Ikano Bank Robin Hood Marathon Event
What are the Ikano Bank Robin Hood Marathon Charity Events
Ikano is a Swedish bank, founded by the family that founded IKEA and they sponsor the Robin Hood Marathon, a charity fundraising event that appears regularly in Nottingham city centre.
What did we set ourselves to do for this charity event
For the Ikano Bank Robin Hood Marathon, we needed to raise awareness of the marathon and encourage people to sign up, for more fundraising.
Strategies in enhancing corporate charity event PR campaigns
With corporate charity events, we are looking at the PR campaign from both a corporate point of view as well as a charity angle and we need to ensure that we are satisfying both corporate publicity and charity promotion. We look at whose profiles we can raise along the way and how we are going to do it - whether it will be talking head pieces, podcasts, opinion articles and commentary, within the appropriate third sector and media landscape.
Seeking story hooks, as part of our strategy for corporate charity events, we engaged with a case study, Rory Coleman. Rory's story was that a year before his 1000th marathon, which was at the Robin Hood Marathon event, he was struck with a disease that left him paralysed and he was told he wouldn't walk again, let alone run. His progress is astounding physicians. It's a really moving feel good story because Rory is a coach, inspiring people with their sporting, home and business lives. After talking with Rory, we wrote the story for the TV and press and secured really good, quality coverage.
What can really be achieved when you use the most effective PR campaign for corporate charity events
Story hooks can come from our research, as we dig deep about the charity and the corporate company. There are always lots of opportunities for finding compelling stories and we pride ourselves with telling them well. We are fortunate that due to our backgrounds in journalism and design and with years of experience and trusted relationships, when we send stories to our key contacts in the media, they know that we won't be wasting their time. What we provide for the corporate charity events will be good journalistic copy, which they can run with.
It is possible to include PR stunts in the strategy, which would draw the media and public and give them something to talk about and share, so that they will remember but of course, this is only when we know that it is consistent with the company's messaging. We thoroughly research and check our information and any causes not to go ahead before we do because being PR professionals, we know what the outcome of the flip side of good publicity can do.
Which is a lead into the crisis management issues that we may have to deal with at corporate charity events. We have to always protect and manage reputations and our media crisis management team work 24 / 7 in order to provide the most swift, reassuring and trusted service to our clients. With corporations, we usually advise to have a crisis management plan in place, just in case.
We provide full event management for all events, whatever it includes and it may include entertainment and catering organising and coordinating all bookings. We also arrange for 1-1 interviews with the media and key spokespeople for the corporate company and the charity. We aim to get maximum good publicity for the event.
For the Ikano Bank Robin Hood Marathon, we had invited the town's Mayor - Michael Edwards and we chaperoned him throughout the event and ensured that we got professional media shots with him, to make for more good media stories.
We coordinated the press, directed and organised plenty of Ikano Robin Hood Marathon event photography to ensure that everything and all necessary people and crucial moments were pictured, like the start and finishing line. Of course, no marathon event would be complete without a date for the awards ceremony, which we attended at a later date and gained further images and stories and thus, even more press coverage.
Coverage was all across the board and on ITV and Notts TV, BBC, Nottingham Post, Nottingham Local News and others. Another one of our successful corporate charity events.