The story so far

I don’t like to start a blog by saying this but here I go again. I’m very sorry.

My apology stems from a good two months of solid university work. To break that down into more detail the work has consisted of Dissertation, Competitive Pitch, a 15 item portfolio of work and last but not least Corporate Relations. These few modules alone have led to a serious neglecting of my own blog, but more to the point the one and only Ptarmigan Academy blog. So let me fill you in with what’s been going on with the Ptarmigan Academy.

To do this properly let me take you back a month to the middle of February. Our work on Challenge66 continued and to ensure the campaign was a success our efforts to find celebrity endorsement had to be stepped up dramatically. Academy team captain Adam Burns – who takes on the role with the effort and determination only seen by Manchester United’s Nani trying to convince a referee he’s been fouled by faking an injury – had all the academy tweeting celebrities to hopefully raise the Challenge66 profile.

After a few days of solid tweeting celebs the girls efforts were rewarded by retweets from Coleen Rooney, Lorraine Kelley, Dame Kelley Holmes and a number of Sky Sports New presenters. The celeb tweeting also managed to bag one academy member Claire Thomas a twitter following subscription from Boy George. Lucky girl!

So a month down the line and the start date was in sight. On Wednesday 9 March Andy, Claire, Aimee and I (Andrew) attended a GNS radio day, in which Andy did a number of live and pre-recorded interviews with around 20 local BBC radio stations and also interviews with the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS). Whilst Andy tried to mention all of the sponsors of Challenge66 along with his all time favourite joke ‘not Yeti’ (this is a reference to Skoda donating two cars and Andy excited to reply ‘Not Yeti’ to anyone who asked him if they were near their next location) we all got a chance to listen in a record the number of mentions for each of the sponsors. This was a great day which revealed good sight into how these days run. I believe it was the first GNS day that any of the academy had ever attended.

Today the Challenge66 campaign finally got under way with an incredible launch day in Leeds. A number of students from the Leeds Metropolitan Events Management course played a huge part in arranging the event which saw ABF The Soliders’ Charity out in force and the Challenge66 tour bus parked on Leeds’ busiest shopping street Briggate. The event launch was also attended by Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, who lost both his legs and suffered other horrific injuries during an explosion in Helmand Province in 2006.

It really was amazing to see the campaign come to life after all the hard work put in by the guys at Ptarmigan, ABF and Andy McMenemy and the whole Challenge66 team. All the local press were at the event including Yorkshire Evening Post, BBC Look North and ITV Calendar News as Andy started the first of 66 ultra marathons. Please click on the links below to catch some of the coverage achieved.

Link one

Link two

Link three

Now the campaign has got underway the work for the academy really starts. A media list for each of the 65 remaining cities has been drawn up and the tireless task of ring rounds begins.

I’d love to continue and fill you in with even more Challenge66 news but unfortunately I cannot see into the future. I do ask you all to keep up-to-date with this truly amazing campaign by visiting www.challenge66.org and also searching Twitter and Facebook for Challenge66.