Having had nothing to do with this Forum since my departure from it in April 2018 I noticed its bookmark the other day and idly wondered if it had got any better. I didn’t bother to log in but this thread was one of the first things that I chanced upon and I found it interesting that others shared my perception of what our Club has become.
All of the traditional member appeal of a car club journal has certainly been drained from Porsche Post by putting it in the hands of a ‘content agency’ who may well be adept at producing Essex Bride or Norwich Resident (yes, really!) but who have reduced it to the equivalent of those throw-away journals found in the back of aircraft seats. Repetitive advertorial, over-reliance on press releases, irrelevant advertising, articles where the first one or two pages are often given over to a picture and which are then generally peripheral ... and an astonishing lack of member input. The really odd thing is that despite what has been said here and what crops up in members’ conversations, the Board obviously think that PP delivers in the way that it should.
The dire state of PP (known as The Beano in this house) is just a microcosm of the way in which the Club as a whole has for some time been on the right road but resolutely travelling in the wrong direction. In the publication produced in 2001 to commemorate the first 40 years of PCGB Bill Goodman wrote, “…we resisted all temptations to grow too big.” and Chris Branston said, “…but perhaps almost as important [as becoming a Limited company] is the fact that the club rejected offers to be subsidised by and become a part of the Porsche Cars GB organisation. The temptation for financial security was enormous but the Committee and later the Board felt that independence was more important.” Of course, growth and subsidy were subsequently chosen but with an astounding lack of foresight as to their consequences.
This Forum, given the length of time that it has been established, should by now have become one of the premier UK Porsche resources but it has consistently suffered from poor management and a lack of development, with only a minute proportion of members and -significantly- officials engaging with it. In failing to capture or retain the sorts of people with the ability to drive it forward it has unfortunately become a digital backwater while the online action takes place elsewhere. The ‘Striving For Excellence’ programme is also worrying as it appears to seek to mould potential Board members in the image of those already there and so stifle any fresh thinking. This pseudo-big business approach to the way in which the Club has latterly operated has unfortunately taken it from being a club run in a business-like manner to being a business pretending to be a club, with its now vast membership being offered to commercial organisations as something which they can exploit in exchange for advertising revenue or commissions.
I feel that the Club has reached its Quo vadis? point and that its future requires careful consideration if it is to continue to be able to persuade Porsche owners to pay a subscription when there is so much in the way of cheaper or even free Porsche content and activities available. We do not seem to have organised a proper National Event (i.e. one with something for everyone) since Althrop despite our vast financial and manpower reserves and if we continue to ignore the fact that the Club has sold its soul in a number of ways it is hard to see it surviving as anything other than some sort of bland ‘lifestyle’ organisation. It really deserves to be better -much better- than that.
]
