Virtual Donal McIntyre? Not quite

Donal McIntyre -the online environmental activist. Nearly. i/view with Stephen FItzpatrick part five.

Part five of the interview with Stephen Fitzpatrick

M: Did you have any success at all – pitching these ideas at Saatchi?

SF: Yes, we had some success pitching it to Sir Peter Blake and his Blakes’ Expeditions team (Sir Peter Blake was a round the world yachtsman and national hero in New Zealand)

Blake was horrified by what he'd seen happening to oceans and wildlife and was repositioning himself as a new Jacques Cousteau with an environmental campaigning mission. He’s got a high tech boat, a team and a bunch of corporate sponsors looking to put money into his new venture.

Nothing too grandiose - we told them we could help them them punch above their weight in communications terms, build a news service and run it off the boat, get live footage back of the expeditions, get it out into the mainstream, get people engaged and backing their environmental campaigning agenda.

We had some success primarily because he was a mate of the CEO (laughs).

I also persuaded Donal Macintyre to get involved to help give the thing some momentum.

M: How did you get Donal Macintyre involved?

SF: I asked him.

M: What was he going to do?

SF: Donal was going to join the ship and take a film-crew with him to make a BBC documentary about Blake - to showcase the investigative aspect of what Blake was up to and to help him build his profile in the UK and US, help raise sponsorship,  but things turned very nasty 

M: How so?

SF: Blake was murdered by pirates on an environmental exploration trip in South America. Donal took a crew with him to try and find out what happened – but it all came to nothing in the end. After Blake had gone the project lost its’ way.

Part six: Social media meets e-government

Repositioning a government department as a social media business