So just what was a mountain bike blogger doing at the North American International Auto Show? It all went down something like this…
On Boxing Day I woke to a Tweet from Jeep:
@mtnbikinggirl We want to send you to NAIAS from 1/13 to 1/16 as an Official Brand Advocate. Interested? DM us an e-mail address by 5PM EST.
— Jeep (@Jeep) December 26, 2012
A quick check of Jeep’s Twitter feed that morning showed that I wasn’t the only one. Now I was even more intrigued and so I sent them a direct message with my email address. While I waited for their response I did a search of the Jeep Blog and discovered that this wasn’t the first time they gathered a group of Brand Advocates.
Less than an hour later I received an email with more information and it was followed up by a phone call the next day. Not only were they sending me, I was allowed to bring a guest! Unfortunately, my significant other was going to be at a conference in Vegas and he wouldn’t be able to join me so I made a mental list of people who would enjoy going to the North American International Auto Show, and could get the time off work. The first friend I asked jumped on it. Done deal.
We left bright and early, somewhere around insane o’clock, on January 13 and after a couple of plane changes we arrived in Detroit where we were greeted by a limo at the airport and were whisked off to dinner at The Whitney. Talk about arriving in style!
In all, there were 5 of us chosen for this adventure: myself, Anton Stetner, Jason Peck, Mary Rambin, and Stacy Acevero. At dinner we met the people behind the campaign and got to know each other a bit better. Anton, Jason, and myself had brought guests. Mary’s guest would arrive the next evening.
Finally after a long day of travel and a fantastic meal, we checked into our hotel and had this waiting for us:
Jeep definitely knew how to make us all feel welcome!
And how were the five of us picked? The full details were never revealed, but what we did find out was that it wasn’t one specific thing, it was a measurement of several different factors which included our Kred scores.
So while it may appear that I was randomly picked, they started to compile their list four months ago, a lot of thought went into who was chosen. However, for me it was like winning the lottery.
The next day was due to start at 6:30am. We were hitting the ground running…