Photo credit: © Laurens Morel

Since cat sailing and yachting journalism are my true passions, it was a major pleasure to work for the first ever World Championship in the Nacra 17. This newly designed catamaran has its roots in Scheveningen, so the location of the inaugural battle for global gold in the Olympic mixed multihull class for 2016 wasn’t a surprise. The whole event was supposed to become a blue print for future organizations of the Worlds.

I was however only contracted by the end of May, so the challenge was huge with less than two months to go. I was asked to think about a plan to promote the new class and boat, the City of The Hague as a top sailing location and the National Sailing Center in Scheveningen. My proposal included a lead-up with weekly interviews with sailors and coaches, a video item about the sailing center and a company profile of Nacra Sailing International with a series of interviews with employees and owners. All supported by social media of course.

I involved my colleague Marjolein Brandt, so together we operated as the International PR Team. The Royal Netherlands Yachting Association took care of the press reporting about the national team in the Netherlands.

Our difficulty was the event web page, that needed to be revised. Upon request I gave my recommendations, completed with the input of Marjolein, but the whole process took a while. We went live just two days before the opening ceremony, so we basically missed the time to meet our PR goals prior to the event, which was frustrating. We had the articles, but we could not publish them properly.

But as soon as the Worlds were on, the website was up and running and all puzzle pieces of our PR job fell together. Our press releases and other reports were published worldwide, the number of Nacra social media followers grew rapidly and so did the web traffic.

I enjoyed working with Icarus Sailing Media, a very professional sports management, marketing and media company from Greece. Their way of reporting on sailing events makes a huge difference in comparison to most of their competitors. Their images are great and they also keep the excitement of the race alive, due to their knowledge of the sailing sports. Again a wonderful combination of professionalism and passion!

August 8, 2013