October 23, 2001
Media Director, Gordon Wright
Expedition BVI is enjoying an unprecedented level of media coverage for a first-year race. Through a combination of good luck, good PR and the undeniable attraction of the British Virgin Islands, we will be hosting television, newspaper, photography, wire service and magazine representatives.
Among the highlights are a veritable invasion of the BVI by eleven members of Outside Magazine, which is not only the premier outdoors magazine in the country, but one of its finest overall, having captured three "Maggie" awards for general excellence in recent years. The Outside staff will be shooting two photo features: the first will be a fashion lay-out featuring models and will highlight their spring apparel collection. The other shoot, which is concurrent with the first, will feature four of our athletes (two men and two women) for a summer gear/apparel photo feature. This lay-out, taking place the week prior to the race, will show our racers preparing for the four-day competition. So if you think you are the model type, or just a hard body, be sure to send us your photos ASAP and we will forward them to our editor. One caveat: we have no say in Outside's selection of athlete/models, so lobbying is ineffective, if not wholly unappreciated.
Another highlight is the television production helmed by Element Productions, of Boston, Mass. These young professionals are renowned for their commercial work and compelling imaging, and will be the supplier of nearly all video for our television and web productions. We're lucky to have them involved, and they will be sending down roughly 12 staff to film the race.
Continuing on the television theme, we have yet to finalize a broadcast production partnership, although we believe that announcement is imminent.
Additionally, we are happily surprised by the amount of television news coverage that is lining up. As with any media "commitment," the following is amorphous at best, and subject to invasion, war, acts of God, swarms of locust or other news monsters. But we expect broadcast coverage on: E! Entertainment, Fox SportsNet (Northeast), New England Sports Network, MSG-TV (Madison Square Garden, not the food additive), AsiaSat 3 (hello, 110 million viewers in Asia and Australia) and, possibly, the Travel Channel.
As for other media, a partial list includes freelance writers filing stories for Fitness Runner, Competitor, City Sports, Windy City Sports, Triathlete, Trail Runner, Reuters, (Associated Press, Agence France Presse) (one of the previous, but not all three), Adventure World, Adventure Racing Magazine, Sports Woman, Sports Illustrated Adventure (tentative), The Sports Woman (UK), Self, Oxygen, the New York Times, Hooked on the Outdoors, Blue, Canoe and Kayak Magazine, Sail Magazine, Endurance (France), Parfun d'Extreme (France), No Limits (Italy), Luxuria, DH, Canoe Sports, Espace (all Canada). Other random bits include www.mountainzone.com, www.NOW.com and Filip Nielson from Sweden who has indicated that he will produce and air a one-hour documentary on Finnish and Swedish television.
Whew! Within the next week, each team captain will receive a press release written by our staff, that will allow you to customize the copy to fit your team's biographic and geographic realities (peculiarities?). Once you plug your team information into the release, we encourage you to send it to your local media outlets, and get some face time for yourselves. Anyone with questions about how, exactly, to go about this can call Media Director Gordon Wright, and he'll share some of his pointers.
That's it for now. See you on Tortola.
