Helping ex-Forces into ‘civvy street’

Coverage in the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, BBC Radio Surrey, Sunday Mirror, Daily Star and even America’s Wall Street Journal. It’s a story that has gone global in recognising the British Forces Resettlement Services (BFRS) and put its flagship ‘Jobsfair in Aldershot September 2010’ firmly on the networking map

Harry Dean of Gemini Forces and Gethin Roberts of Drivers Direct – both directors of the BFRS – approached Bridge PR and Media Services about announcing a networking event in Aldershot on September 16, 2010. The event is to help past, present and future service leavers and their family members access a range of support organisations and find meaningful employment.

Seeing the bigger picture
The initial news release, using a press distribution service adopted by major multi-national firms, highlighted the fact that 45,000 personnel will be leaving the Forces later this year. Around 20,000 leavers are as a direct result of the recent defence review, leading to a surge in ex-Forces personnel flooding the civilian jobs market.

By taking the story to a higher news platform we managed to attract interest from national and international press and broadcast media and achieved the ‘ripple affect’ – see our latest blog.

The ripple effect
Following the initial release we were contacted by BBC Radio Surrey who were interested in interviewing Harry about the transition period ex-military personnel go through. The Guardian online quickly followed and asked them to participate in a web-based seminar (webinar). This led to Guardian journalist, Lisa Bachelor, getting in touch about a feature on helping ex-forces into civvy street. We supplied Lisa with news material about all the good work that recruitment agency Gemini Forces were doing to place ex services personnel into civilian jobs and the fact that Harry Dean of Gemini was involved in a BFRS jobs fair. We then issued a release about the BFRS jobs fair.

To our delight, the Guardian newspaper carried a full front page and a half spread in the Work section, which then led to the Daily Star covering the BFRS jobs fair, followed by the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Mirror and finally the Wall Street Journal picking up the story. We expect the story to run further still.

It wasn’t a big bang story… but a slow burner that is continuing to bear fruit for our clients. Gemini/BFRS have since been approached by a production company looking to do a documentary for BBC3 on the difficulties ex-services people find in returning to civvy street.