Content | PR | Social Media

PR for the longest run home – ever

We were trusted by brainstrust earlier this year to launch endurance athlete Jack Jarvis’ extraordinary #Beijing2London challenge to the media, building the profile of both Jack and the charity ahead of his world-first 13,000km run home.

Over the past four months, we have worked across PR, social media, content, influencer and celebrity engagement and sponsorship strategy to turn #Beijing2London into a campaign that could travel far beyond the start line.

Ingredients

• PR
• Social media
• Content
• Influencer and celebrity engagement
• Sponsorship strategy

Recipe

A huge human story
Jack’s personal journey, his motivation for taking on the challenge and the sheer scale of what he was attempting gave us the foundations for a compelling human-interest story.

A world-first headline
13,000km. 17 countries. Around 50km a day. The numbers gave the story instant scale and plenty of opportunities for media to bring the challenge to life.

A reason to care
At the heart of the story was brainstrust and the people affected by brain tumours – ensuring the challenge had a purpose beyond the feat itself.

PR with plenty of routes in
We developed different angles for national, regional, specialist, running and endurance media, rather than treating the challenge as a one-off press launch.

Owned content
We produced a podcast episode with Jack, giving brainstrust a substantial piece of content it could own and use to tell his story in much greater depth.

A social strategy
We created a social media approach designed to build Jack’s profile, document the challenge and connect him with relevant communities.

Influence
We identified celebrities with personal connections to brain tumours and influencers within the running and endurance communities who could help amplify Jack’s story and support him throughout the challenge.

Big-brand thinking
We developed a sponsorship strategy looking at how brands could become part of Jack’s journey, with potential targets including Nike, adidas and Ford.

Finished Dish

The launch campaign generated almost 396 million opportunities to see or listen to coverage for Jack and brainstrust.

The story travelled across very different types of media, including standout national opportunities such as live interviews on TalkSport and Sky News, BBC coverage and a double-page spread in the Daily Express. The story was also picked up by Daily Express Online, BBC News, Yahoo and AOL.

The campaign also reached the audiences closest to Jack’s challenge, with coverage across Running Week and UK Run Chat, including UK Run Chat’s website, X, Facebook and Instagram channels.

And this was just phase one. With Jack now on the road, the campaign has many more stories still to tell – from the realities of running thousands of kilometres across multiple countries to the people Jack meets, the challenges he faces and the growing community supporting him.

The launch has given brainstrust the platform to turn one extraordinary challenge into an ongoing story – with media, content, social, influencers and potential brand partners all playing a part.

“Content Soup immediately understood both the scale of this challenge and the sensitivity of the story behind it. They bring energy, creativity and strategic thinking while never losing sight of the people we support. They have been the right fit from day one.”