Team Britannia

Challenge

Boosting sponsorship investments

Alan Priddy, the man behind the attempt, is as influential as he is adventurous, and due to this, Team Britannia has enjoyed an influx of press. "Press coverage helps to secure investments and funding so our aim is to receive as many mentions in both national and local publications as possible." Project Managing Director, Allister Thompson explained.

As well as receiving new injections of cash, Team Britannia must also ensure existing sponsors are well informed and receive ROI from the partnership. Thompson further commented that this would be almost impossible to achieve without the use of Meltwater's media monitoring tool to keep track of conversations around the project and the exposure of the sponsors involved.

In a world where finite resources are scarce, the brains behind Team Britannia also wanted to use this opportunity to see if there was a design-led solution that could be implemented to help reduce the consumption of energy used on the oceans. However, with an ocean racing legend onboard and a world record to beat, the team was concerned that this ethical message was at risk of becoming lost in the buzz.

Solution

A targeted approach

Team Britannia use Meltwater as their all-seeing-eye. Through keyword tracking, they're able to analyze mentions and pull actionable insights from the data to help guide and develop a strategy. "I look at the dashboards daily. They are clean and customizable, so I have the option of focusing only on what's important for me at a given time. For example, I find the content stream and heat map particularly useful."

Having been a journalist himself, Allister understands that to positively impact press volume, relationship building with journalists is key. "Meltwater allows us to keep on top of our press - both who is writing and what they are saying - about Team Britannia while making sense of the peaks and dips in the conversations." Alister continues, "I add a note of each journalist and their engagement and document this on a structured media list." By doing so, Team Britannia is able to foster deeper relationships with influential names based on topics they know they'll be interested in covering again. A targeted approach is much more likely to result in press mentions. A key tip; Never underestimate relevance when dealing with journalists, those that do will be perceived as unstructured and therefore unreliable.

Team Britannia has a number of social and news searches set up tracking different messages associated with the project including mentions of the team, Alan Priddy and the project as a whole. "By setting up multiple searches and focusing on each message, we can easily pinpoint what is contributing to the volume of coverage." Once Team Britannia is aware of what's feeding the buzz they're able to focus their efforts. For example, they may discover that Team Britannia is only briefly mentioned in press coverage while Alan and his track record has the spotlight. They may also uncover a lack of sustainability press mentions and decide to ramp up communications around this message to ensure it doesn't become lost.