A plea for SPAM sponsorship, to the Hormel Corporation

Ever since joining the Drive Around the World team in California, I have been trying to help fund the expedition by attracting sponsors. It’s not something I’m used to doing (and it, in a sense, it goes against the ethic of privately funded wandering I promote in Vagabonding), but I’ve been trying my damnedest to be a productive team member and do my part. Most of my sponsorship energies, in fact, have been devoted to winning the sponsorship of the potted meat product known as SPAM.

To me, Drive Around the World could do a great service to SPAM: We could counteract the negative association of e-mail “spam” by transporting authentic SPAM around the world and eating it in a variety of cultural contexts. A rather silly activity, of course, but that’s exactly the point. With so many Internet users sick of e-mail “spam”, the absurdist publicity we generate would help people appreciate the corporeal existence of culinary SPAM. Hormel (the makers of SPAM) would score a PR coup, and – through the sponsorship – we could get a bit more needed gas money.

Unfortunately, the response from the people at SPAM tows the line between “tepid” and “disinterested”. I suspect the people in their marketing department think I am joking when in fact I am completely serious.

An excerpt from my sponsorship pitch is below. All modesty aside, I think it’s a brilliant idea. If any of you have any personal contacts with Hormel or SPAM, I implore you to lend a hand in helping us with this unorthodox (yet very serious) sponsorship proposal.

Here is the jist of my letter to SPAM:

To Generation-X’ers like those of us undertaking Drive Around the World, SPAM has always been an endearing throwback to the lunchboxes of our youth (and, in many cases, the gear-boxes of our endurance expeditions). For a new generation of youngsters, however, “spam” has a negative connotation: It is a word that has become associated with the scourge of unsolicited commercial email (UCE). Indeed, when you key the word “SPAM” into Google.com or Amazon.com, the first listings you get have nothing to do with Hormel’s legendary canned meat, but with services designed to eliminate UCE. SPAM may be as well loved and uniquely American as McDonald’s, Coke, or Disney, but it has suffered an “image devaluation” because of opportunistic bulk e-mailers.

What SPAM needs is to take its name back. SPAM needs to find a way to “cc the world” and let everyone know that “real” spam doesn’t contain porn, worms, viruses, or solicitations. SPAM is not something you delete, after all – it’s something you EAT. So wouldn’t it be nice if we could “bulk mail” the world to let everyone know that SPAM is still a delicious meat product that comes in a distinctive blue can?

Well, with Drive Around the World as your personal SPAM couriers, “cc’ing” this message to the world is very much possible, since (with a travel writer and film crew in tow) we could literally integrate SPAM into our expedition activities. That is, we could give cans of SPAM away in each of the countries we visit, and use SPAM as a cooking ingredient using the culinary style of each of our 34 host countries. Imagine us cooking SPAM masala in India, SPAM borscht in Russia, SPAM tacos in Mexico, and “Peking SPAM” in China – all in front our film crew. Imagine us handing out cans of SPAM as gifts to border guards and schoolchildren. And, imagine the grateful grins on the faces of Internet users everywhere when, together, we promote this as a way to “strike back” at email spam (a very newsworthy topic of late) by spreading “real” SPAM around the globe.

The publicity it would generate for Hormel, as well as our charity (Parkinson’s disease) would be priceless. If properly promoted, our plan to “SPAM the globe” or “cc the world” (the phrase “Spambassadors” also comes to mind) would make headlines in every “unusual news” channel and website in America, including the likes of Dave Barry. Television and mainstream newspaper attention would be sure to follow. Given the antagonism UCE-spam has attracted in the last half-decade, the buzz on our joint project would probably attract the amused attention of millions of Internet users worldwide. The publicity payout would be too huge to calculate – and Hormel would enjoy the biggest PR coup since NASA took Tang into outer space.

Spamtastically yours,


Rolf Potts
http://drivearoundtheworld.com
http://rolfpotts.com
http://vagabonding.net