The British GT Fans Show production team, Stormvixen Creative Media Consultancy and RPS Driven Media Limited, have noted the recent statement from the British GT Fans Group on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with dismay. The withdrawal of participation from both our original partners in our debut season is both disheartening and disruptive.
Both Nick Smith of RPS Driven Media and Sara Smith of Stormvixen CMC were made aware of the groups desire to leave the show early in week commencing 7th December 2020. Gaz Jacobs had already expressed his desire to leave the show and did not participate in Episode 20, reviewing the final round of the 2020 Intelligent Money British GT Championship at Silverstone. Andrew Brightman’s decision to leave, whilst not unexpected, was a disappointment to the production team.
As soon as we were notified of Andrew’s departure we agreed with him a timescale to allow the show to make necessary changes to our online presence. The group then pre-empted this agreement by issuing their statement early.
The group made demands at this time that we change both our name and our own image. Having suspected this could happen, we investigated our legal position and have declined to make those changes.
Our name, The British GT Fans Show, is literally descriptive. It had been Nick Smith’s intention to use that name from the beginning and consultation with Andrew Brightman prior to launching the project was a courtesy. It appears that the British GT Fans group misinterpreted this courtesy as a request. Whilst we also desired the participation of members of the groups admin team, it was not a prerequisite for producing the show, nor for the name of the show.
As the two organisations were going to be working closely together, integrating the British GT Fans group logo into our own was a logical thing to do. However, in creating our own image, we have carefully blended the corporate identity of all our partners into a single image. We have made several substantial changes to the original British GT Fans group logo, including colour, size, removal of extraneous imagery and integrated it into a more substantial creative work.
This substantial creative work is separate to the original; similar in fashion to an artists rendering of a car being a separate and equally protected work to the original design.
We understand that the British GT Fans Group admin team have significant demands on their time, with full time jobs, marshalling duties and the heavy workload of running the group. It’s therefore understandable that they are not able to devote the necessary time to a show like ours.
Our position is simple, our name, our image and our online presence is all our own and now established. We will not change our identity at the insistence of a third party; there is only one entity, the SRO, who have the rights to control our use of the series name in our identity and they have made no moves to do so.
As stated above; our name is literally descriptive. We are a show aimed at fans of the British GT Championship. We have invested significantly in that name, including website addresses, website design and maintenance, advertising, printed materials and corporate wear. We are not willing to throw that investment away over a partner which has stepped away from the project.
We will continue our work on the Intelligent Money British GT Championship and related subjects. We have taken on board feedback received during the first year of our show and are now free to make changes to bring you more of what you want to hear. We will work with our good friends at TCF Sportscars to bring this to you.
We will continue our work to bring the British GT Championship to a wider audience. That work, in just nine months, has seen our show listened to on every inhabited continent on the planet. We’ve been listened to in 29 countries, from Australia to Wales and we are working on adding Yemen and Zambia to the list! Our social media reach averages tens of thousands a month.
We feel that our goals are aligned with the British GT Fans Group even though we no longer have an official relationship with them. We will continue where appropriate to promote the group, even if we ourselves are now excluded from it, because we recognise and value the work they are doing.
Finally, we would like to thank Andrew Brightman and Gaz Jacobs for their time on the show. We’ve valued their contributions, their assistance and especially their dedication to the championship we all love. We would like to wish them all the luck and success in 2021 and beyond.
