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How to launch a high-tech PR offensive on tech journalists

On reflection, I think BT has the right attitude to corporate sailing as a sponsorship opportunity. It took a party of tech-inclined journalists to Cowes during Cowes Week, and organised races in Southampton Water, first.

Now, on the face of it, this isn't why people queue up to go to Cowes Week (or Skandia Cowes Week as we're supposed to call it). It's the social opportunities - that is, normally, it's for the chance to dress up as an elderly penguin and make serious attempts to achieve cardiac arrest by dint of drinking to excess and over-eating. And there's the tradition of racing past the famous Cowes water-front on the North of the Isle of Wight, and having a real canon fired to greet the winner.

BT took the view that it was a chance to get some of its more senior executives a chance to meet each other out-of-office, and also, to form personal acquaintance with members of the press corps.

This may sound obvious. Trust me, it isn't. I've been on one corporate sailing day where the client spent a small fortune chartering two large yachts, and then put all its own execs on one, and all the press on the other. Nice, of course, to meet old colleagues and rivals. But when you're giving up a whole day of potential freelance earnings, you like to feel you're achieving something that may be useful.

As for the sailing, it would not have been much fun for the many invitees who had never sailed before, if the boats (five Bavaria 36 one-design yachts) had been dumped into the Solent. When  the wind reaches 26 knots in that bit of shallow water, it gets pretty lumpy. Some of the most spectacular "Southern Ocean Storm" photographs you'll ever see showing Sir Chay Blyth's steel-built round-the-world fleet, were taken in a Force 8 gale between Southampton and Portsmouth.

By contrast, Southampton Water was flat, without big waves. The novice sailors, struggling to wind winches and haul various bits of rope while trying to work out why some were called sheets and others halyards and still others "warps" or "springs" or even "furlers" or "reef lines" usually has trouble staying on two feet. A small boat (a 36-foot yacht is a small boat!) falling off the back of a six foot wave can make even a seasoned sailor struggle for balance.

So the day was good. The end of the day involved sailing across the Solent to Cowes itself - a low-stress operation  where there was no racing involved, and if you didn't trim the sail exactly right, nobody cared (except for one lunatic who continued fanatically trying to point higher and travel faster - mutually exclusive targets!) than the rest for absolutely no reason whatever except the joy of getting close to 7 knots across the water.

Nobody was sea-sick; nobody bruised their arm, and at the end of the day, the prizes (nice whisky glasses) were issued by celebrity sailors Ellen MacArthur [left] and Olympic medallist Annie Lush [above, right]. And they both stood around at the champagne party, and chatted to the novice and reminisced about the Olympics and sailing around the world, and all the other amazing things they've done.

And from my point of view, I now know the guy who runs BT broadband by sight, and have sailed with him, and learned that he's a good lad. Now, from BT's point of view, that surely has to have been worth the money?

Tags: BT Broadband, Skandia Cowes Week, sailing, and PR