Ravens Senior VP/Digital Media & Broadcasting MICHELLE ANDRES is off to London this week in preparation for Sunday’s Ravens-Jaguars game at Wembley Stadium. While it’s not Andres’ first time traveling to The Big Smoke, it is for her organization. She’ll be on-hand to not only guide the team through the city’s attractions, but more importantly, head their digital efforts to make sure fans back home don’t miss a beat. Andres left Wednesday night with her team to set up HQ at The Admiralty pub in Trafalgar Square, where they’ll lay the groundwork for the weekend leading up to the big game.
TAKES A VILLAGE: The prep for this trip far exceeds the normal prep for a regular season home game. We’re essentially taking the entire show on the road. That includes cheerleaders, a portion of our fans, our mascot, all whom we don’t normally travel with to an away game. There’s that whole process, and then of course setting up events in London both for the fans traveling and for those that already live there. It’s our regular travel party, plus extra marketing folks, digital people, broadcasting folks as well as corporate sales people. Pretty much extra folks from every department in order to help us execute.
24/7 COVERAGE: For my crew, we have two separate teams. One we sent early Wednesday night to be there in time for the welcome party we’re hosting at The Admiralty on Thursday night. Then the second crew left Thursday night with the team itself to get there Friday morning. The entire time we’re there, we’ll have two different crews operating at all times, one of which will be covering what’s happening with the team. The other will be covering everything happening with the fans and the events we have going on.
LOAD UP THE BUS! We’re having a party at our pub each day. There’s the welcome party Thursday night, then Friday we have a bus tour all over the city with our cheerleaders, fans, RAY LEWIS and JONATHAN OGDEN. We’ll hit all the tourist sites around the city, including the Tower of London and Big Ben. It’s a branded bus wrapped in Ravens logos and we’ll get off at each stop and mingle with fans, tourists and then move on to the next one. We’ll also be taping our popular podcast “The Lounge” live from the pub that day previewing the game.
FLY LIKE A BIRD: Saturday we’ll have our “Ravens Flock Party: London Edition,” where we’ll have a lot of the UK fans clubs present. Then on Sunday we’ll host a tailgate prior to kickoff. During the game we’re coordinating everything we have going on from a digital standpoint. Social media, photography, video, getting up highlights, imagery on the team site, etc. It’s a big machine of people really trying to cover the game for the fans who can’t be there. From start to finish we’re on every digital channel you can imagine.
TICKET TO RIDE: I’m a pretty big traveler and I’m going to be heading to Vietnam in April for a little over two weeks with my dad. My family also mostly lives in the South, especially Florida, so in the offseason I have an opportunity to go down and visit with them. I think we’ll have a little down time in London as well this weekend. I’m hoping to do a tour of Buckingham Palace and then also Kensington Palace as well.
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