The Unsuitablog

It’s painful to watch this, but if you really want to see a giant green marketing Weeble take centre stage at a presentation by a racing team that, by its own admission, will “dabble in just about anything that has wheels”, then feel free. It gets really silly about 5 minutes in.

But first is the email exchange between myself and Megan Palmer who works for a PR company, promoting a product that – and it gets a bit complicated here – has a part to play in the thing that they actually mention, as opposed to the thing they don’t mention which is the product they are supposed to be promoting! You’ll see what I mean if you keep reading…

From: Megan Palmer
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 1:09 AM
To: Megan Palmer
Subject: FW: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

Hi,

I wanted to introduce myself and invite you to participate in Rick Ware Racing’s Video Press Conference where they will announce our green client as their multi-year sponsor for NASCAR, right before Daytona 500 next week tomorrow during a live video press conference. I will be contacting you in the near future regarding this exciting green product.

The press conference is tomorrow at 3pm EST http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rick-ware-racing or follow them on twitter for more @rickwareracing

Hope you can tune in and I look forward to working with you soon!

Megan

Megan Palmer
Executive Account Manager
Public Relations & Events

megan@amgwagency.com

ph: 305.856.8004 x: 304
fax: 305.856.8650
bb pin: 30FDCD98

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/meganpalmeramg

900 SW 8th Street C-2
Miami, Fl 33130

From: “Keith Farnish”
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 09:25:10 -0000
To: Megan Palme
Cc: Keith Farnish
Subject: Re: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

WHAT! How can a “green” client be a sponsor of a motor racing team?!

Please respond as this is astonishing.

Keith

From: megan@amgwagency.com
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 11:28 AM
To: Keith Farnish
Subject: Re: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

Good morning, maybe its better phrased as ‘eco friendly’. :) hope you can tune in.

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Keith Farnish wrote:

That still doesn’t make sense, Megan. What part of motor racing is “eco friendly”?

Keith

From: Megan Palmer
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 11:54 AM
To: Keith Farnish
Subject: Re: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

The product is “eco-friendly” but that’s only one component. It’s an automotive product, which is why they’re taking part in the motor racing sport. I can’t say too much more before the video conference. As I look further at your website maybe it’s not a fit for your type of “green” coverage. Sorry for wasting your time. :) Have a good weekend

My type of “green” coverage. As opposed to what? I assume Megan meant really gullible “green” coverage that dumbly reproduces anything that purports to be green in order to pack out its RSS feed.

[On a sidenote, one reason The Unsuitablog doesn’t have 10000 subscribers is precisely because it doesn’t dumbly reproduce every bit of cack sent to it in order to have 5 or 10 posts per day. I would like to think the people who read this actually care about the subject matter…]

So, much later on I watched a recorded version of the Rick Ware Press Conferenc because, for some strange reason, I didn’t feel like watching it live. It turns out that Megan’s client is (I assume) the makers of Fuel Doctor, the product represented by the Weeble. I popped over to their site and had a read.

Apparently, simply by plugging this little gizmo into the cigarette lighter port of a car, your mileage can improve by 25%. This is mightily impressive considering all it is is an electrical filter, much like the ones you can put between a power supply and an amplifier to (theoretically) improve the sound quality of a hi-fi. Which makes me rather concerned that hundreds of millions of people are driving around at any one time in highly complex pieces of machinery that are so badly made that a simple line filter can fundamentally alter the ability of an engine to process gasoline.

So it’s a good thing that it’s a complete load of bollocks.

The so-called “certified lab tests” show, in shattered English, between 0.055% and 0.5% fewer carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, this incredible “green” technology has the equivalent emissions improvements to cleaning a bit of dirt off the windscreen.

Now, I know the CO2 test is right, because it uses a standard piece of kit, used around the globe to a recognised level of accuracy. But in the test that produced 0.055% less carbon dioxide, the car used 16% less fuel! They have somehow contrived to create something that uses up to 25% less fuel, yet emits virtually the same amount of carbon dioxide. According to a link on their web site:

It should be noted that the majority of the Carbon (99%) coming out of an engine is in the form of CO2. This means that improvements in fuel economy result in reduced CO2 emissions.

How did they measure the fuel use? Well, nowhere does it actually say, except on one of the tests we see some rulers next to some measuring jugs containing alarmingly orange liquid. Anyway, as the man said, emissions should match fuel economy, and they don’t, so nothing on the Fuel Doctor site has any credence whatsoever.

And neither does sending out a press release claiming that something to do with a motor racing team is “green” :-)