Would you credit it?!

Yesterday saw the ICAP charity day.  The company describes itself as ‘the world’s premier interdealer broker and provider of post-trade risk & information services’.  Since 1993 they’ve been donating all revenues from one day’s global trading to charity.  In the last couple of years that’s been over £11m annually.

Picture from ES website

Like the BGC trading day, which it pre-dates by a number of years, the charities organise celebrity supporters to come along and encourage the traders, as well as getting a chance to make a trade.

 The event got great coverage and made the front cover of London’s Evening Standard, featuring a picture of former Doctor Who star, David Tennant and inside was a picture of Bond actor, Daniel Craig.  There was a great credit for ICAP – deservedly so.  What there wasn’t was a reference to the individual charities the stars were supporting. 


Picture from ES website



It reminded me of a couple of times when great celebrity supporters have failed to get a mention for the charity involved.  One was Nicole Kidman launching Cancer Research UK’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month at Madame Tussauds which got picked up but with no mention of the charity.  Another was when Hollywood A-Lister Ashton Kutcher visited a training exercise with the RNLI.  This one, which was tied in to a film launch, didn’t even get picked up. 

In the ICAP case whilst a mention for the charity would have been nice it wasn't essential.  The main reason for asking for the celebrity support is to reinforce the relationship between the charity, ICAP and its staff.  If the stars help raise the profile of the corporate supporter that’s great and worth using up an ask.

Getting the support of the sort of big names mentioned here is a terrific achievement and never easy.  However they do not guarantee you publicity.  Putting all your eggs in a celebrity basket is always a risk and doesn’t always pay off, which is fine if you recognise this, but it can be hard getting directors and trustees to understand.  Thus managing expectations in advance of an event is incredibly important.