The Longest Round: Helping champion fighter fundraise

Press Box PR partnered with former world, European and Commonwealth champion boxer, Darren Barker, to become lead sponsor and sole media partner for his all-new charity event.

Barker devised The Longest Round, the first extreme challenge of its kind. The event saw Barker cycle from Edinburgh to Dover, swim the English channel, cycle Calais to Gibraltar and then solo saile from Gibraltar to Morocco in an 1800 mile challenge all in order to raise awareness of men’s mental health issues to raise money for anti-suicide charity, Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

https://www.justgiving.com/page/thelongestround 

PBPR’s objective was to increase brand awareness of the challenge in order to increase fundraising.

Our strategy was to create a PR and marketing campaign that aimed at securing organic media coverage in top tier titles with a focus on link-building to drive traffic to the fundraising page.

The dedicated team kicked off with a media day at launch in Edinburgh which saw us grant key journalists exclusive access to Barker for interviews. We then acted as press office sharing news and updates and arranging interviews with key publications throughout each leg.

Our final push was to create a surprise hero’s welcome into Gibraltar for Barker and his team. We arranged crowds of people to meet at the entry point for a large scale photoshoot which resulted in TV and radio coverage in Gibraltar.

We secured 36 pieces of online media coverage including Daily Mail, The Independent, The Sun, Metro, The Mirror and Sports Illustrated. Plus one print piece of coverage, one radio and one TV broadcast pieces. 100% of the media coverage was organic with no advertorials, paid-for placements or paid-for links. And a massive 73% of coverage included links to the Just Giving page helping Barker to fundraise more than £53,000.