House of the Rising Sun Corporate Sponsorship

BACKGROUND:
It started simply enough: Henry and I, Bill, decided that we wanted to set up a web cam so that we could find out what the hell the dog does all day while we are gone. This is something along the lines of "what happens when you close the refrigerator door", but far more interesting, given that we have a semi-sentient being left in an outdoors environment with several opportunities for stimulus.

Web cams aren't exactly cheap, though, especially not good ones. Plus, it wouldn't do to just have a single cam--the backyard is fairly good sized and would require at least three cams to get an all-encompassing view. So we've got three cams. The problem, of course, is what happens when we detect the dog doing something bad? Obviously, the best thing for us would be the ability for us to yell at the dog via the Internet. Of course, this requires more hardware and software.

By now, we're transmitting a fairly good amount of data across the 'net, and for it to be really useful, it'd probably have to be updated fairly frequently. A full-time dedicated connection isn't exactly cheap, and the amount of data we'd be squirting through there would almost justify an ISDN line.

So, in order for us to find out what the dog does all day, we've got a several thousand dollar startup cost, and a several-hundred dollar a month maintenance cost. Now, we certainly don't have that kind of cash, but Corporate America certainly has more than enough cash to throw around on a wasted effort such as this.

The Proposal
The proposal is fairly simple. For a small, reasonable fee of say, oh, $38,000 a year, we'll feature your name, logo, and promotional banners all over our website. In addition, we'll paint our fence with your logo, put it on each of the web images, and bleach the dog's fur with the name of your company or shave it into the side of his coat (depending on the weather). Everyone loves dogs, and this site would generate terrific amounts of traffic, generating a goodly amount of exposure for your company and your product. The Internet is a gold mine for advertising. With some good promotion on our part (I hold a BS in Marketing) the coverage could be incredible. The very fact that we would be the only dog-cam with big-time corporate sponsorship would bring the media a-running looking for a human-interest/Internet hook.

This is just the start, however. We could hook the entire house up to the Internet. Web cams would be just the start. We could hook sensors up to indicate the ambient outside and inside temperature, humidity, windspeed, and precipitation within the last 24 hours. We'd have not one but TWO ubiquitous fish-cams, a garage cam, an office cam, a kitchen cam, some more ubiquitousness with a fridge cam and a coffee cam, and temperature indicators on both. We'd have kitchen range temperature sensors, door open detection, and infrared motion detection. And, of course, your company's logo could be prominently displayed for only $105,000 a year (does not include dog-cam placement).

You may be asking yourself, "hey hasn't this been done before". Sure it has, in small doses. But who has ever hooked up every possible device to the Internet? Now, of course, it wouldn't do to have our normal old hovel hooked up. Besides, our landlord wouldn't like it a bit to have his house torn asunder so that we could wire it with all of our sensors. What better endorsement of your housing than to have a satisfied pair of roommates sharing the house with a dog?

The possibilities don't end there, my deep-pocketed corporate friend. Oh no! You were quite right in thinking that this is simply an overblown repetition of old-hat stuff. But who has ever put a remote cam on a dog? Quite simply: no one. Sponsorship of this sort would be quite costly, and probably would require donation of most of the equipment needed for this project. Oh, and a $250,000 annual fee to boot. After all, if we are going to burden the dog, it had better not be unnecessarily. Henry and myself could also wear the cams, giving unlimited vistas on which to project your corporate image.

Think about the tie-in possibilities! "You'll feel about as low as that time when Bill and Hank had to swat the dog for eating the steaks off the grill if you don't use XXXXX". T-shirts! Licensing! The recent movie "The Truman Show" has already provided a great deal of Hollywood powered hype, and we'll ride that wave right on in to the great money machine in the sky! Don't delay, email us right now!