3 Berkshire Orienteers were on BBC Radio Berkshire this morning for 3 hours with many opportunities to publicise the sport. The station has a 'Peach Quest' (named after the presenter, Andrew Peach) where the team in the studio has to solve clues and direct the BBC reporter to the next location. Sound familiar? Older orienteers may remember Annika Rice doing something similar in a television programme (Treasure Hunt). In Annika’s case, she had a helicopter and a TV crew following her around. BBC Radio Berkshire use a BBC van driven by the one-man support crew and the programme is live so no chance to edit out errors.
In fact last weekend our New Year's Eve event at the campus of the University of Reading was the location for one of the clues (so we had some free publicity then as well) but today our team spent 3 hours solving the clues and promoting the club and the sport. It is a pity to say that, despite the team solving the clues, the reporter failed by a few minutes to get to the final location but can I suggest 3 free pens might make them feel happier (note that I was not on the team so this is not a personal plea!)
Prizes for Publicity
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
Orienteering and skiing have a strong common band with many participating in both sports. A multi-actvity centre around a dry-ski slope sounds great but what could the facilities for orienteering that they are talking about building possibly be?
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38828850
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38828850
- Domhnull Mor
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
A nice mention for orienteering here:
https://www.mudstacle.com/2017/02/intro ... erent.html
Apparently Obstacle Course Racing is the fastest growing sport in the UK. If only they'd all come and try orienteering, where one of the obstacles is navigation...
https://www.mudstacle.com/2017/02/intro ... erent.html
Apparently Obstacle Course Racing is the fastest growing sport in the UK. If only they'd all come and try orienteering, where one of the obstacles is navigation...
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Spookster - god
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
That's excellent! Exactly the sort of thing that strategic plan objective 5.7 should be encouraging Regular obstacle racers the sort of audience which, to my mind, orienteering should be targeting - there's a lot of them, they're probably more likely to enjoy orienteering than the general population, and we can offer them more adventure than they usually get at the tenth of the cost.
Kudos to TVOC for making the author's first orienteering experience such a positive one. He's not the first person to become embarrassingly confused at Hill End...
Kudos to TVOC for making the author's first orienteering experience such a positive one. He's not the first person to become embarrassingly confused at Hill End...
British Orienteering Director | Opinions expressed on here are entirely my own, and do not represent the views of British Orienteering.
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Scott - god
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
Also, I don't know where the author lives, but I note that there are a good 130 miles of driving between the locations of his first two races. Who says that newcomers aren't prepared to travel?
British Orienteering Director | Opinions expressed on here are entirely my own, and do not represent the views of British Orienteering.
"If only you were younger and better..."
"If only you were younger and better..."
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Scott - god
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
Good point Scott - whilst Sport England research shows that newcomers will rarely travel more than 20mins to try a new sport, this author is clearly different!
I'd had quite a few exchanges of messages via the TVOC Facebook page before Pete (the author of the article) came to Hill End, so another plus for Facebook promotion too!
Incidentally, for £30 of Facebook advertising, we had 79 IND entries - FB was the only form of publicity I used, so a very healthy return! Plus a very large proportion of the IND entries were M/W 21s, which highlights that social media promotion is the way to go to target young sporty adults/runners.
I'd had quite a few exchanges of messages via the TVOC Facebook page before Pete (the author of the article) came to Hill End, so another plus for Facebook promotion too!
Incidentally, for £30 of Facebook advertising, we had 79 IND entries - FB was the only form of publicity I used, so a very healthy return! Plus a very large proportion of the IND entries were M/W 21s, which highlights that social media promotion is the way to go to target young sporty adults/runners.
- MikeShires
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
Spookster wrote:Apparently Obstacle Course Racing is the fastest growing sport in the UK. If only they'd all come and try orienteering, where one of the obstacles is navigation...
Completely agree - it's definitely something that orienteering publicity can take more advantage of. As Pete (the mudstacle blog author) says, he didn't know about the orienteering "scene", so it all boils down to a need for better publicity!
I tried to target this market more last year for a series of events in Bucks (mainly with social media marketing, but also including a printed flyer). It's all about branding, how the sport is described and the targeted marketing to that market.
The series of four events (marketed as races rather than events - subtle terminology change for the image/branding) got an average of around 70 IND entries at each event, mostly the younger sporty adult target market too.
Images courtesy of ActivNorth photography (used with permission!)
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- MikeShires
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Re: Prizes for Publicity
And just another blog entry about an account of the Didcot Urban Race - spreading the word via these types of blogs is something I'm really trying to work on at present, as they present a good image of the sport.
https://rosiedaviesblog.wordpress.com/2 ... enteering/
https://rosiedaviesblog.wordpress.com/2 ... enteering/
- MikeShires
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