Forget the Thriller in Manila and the Rumble in the Jungle as we bring you … the Lark in the Park

USUALLY you’d find that we are advocates that PR and marketing should go hand in hand.

Usually we’d tell you that aligning PR and marketing harmoniously will help you achieve your business objectives and boost the bottom line.

Usually we’d be respecting the complementary roles between marketing and PR, with both needed for business success.

This isn’t ‘usually’.

Today we go off script to tell you about PR and Marketing going head in a good old fashioned grudge match. And it involved blood, sweat and (nearly) tears.

If you’ve been following developments here at Holyrood PR, you’ll know we’ve been training hard for the Total Warrior challenge,  an exhausting 12k mud run punctuated by 30 muscle and spirit sapping obstacles.

Well, it turns out the Scottish Government’s marketing team are also in training for September’s event, leading to the gauntlet being thrown down for a training day face off.

So read on for my full and completely non-biased account of the beasting session between Holyrood PR and the Scottish Government Marketing Team and to see who came out on top.

Setting the scene

As avid consumers of the news, we were delighted to read Clare Smith’s weekly diary pieces in the Edinburgh Evening News. Clare is the Chief Marketing Officer at the Scottish Government and her accounts have been informative, inspiring and honest.

Her team seemed to be training pretty damn hard, guided by fitness guru Keiron Ross of Race Fitness, who has been putting the Government team through its paces every week.

We’ve been training pretty hard ourselves thanks to our own twice-weekly preparations with Darren Danagher PT from Studio EH1 and sessions at Lifescycle spinning studio. So we got in touch with Clare to let her know we were kindred spirits.

Why would we put ourselves through the pain and torment? Find out each team member’s motivations for tackling Total Warrior

That certainly lit the blue touchpaper – and Clare was keen to assemble her troops in preparation for a ‘PR versus Marketing’ challenge.

The Event

Meeting at Inverleith Park, our team of four Warriors, Scott, Craig, Katie and I assembled, opposite the team of four ScotGov challengers.

Following a warm up that certainly got hearts racing Keiron set a challenge to gauge fitness levels.

The PRs certainly seemed to impress – perhaps mistakenly – and the teams were soon levelled up, which included my own switch to the dark side.

Check out Clare’s own account of the battle between PR and Marketing in her weekly Edinburgh Evening News article

The battle royal then commenced, with various challenges ranging from a medicine ball carry relay race and two painful tests of core strength to a dignity shattering ‘monkey run’.

Seven events in and it really couldn’t have been much tighter. Following a good start, which saw defeats for the PRs in the core tests as well as the medicine ball run, Team Marketing’s lead had been pulled back to 4-3.

It turned out that the team of PR’s proved adept at scaling walls and running like monkeys. Make your own jokes.

In the last event, a time trial making use of Inverleith Park’s balancing beams saw Team PR bring home the bacon, sealing a 4-4 draw.

So what did we learn?

Without wishing to sound too cheesy, Total Warrior comes down to team work. Having good spirit, a base level of fitness and keeping it fun and interesting have proven to be crucial factors when training but they will be also be  vital on the day itself.

Having the opportunity to interact with another team going through the same experiences put this into perspective and gave us great motivation to keep going.

There may have been no winners on the day, but our exploits made for a great article in the capital’s main source of local news, has certainly helped me write this blog and has raised awareness for the great cause that is SSC, the charity that we are working hard for.

Rumours abound of a re-match closer to the big day, keep posted to see if that materialises.

Please dig deep and  give a fiver to a brilliant cause

Any donations to our MyDonate page will be gratefully received and will help us provide assisted places to allow disadvantaged kids to attend SSC summer camps and make lifelong friends and connections along the way whilst enjoying unforgettable experiences in the Perth countryside.

Find out more about our journey to become Total Warriors 

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