Car Show Overload?

I've been assigned the task of publicity for the last couple of British Car Festivals and with help from several other club members, we've been able to get our message on the airwaves and into some respectable print media. This year, however, it was a bit more challenging.  We did get our event listed in the usual enthusiast publications and web sites and other British car clubs in the southeast placed us on their activity calendars.  

Photo credit: Lise Gagne

I could not get the story included in the events calendars of several regional magazines (Mobile Bay Monthly being one) although we did get some print coverage in the local newspapers. Not being able to get the word out in a wide reaching form makes it difficult to keep the general public attendance numbers up and reach out to prospective British car enthusiasts. 


As with most blowhards with a keyboard and high speed Internet, I've got a theory as to the root of the problem: saturation.

It seems like every volunteer fire department, church with a parking lot or restaurant with a need to generate traffic has a car show or cruise in of some sort. There's hardly a week that passes that a notice of a car show with a worthy fund raising cause doesn't pop up in my email in box. I cannot imagine how many badly-worded 'press releases' get out to the local print and broadcast media. I think we might be getting lost in the crowd.

British Car Festival is one of the area's oldest car shows with twenty years of history under its belt. I can think of only two or three others in the area that have had a longer run than our humble show. How can we set ourselves apart from the show and shines and make our event worthy of mention? 

I'm open to ideas and we need volunteers with contacts. We've got about a year before the next BCF. That's plenty of time to develop a battle plan!