Yokohama’s SEMA Booth Is Pretty Darn Awesome

SEMA is, at its core, nothing more than an arms race. The annual 150,000-person trade show invites companies to exhibit their latest wares, with the top prize–unofficially, at least–being buckets of free ink from automotive outlets around …

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Tell them to run a batch of 13 inch performance tires.  

They might all ready build them, just not import them to the US market.

https://www.y-yokohama.com/global/product/tire/pdf/tires/catalogue/Passenger_Car_Tire_Catalogue_Asia-Oseania01_02.pdf

Bring back the A008 and I’ll order a set tomorrow!!

Paid article????

bluej said:

Paid article????

That doesn't really bother me. At least they are upfront about it. Got to pay the bills

In reply to bluej :

Yeah, we do paid articles like this occasionally. Don't worry—they are always clearly labeled and written by our own editorial team. 

Tom Suddard said:

In reply to bluej :

Yeah, we do paid articles like this occasionally. Don't worry—they are always clearly labeled and written by our own editorial team. 

Well, hopefully they read it...and bring back the A008. 

My buddy has to work his company's booth.  Wax guy.  
 

I'm jealous.

Tom Suddard said:

You know, they could have at least paid for a whole detailing of that car..  I mean, it's almost like they intentionally missed cleaning half of it! 

Datsun310Guy said:

My buddy has to work his company's booth.  Wax guy.  
 

I'm jealous.

Bikini?

Tom Suddard said:

In reply to bluej :

Yeah, we do paid articles like this occasionally. Don't worry—they are always clearly labeled and written by our own editorial team. 

Not bothered at all either.  Those are sweet cars in an awesome display from a vendor I'd recommend.

Tom Suddard said:

In reply to bluej :

Yeah, we do paid articles like this occasionally. Don't worry—they are always clearly labeled and written by our own editorial team. 

My worry wasn't about who actually wrote it, though of course that does matter, but purely that once you're accepting money from an outside source to put out content under the grm banner, it becomes a chink in the credibility of everything else grm puts out. Obviously that's only my personal opinion, and being open about it certainly helps. 

Let me ask a few questions: Would you have covered the same material in a similar manner anyway? Not necessarily a full article, but at least a paragraph as part of the rest of your SEMA coverage? Is this a digital only piece? 

Fyi, I have not clicked the link to read the full article, so I don't know how in depth grm goes, or if any of it is critical. Basically, I don't care how cool/good the content is, I'm not consuming journalistic content if it was paid for, and doing so probably influenced that coverage. 

In reply to bluej :

Read the full article, then I'd be happy to answer any questions. This is digital only; we do not do this in print and we do not do this anywhere readers are paying for the words they're reading. We would have covered this in a smaller form anyway; this topic was my idea, actually, and Yokohama was willing to provide the financial support and access to their people to make it happen. 
 

And again, we're pretty upfront that this is paid. If anything, I think this improves our credibility. Some of our peers have gone to a more or less 90% paid article format, but don't tell their readers and instead sell ink via cleverly-structured ad deals instead of honest discussions about the content that could be created together. Here, you always know what's journalism, and what's paid (it's the most prominent text in the article).

Personally, I'm really diggin' the 'Hot Wheels case' vibe that the shipping container setup provides.