even with all of the excitement surrounding influencer feedback and potential interest from contacts within Porsche. We were still worried about the whole "place in line" problem, the fact that we were out-of-towners. We felt exposed. We thought back to the conversation about how "rich" our builds were. As in, how they weren't very. The online forums were full of stories of dealers in the U.S. simply charging flat-out markups (for which the acronym had become "ADM" - additional dealer markup). ADMs of fifteen or twenty thousand US dollars on GTS models in US dealerships were common, and often bemoaned. In Canada (and in the province in which we lived), such naked markups were not legal. But we'd heard that dealers would wink-wink nudge-nudge about how one's chances might be improved if your option list was .... juicier.

So we decided to make our builds .... juicier. That is to say, more.... enticing. We collectively added a couple of thousand dollars worth of options to our builds (such as black-painted brake calipers, for example), and emailed the resultant new build codes off to Christina. We hoped that this would send the signal that we "understood", and were willing to make some adjustments to account for .... market forces.

May 28, 2022 - Black Hole Discovery

We heard nothing from Christina for almost two weeks. We inquired over text about whether or not she'd received our updated builds and she responded that she hadn't received our new builds. After some further back-and-forth, we discovered that in the switchover to ownership by AutoCanada, they had changed all of the email addresses (of the employees at the dealership). And it wasn't because the domain name had changed - it hadn't. They had just made everyone switch to new usernames. And apparently also did not bother to configure any sort of forwarding from old username to new username (or if they did, it wasn't configured properly). And whatever mail server they were using did not echo back an error when it received an e-mail sent to one of the old email addresses. Which meant all emails sent to the original email addresses .... well, they were effectively going into a black hole, never to be seen, read or responded to. Wonderful. Great job, guys. That has got to be just fantastic for business.

Once we had cleared up the misunderstanding around why our build-update emails had gone unanswered, we re-sent them (this time to the proper 'new' email address), and Christina quickly updated our builds. Now, would that help our prospects? We hoped so.
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