Hi, I’m Katrina, I recently joined the All-Channel Launch team working mainly on Tesco and BP.

Having only been a Launcher for 6 working weeks this week heralded my first piece of experiential activity and the opportunity to spend a day with former Olympian and hurdling legend, Colin Jackson CBE. It just so happens that Colin is one of the nicest men you will ever meet and just as well as we were asking him to run his first ever half marathon on before of the Tesco Great School Run. This he did with consummate ease and a big smile on his face the whole way round.

Prior to my arrival, Launch had taken the brief to raise awareness of the 2012 Tesco Great School Run ( a 2k fun run staged at schools across the UK encouraging children, family, friends and teachers to take part in exercise for fun) and encourage other children/schools to sign up. The idea was simple yet effective – get Colin to run between the primary schools in Westminster to thank them for signing up to this year’s run and spur on kids to take part. The response we had from schools and kids alike was fantastic and far exceeded our expectations. The best way to give a snapshot of the day is by numbers:

• 15 miles run
• 1000+ kids met
• 100 Autographs signed
• 20,000 steps taken
• 500 high fives
• 150+ banners made
• 5 London Landmarks

It is not every day you get to work with a British sporting legend but seeing the response from the kids along the way was truly refreshing and I would recommend it to anyone! Coverage included: The Sun, The Guardian, TalkSport, The Mirror, The People, MSN to name a few.

Here at Launch Group we realise that December is typically a gluttonous month focused around consuming vast quantities of food and drink! So, in order to ‘do our bit’ and give back to charity we decided to host a Charity Coffee Morning this week to raise money for The Royal British Legion, one of the most prominent and newsworthy charities and also a client of ours.

In order to get as many people involved as possible, we asked all Launchers to get their baking hats on and create something delicious that would sell in the masses. And we weren’t disappointed….Amongst our baked beauties we had a delicious and handmade coffee cake, decadent (and giant) chocolate brownies, crammed with dark chocolate pieces, and a variety of cookies and cupcakes decorated beautifully with glitter.

As with all sweet treats, the baked goods went down very well with the team, and everyone was very generous. Launch Group managed to raise a very respectable £51.00 for the charity. Eating all those cakes seems all the more acceptable now…

Well, here they are: the spindly, delicately sprouting products of several weeks of love, watering and half-hearted sabotage attempts. It would be fair to say that some of our sunflowers are faring better in the office environment than others (Laura’s sadly appears to have heaved its last breath), but there’s no doubt that nursing our plant friends day-to-day has brought out our green – and not to mention competitive – side in a big way.

After all, this June has been proclaimed Launch Green Impact Month, which means that we’ll be looking harder than ever at our CSR policy, and just how exactly we can make all of our practices as super-green as possible.

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