We run media, filming and digital campaign live from the Sahara Desert with Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Filming on location

We managed the media, filming and digital campaign live from the inhospitable Sahara Desert with explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes as he undertook the gruelling Marathon des Sables – the toughest footrace on earth – to raise funds for charity Marie Curie.

Our brief

Our brief was to tell the dramatic story from the Sahara Desert in real-time, whilst driving digital engagement, media coverage and ultimately donations.

We travelled to the Sahara Desert with Sir Ranulph Fiennes and set up camp ready for six days of extreme filming, live broadcasts and daily editing of content for social media and broadcasters, including our media partners BBC Breakfast and the Telegraph.

You are world class at what you do. I wish I’d known you years ago.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes

Filming in the Sahara

For five days we filmed Sir Ranulph as he completed this gruelling challenge.

Every day we shot, edited and transmitted a video diary and a set of photographs for The Telegraph, our print & online media partner.

We also transmitted a daily set of photographs back to Marie Curie for their social media channels and for sending out to further press outlets in the UK.

Arranging strategic partnerships

Producing live outside broadcasts, especially in difficult or remote locations, is one of our specialities.

Our entire media operation from the desert relied on satellite communications.

To do this Fieldcraft Studios arranged a sponsorship partnership with Inmarsat – the satellite experts. They provided us with equipment and a connection.

This sponsorship enabled us to transmit our daily diary and also produce live broadcasts for BBC Breakfast, Sky News, ITN News among others.

Every day we also prepared a b-roll package with the most compelling shots and a set of photographs from the day for BBC Breakfast and other broadcasters.

Phenomenal media coverage

We worked very closely with the brilliant Marie Curie PR team, who were running the PR campaign from the UK, and an incredible 75% of all UK adults saw the resulting media coverage.

Every national broadsheet and tabloid in the country covered the story as did the major broadcasters.

This type of blanket coverage is testament to Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ popularity and the expertise of the Marie Curie PR team – but it was made possible by having our specialist team on the ground who were able to report in realtime sending back broadcast-ready video diaries, video clips and photographs that fed the media and social media story on a daily basis.

Watch one of the BBC Breakfast broadcasts

Influencer marketing

We have been working with digital influencers since 2010 when we staged the UK’s first charity overseas trip with bloggers for Save the Children.

For Marie Curie, we put together a fascinating event for bloggers at Kingston University where Sir Ranulph was training in the heat chamber.

This gave the bloggers an unprecedented ‘behind the scenes’ experience of Sir Ranulph’s expedition training.

Our team of blogging and vlogging ambassadors blogged about the campaign and also helped to share the content live from the field.

Influencer results

In total our influencer campaign saw 1,700 bloggers sharing content and writing about the campaign.

Innovative storytelling

We’re always looking at new ways to tell stories that will generate public engagement and media coverage.

For this campaign we trialled storytelling using data from wearable technology.

We put together a partnership between the sports science department at Kingston University and the Media Innovation Lab at Lancaster University.

Together we built a dashboard that tracked Sir Ranulph’s vital statistics throughout the race.

Telling stories with data

The dashboard was updated daily with rich media content straight from the field, Sir Ranulph’s vital statistics and importantly, expert comment from Dr Hannah Moir and Chris Howe.

This fresh take on storytelling in the field gave us extra media coverage and a new angle for telling the story.

Read our blog post about the project.

Results

An phenomenal 75% of all UK adults saw coverage of this campaign.

Fuelled by our daily updates of photographs, video and our ability to set-up live TV interviews with Sir Ranulph we ensured that national newspapers, tabloids, national TV and radio all covered the story throughout the duration of the challenge.

This widespread media coverage helped Marie Curie to fundraise £2million.

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