How Yasper found itself in the eye of a media storm

Throughout July and August, the Yasper team have been supporting a crew of elite rowers who are aiming to raise a record-breaking £57m for the fight against Motor Neurone Disease. What started as a pro bono storytelling project quickly escalated when we realised the story had the capacity to capture national media attention.

Our founder, Julian Pearce, spoke to the Yorkshire Post about the experience and how we turned a potential crisis into a high-profile and positive news moment for the campaign.

When you find yourself in a crisis comms scenario, the rulebook sometimes has to go out of the window. And while some crises are self-made, others are thrust upon you. How you respond to these situations is critical and can mean the difference between success and failure.

Last Thursday evening, I was settling down to watch some telly, when WhatsApp pinged on my phone. As a PR agency owner, this isn’t unusual – it’s often a client, colleague or contact sharing something with me.

In this instance, what came through made me simultaneously laugh out loud and caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.

My company has been providing pro bono support for a crew of charity rowers, who aim to raise a mammoth £57m by completing a series of extreme challenges over the next four years, to fight Motor Neurone Disease.

Our role has been to tell the story of the challenge – ROW4MND – to raise both the profile of a disease that will affect one in 300 people over a lifetime and vital funds to help find a cure.

All money raised will be split between the Motor Neurone Disease Association; the My Name’5 Doddie Foundation; and the Leeds Hospitals Charity – each an organisation that is doing sterling work to combat this awful illness.

When planning the comms around a challenge of this type, it’s important to game-play different scenarios. We had factored in many eventualities, from capsizing to crew changes, and from sickness to storms. What we hadn’t counted on was being at the centre of a media storm rather than a meteorological one.

Enter Rupert Lowe, MP for Great Yarmouth – an individual I hadn’t come across before, but with whom I was about to become all too familiar. He had spotted our crew’s boat and sent out inflammatory posts on social media, proclaiming: “Dinghies coming into Great Yarmouth, RIGHT NOW. Authorities alerted, and I am urgently chasing”.

The accompanying picture was quite clearly an ocean rowing boat, and it was not carrying migrants, just my clients!

What ensued was 48 hours of manic activity, late nights, emails, media requests and reactive statements. There was interest from every major broadcaster in the UK, and to date we have achieved >400 items of coverage mentioning the ROW4MND campaign.

It was the second most read story on BBC News at one point, and Rupert Lowe was trending on X.

It’s not often that a story captures the public’s imagination quite like this, but soon memes were popping up left, right and centre, mocking the MP’s mistake.

Most importantly, over a 48-hour period an additional £25,000 was raised for this important cause.

We had absolutely no control over Lowe’s actions, but we did have control over the response. The famous Gary Player quote, “The harder I work, the luckier I get”, was referenced several times between us and the crew, and it rings true here.

The lesson is that, when the eyes of the world are upon you and an opportunity presents itself, you need to grasp it with both hands.

To find out more about our work with ROW4MND and how we placed the crew in the national media spotlight, read our full case study, here.