Make Your Mark Blog

In our media obsessed world TV remains the medium which is most sought after - by teens and Susan Boyles wanting their five minutes (or longer) of fame, by brands wanting to get in front of their target audience and by charities and campaigners wanting to raise awareness of issues, and to change attitudes and behaviours.

As for Make Your Mark we do our best to influence programming to make sure that programmes which inspire people to be entrepreneurial continue. Dragon’s Den and the Apprentice brought entrepreneurs to the public’s attention but on their own they give just one view of the kind of people who set up in business.

So, we offer our expertise and ideas as a creative resource to TV channels and production companies, and keep them up to date with interesting entrepreneurs and trends.

We also offer them access to our network of Make Your Mark Ambassadors, promoting TV opportunities which we often get a good response to. For example three of our Ambassadors appeared on BBC 3’s Last Millionaire programme - Lianne Miller, James Taylor and Nathaniel Peat.

And sometimes, if we’re really lucky (or cunningly in the right place at the right time) we get the chance to work on bigger TV partnerships. Right now we’re very lucky to be working on Village SOS, a partnership between the BBC and the Big Lottery Fund. We’re providing expertise about enterprise - helping with the Village Champion selection and application materials, promoting the opportunities to our various networks and inputting into the BBC Learning campaign which will accompany the series in Winter 2010. It’s a sustainable campaign where all partners have the same vision - that the programmes (and BIG funding) will change not only the lives of the six villages who feature in the programmes, but also the lives of many other villages and individuals who are inspired by it.

So my five tips for getting your inspiring story or cause on TV are:

• Be as helpful and responsive as you can, even if the first opportunity you are offered isn’t up your street
• If you can’t help don’t leave it there - look to your network for who you could introduce them to
• Work with the TV companies and channels who are looking to champion causes and individuals, rather than making fun out of them. We accidently involved some of our Ambassadors in Fonejacker (could have been worse!)
• Don’t underestimate the value of your organisation - TV programmes require a huge range of expertise and partnerships to make them happen. Lots goes on behind the scene before the cameras even start rolling
• Play the long game. Don’t assume every TV opportunity will go somewhere, you will probably have 20 conversations before one turns into a real opportunity. There are thousands of ideas for every programme commissioned

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Celebrities, Creative Industries, For fun, Make Your Mark Ambassadors, Village SOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.