Much excitement at Launch Towers this week as the teams behind the inspiring Scott-Amundsen Centenary Race to the Pole recreation met TRH Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Earlier this year the five team members completed their arduous trek, covering 920 miles in the process. Incredibly, the Scott team reached the South Pole 100 years to the day as Captain Scott did, before he began his ill-fated return trip.

The Duke is patron of the expedition and joined team members in London to show his support. As you might expect, there was much media attention focused on Kate’s attire but when Prince William held the oh-so-cute three week old Hugo Vicary, son of Scott team member Vic Vicary, the media and social media sphere went into overdrive.

Fantastic front page coverage followed for the Legion, with much of it mentioning the heroic efforts of Lt Col Henry Worsley and his Army team-mates in raising funds for The Royal British Legion’s Battle Back Centre.

The expedition raised a staggering £160,000. And Team Poppy at Launch has been honoured to be involved and supporting them every step of the way…

Is one of your new year’s resolutions to be working at a ‘PR Week Best Place to Work’ agency, implementing exciting client campaigns for the likes of Tesco, BP, Capital One, Disney & The Royal British Legion, with an incredible bunch of like-minded people -  then look no further!

Launch Group is recruiting for brilliant consumer Group Account or Account Directors, Consumer Account Managers, Corporate Account Execs and Graduates to work across our all-channel accounts.  You will be results-minded, have a love of media relations, and have experience working at well-known agencies on big, well-known brands and have a passion to be part of an exciting, growing agency.

Please send your CV to cvs@launchgroup.co.uk and we look forward to a very Happy New Year with you.

Today’s date (11.11.11), a perfect palindrome and a particularly poignant Armistice Day as the Royal British Legion commemorates its 90th Anniversary. To say it’s been busy at Launch Towers would be an understatement. The RBL team has been working relentlessly in the lead up to Remembrance Sunday securing media opportunities left right and centre. With too many to mention individually, I’ve compiled a few highlights from the last couple of weeks.

Boris meets Doris

Boris Johnson appeared with Launch’s very own Harriet ‘Doris’ Murphy to launch London Poppy Day, the largest single fundraising day in the capital with servicemen and volunteers aiming to raise over £500,000 in just 12 hours. Thanks to Harriet (and of course Boris), the pictures made it to page 2 of the Evening Standard and kick started the media frenzy…

London Poppy Day

Question: What do you get if you cross nearly 1,000 men in uniform and a load of poppies. The answer is London Poppy Day, a PR dream and enormous honour.

The largest fundraising day started with a bang with Launch’s illustrious team leader Rebecca running round London trying to coordinate service personnel, beneficiaries, route master buses, Olympic cyclists and a number of national film crews. Whoever said working with children and animals was difficult should speak to Rebecca about coordinating the PR for London Poppy Day! Joined at her side by media hound Charlie who was last seen running after the TFL commissioner’s routemaster bus as it left without her and the BBC London film crew who had come down to film the bus! Thankfully she caught up with it and the team achieved some astounding coverage (personally some of the best I’ve ever witnessed) including numerous broadcast interviews with BBC London News and ITV News.

Piggybacking the news agenda

A particularly great piece of ‘PR piggybacking’ also occurred. Cue ITV News broadcasting a piece on the opening of a new road in the city complete with vintage cars driving down Regent Street. I can only imaging their PR team’s frustration as some rather dashing soldiers holding trays of poppies appear in the back of the vintage cars. Sorry!

May the force(s) be with you

To mark the end of London Poppy Day with a total of nearly £450,000 raised in just 12 hours, the team headed down to Leadenhall Market for a glass of wine with the soldiers. Without giving too much away, we lost an umberella and gained a few friends…..my lips are sealed *ahem*!

Shoulder to Shoulder

In true ‘All Channel PR’, some phenomenal digital work as we also launched Shoulder to Shoulder. The RBL team capitalised on the random appearance of Suggs in the building and added to the virtual wall of Remembrance alongside the Saturday’s, Lorraine Kelly, Barbara Windsor, Andy Murray to name a few. The number of people currently standing shoulder to shoulder is 17,000  but is increasing by the day.

From Cupcakes to Bling….Poppies take over the world!

Any of you watching  Live with Gaby today will have seen Flossie cup cakes for Remembrance Day and Recipes for Remembrance….massive well done to Larissa, the relentless phonecalls have paid off! Twitter also went crazy last weekend with the airing of Strictly Come Dancing and the X-Factor….well done to Charlie who couldn’t physically have featured more poppies on primetime TV if she had tried!!

And finally… today the team went down to Silence in the Square. A truly moving experience for me personally given that my grandfather died serving his country in the Navy. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the Launch team to achieve the phenomenal amount PR coverage for the Royal British Legion. What a fantastic start to my time at Launch.

This week Launch Group joined The Royal British Legion for this year’s launch of the Poppy Appeal 2011.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of The Royal British Legion and to celebrate, the Legion is calling for the nation to stand shoulder to shoulder with serving and ex-Service personnel and show their support by wearing a poppy.

Whether it’s the traditional poppy or a virtual poppy, the long standing symbol of The Royal British Legion remains a powerful reminder of those who have served and still serve the Armed Forces.

This year, the team are helping to get the word out about  The Shoulder to Shoulder app, which enables people to upload a photo of themselves, add a poppy to it and then a message of support to our Armed Forces. Once submitted, the images then appear on the Shoulder to Shoulder virtual wall.

The app launched yesterday and already an amazing 2,800 people have uploaded pictures to show their support.

To show your support, check out the website and follow Shoulder to Shoulder on Twitter.

Twitter has become the most important soap-box of the media world – forget reading about gossip in weekly mags and online rags, these days we want it immediately from our favourite ‘slebs smartphone.

It really is a wonder the impact that just 140 characters can make on a campaign.  You can have a steady increase of followers, and then BOOM! Stephen Fry gives you a mention and your figures leap.

Lazy folk don’t even need to write a personal message, they can just retweet somebody, and then your reach automatically widens to their avid followers too.

Celebrity endorsement from shampoo to cars is a multi-billion pound industry with temperamental results, yet the power of a recommendation on Twitter is immense.  Simon Cowell asked the Twittersphere where he could get a Poppy Twibbon (like a bumper plate sticker for your Twitter avatar, a way to show your allegiance to a cause), PoppyLegion (aka us here at Launch!) replied linking to the Official Royal British Legion Twibbon and Simon told his 40,000 followers that he “highly recommends” following PoppyLegion.  The result? 160 people started following Poppy almost immediately. 

It is also a great outlet for enquiries; after the X Factor gang wore personalised sparkly poppies, everyone wanted to know where to get one.  As a result, they completely sold out (raising massive amounts for the Poppy Appeal) particularly after Dannii Minogue and The Saturdays tweeted about how much they loved theirs. 

The charity 2 Minute Silence single is supported by myriad public figures – from sports stars to musicians and politicians – and has created a great Twitter publicity push that reaches a great scope of the population; Thom Yorke reached the alternative crowd, David Tennant called out to his Dr Who devotees and Stephen Fry enlightened his 2 million fans.

In the two weeks of the 2010 Poppy Appeal , PoppyLegion has multiplied her followers by a third, an amazing achievement which I’m sure is down to  the passion for the cause – not just celebrity advocacy…but it sure does help point people in our direction.

So if you too want to join the clique of a media mogul, ex-Prime Minister and top popstars I’d recommend you follow @PoppyLegion too.