Be Nice to the Sponsors

We are fortunate to have such good sponsors in Pro Plan and PD Pet Insurance, and such helpful account managers as Miranda for Pro Plan and Jacqui for PD Pet Insurance.  When you deal with them, please make a point of letting them know how much we appreciate them and their companies.

Currently, for example, Pro Plan is giving us considerably more product than the contract requires.  Over and above that, they sometimes give us even more, in the form of product with approaching use-by dates.  Because there’s no time left to get it distributed and sold, they pass it to us as a bonus.   To learn that Miranda has been emailed and abused over the age and type of product that was effectively a gift over and above a generous prize of current product, was a disappointment, and a poor reflection on the member.

Unfortunately, I see a small but steady stream of less egregious, but still disappointing, examples of disrespect, like show organisers not bothering to display sponsor’s products nicely (or at all) failing to advise correct delivery details then publicly blaming the sponsor for late or absent product, not using the agreed logo or banner, or wearing rival companies’ apparel while officiating at a sponsored show.  I’ve heard of a club refusing to take delivery of a load of product because the truck wouldn’t fit in a driveway!  Apparently arranging for club members to move the product from the entrance to wherever they wanted it didn’t occur to anyone.

Then there are the people who run down the sponsor’s food for whatever reason.  Of course there’s no rule to say you have to like it, but there’s such a thing as courtesy – and gratitude.  We wouldn’t be sending anyone to Crufts each year without Pro Plan.  And if you really did have an unsatisfactory experience with one of their products, did you try one of their others, in case the problem was your choice of product, not the product?

Without meaning to bring politics into it, let’s remember the words of our former Beloved Leader Jacinda, “Be kind to each other.”