Growing awareness of the sponsorship activations through MBNA with PR and media relations

This year, our focus has been on raising awareness of partner initiatives through the MBNA Community Investment Programme through PR and media.

Research and insights:

• We work closely with partners to understand their calendar of events for their community initiatives so we can identify relevant press and media opportunities.
• This includes reviewing awareness days and events throughout the year that we can tie to their activity programme.
• We conduct an ‘always on’ approach to reactive pitching and if opportunities arise, we flag these to partners where possible.

Media relations:

• Over the years, we have built strong relationships with journalists, and we use these to bolster certain activities and events that are most suitable.
• This year alone, we have worked with Global to attend two partner events with Chester FC, Let Girls Play and Mental Health Awareness Week.
• Multiple features were included on breakfast slots across local radio stations, including Heart NW, Smooth NW and LBC.

Media monitoring:

• Due to the saturation of articles and features based around the broad term ‘coughs’, we knew we had to stand out from the crowd with press to set our doctors apart as industry leaders and experts.
• We created a bespoke media list of journalists covering relevant topics during the past 12 months and utilised our existing media relationships to land national coverage.

Website content:

• To aid awareness of the MBNA Community Investment Programme, we worked with the client to develop a bespoke landing page to sit in the ‘About Us’ section, highlighting the positive work they achieve through their partners’ initiatives.
• As part of this, we created a wireframe, supported by drafting content, and had prior involvement in creating the spotlight videos.

Award-winning initiatives:

• In early 2024, we worked with the MBNA Community Investment Programme to submit an entry to the Card and Payment Awards for ‘Changing Lives in the Community’ – and they won!