Escape Campers Sponsors The Art Klick North Island Tour!

Huge news! Escape Campers has been kind enough to sponsor me one of their amazing New Zealand campers for the Art Klick North Island Tour!

I am heading off for a one month road trip around the North Island next week to meet artists, tertiary institutes, media and the people in the New Zealand IT scene and thought it would be great to get a painted camper. After some quick research I found that Escape Rentals is 100% New Zealand owned and has the best artwork by far. It was an easy choice to approach Escape first.

After a quick chat to Michelle (the South Island manager) she talked to the (Christchurch based) owners and it was all go. So I’m heading in to pick out my camper for the coming month tomorrow !

Escape Carbon Emissions Offset With Carbon South
Not only does Escape have new vans and great artwork (you should see their office in Cathedral Junction) but they are also offering their customers an opportunity to offset their carbon emissions by partnering with Carbon South which is a first for a New Zealand rental company.

Escape Plant a Tree
Escape also offer the opportunity to Plant a tree for $25 and directly help with the Te Kopi biodiversity project in the Pelorus Sound, part of the Marlborough region of New Zealand. Te Kopi will plant a tree in the best place suited to the project and will keep a record of donor name and where the tree was planted on a database.
In the coming Months, tree donors will be listed on the Te Kopi website with a GPS position of their tree which is super cool.

Escape Charity Campers
On top of all this, Escape also supports the WWF and NZ Aids Foundation by donating 5% of all revenue raised from their two charity campers (below).

This is a great example of a company doing everything they can to reduce their impact on the environment and support worthy charities. Escape is literally leading the way in internationally for environmental and socially conscious business practices.

I think the services Escape provide and values they stand for are the epitome of what New Zealand business should stand for and we could all learn from their example.

The plan
I will keep you updated with the tour via this blog and let you know how the trip is progressing and who I have met on my journeys.

My basic plans are to be in Wellington on Monday 18th August, meet the tertiary institutes like Victoria School of Design and Massey College of Creative Arts, hang out with Amie from Art List, meet Dave from Radio Active FM, and then go to the Unlimited Investment Challenge and meet some of my inspirations and hopefully get some interest in investment in Art Klick so we can expand the prints internationally. I then intend to travel up through the North Island for a week and a half, arriving in Auckland early September for a couple of weeks.

If anyone is keen to meet up to talk about art, the interwebs, marketing, interviews or their company feel free to send me an email or give me a txt or call on my cell (027 320 9881) and we can hang out.

I will keep you updated so check back often or subscribe to this blog.

You can also follow me on Twitter: artklick or add me on Skype: nz.jimmy.james

Below are some pics of the amazing artwork on the Escape campers – click on it to go to their site to check out more and book your next roadie! At $25 a day it’s a bargain! Thanks Escape!

New Million Dollar Leg Website Design Plans

Hey guys, as you may have noticed this is just a wordpress blog (which is still amazing and highly recommended if you are looking at starting a personal or company blog) but to give advertisers good exposure and make the site more interactive for visitors I want to redesign it into a proper website.

I would really like to get a tertiary institute to redesign it and make a cool YouTube video and blog documentary on the process of creating and building the site to promote that institute and their students and teachers.

NatColl has expressed some interest which would be really cool – but if anyone or even a web development company would like to do it as a way to promote their skills and services this would be a great way to do it and likely result in a lot of national and international attention. Once we get the site up I am going to push it even harder and it should get some pretty decent traffic (if the coverage so far is anything to go by).

Below is a list of the features I think would be cool but I am open to any suggestions:

- A 360 degree rotating animation of my legs (ajax or flash?) – with the tattoo’s which you could then pause, click on and zoom in.
- When you hover over the tattoo it would pop out and show the sponsors/companies who paid for that tat + the tattoo company and artist who did the artwork.
- The pop out would have the companies logo which you could then click on and take you to a page about them which they could then log into and edit, upload latest flyer etc.
- The sponsors could be sorted into category / industry and sponsorship type.
- A similar set up would be needed for media who cover the story and the article they write – so they can log in and edit their page (to encourage them to cover it and spread the word).
- A page of the tattoo companies + a blurb and link.
- An About page – why companies should sponsor etc
- An intro video – plus a video page with the YouTube Vid series.
- Site stats – unique visits, page views etc
- A twitter feed, plus links to the facebook group, YouTube channel etc
- A blog and feed to the front page
- Charities to receive the $50,000 when I make it to $1 mill – submit and vote for by community – top 10 get $5,000 each
- Artwork to be used for tats – and artist profiles from members from Art Klick. (who I pay $1,000 if I use their artwork).
- A forum with avatars and profiles for sponsors to talk marketing and promote their company.
- Competitions – with prizes from sponsors who want more coverage
- eCommerce functionality – credit card payment for sponsors and guerrilla marketer membership
- A nice CMS so I can add new sponsors, blog posts, competitions etc.

Few other ideas include:
- A drag and drop tattoo on legs – but not of high importance/necessity
- A media player

These are some ideas so far. I want to steer clear of Flash (except maybe for the rotating legs) as it isn’t visible to google and the links to sponsors wouldn’t be worth anything to them (This site is constantly increasing in power/authority in Google due to all the links from news and education websites which is another huge reason to become a sponsor – sweet sweet anchor text!)

If anyone is interested please give me an email or call and we can talk more how we can work together. Would love to get this going soon though!

Avenues Magazine Article

Before all the Million Dollar Leg Project hype my friend Rei Ishikawa recommended me to his friend Kate Ward, a very talented journalist at Avenues Magazine. I went in for an interview just over a month ago and we talked for over an hour (I felt bad because I mainly talked about myself!). It was planned to go in the September issue with two other young entrepreneurs. But about a week later I had the MDLP idea and they were keen to bring it forward a month and do an article on ArtKlick and MDLP which was great.

I have no idea how she did it but she captured everything! I honestly couldn’t ask for a better written or more accurate article. For any media coverage from now on I recommend they read this article first as it completely sums up the story of Art Klick and why I am doing it.

Thanks so much to the Avenues team and Kate, it’s an honour to be featured in the leading lifestyle magazine of the South Island.

Below is the article – Just click on the image and it will pop up in a new box – then click on it again to magnify it and you should be able to read it!

Avenues - August 2008 - Art Klick and The Million Dollar Leg Project

Avenues - August 2008