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All rowing together
The versatility of Guild members has been ably demonstrated by the PR support provided by the Whisper agency to a successful rowing adventure.
As Sarah Outen – the first woman to row single-handedly across the Indian Ocean – arrived in Mauritius after an epic 4000 mile journey from Australia, Guild members Adrian Bell and Amy Middleton at Whisper.pr were in the thick of the action.
Marking a significant departure from the agency’s retained agricultural clients, Adrian has been working with Sarah for more than two years, first in the groundwork to prepare for her gruelling adventure and then during the 124 days she spent at sea.
Whisper’s involvement in Sarah Outen's Indian Ocean
row made a change from agricultural topics
As the significance of her achievement began to sink in, a carefully-prepared completion plan swung into action.
The Whisper team knew how to build a following and maintain press interest over such an extended period because Adrian has experience of providing PR and campaign support for ocean-rowing and other extreme adventure attempts, including trips to the North Pole, a record-breaking crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and a desert marathon.
Adrian Bell
“By drip-feeding selected outlets during her four months at sea, Sarah’s star status and appeal grew steadily,” says Amy. “A regular slot on Radio 2’s Radcliffe & Maconie Show, Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and Radio 5’s Richard Bacon Show, plus print articles in newspapers and magazines, ensured Sarah Outen had a massive following by the time she was nearing the end of her journey.”
Amy adds that Sarah Outen’s website had more than 20,000 hits on the morning she finished from people all over the world keeping track of her progress, boosted for UK audiences by an early morning appearance on BBC TV’s Breakfast News.
“Once the story broke that she had successfully completed the row, our phones didn’t stop ringing for two days with interview requests,” Amy says. “It was quite tricky co-ordinating everything with Sarah being over 6000 miles away, especially as communications with the shore support team in Mauritius were so erratic.”
Sarah Outen’s endeavours have now come to the attention of millions more people, thanks to coverage in the Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, Daily Mirror, BBC News and several regional titles, with dozens of European newspapers, and more further afield, choosing to run the story too.
Amy Middleton
Of nine previous attempts to row the Indian Ocean only three have been successful and when her boat capsized and hit the reef just 300m from the Mauritius shore, Sarah thought she was going to add to the list of rows classed as ‘incomplete’.
But the determination to succeed saw her through to the record books; she became the youngest solo female ocean rower and set another record for the longest time spent at sea by any woman rower.
The adventure also raised more than £15,000 for Arthritis Care – Whisper waived its fees for the project to maximise the fund-raising.
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