The people that make it happen: Charlie Evans

A huge amount of planning and effort goes into delivering an international events series such as the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay. In this series we are showcasing the exceptional people behind the scenes who make each Bloomberg Square Mile Relay race run like clockwork.

In this second part of the series we spoke with Square Mile Sport’s Digital Marketing Manager, Charlie Evans who has been in post since January 2019.

Evans leads on all things digital for the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay including social media, digital and direct marketing, news content, advertising and supporting other colleagues with their digital needs. “The great thing about working in digital and in this role especially, is that there is so much amazing content that you can create and such a diverse community of followers to engage with. Every day is very different and there is always something to do.”, explains Evans.

“I am one of the few people in the team that work across all races in the series as well. I like to keep myself busy!”, said Evans.

Evans manages the social media for all Bloomberg Square Mile Relay events

“One moment I’m having a great conversation with one of our runners on Instagram. I’m then number crunching the analytics to see which campaigns are performing better than others and why. That’s before I do some coding for our HTML emails. It’s really varied.

“Covering events on digital is all about the preparation and race days are an interesting one, working across a wide range of time zones with me based in London” says Evans who previously worked at several British Olympic sports federations before he joined the team.

“We schedule in as much of the content in advance as possible. That frees up my time to have direct conversations with people on race day who are at the event and to try to convey as much of the live in-event experience as possible.

“A large majority of my work for the event comes after it has finished, as that is when a lot of people become active on their own social media channels; talking about the race, sharing photos etc.

“But without doubt the highlight of every race for me is seeing how much we’ve raised for The Extra Mile Programme. That money has a huge impact for people in the race city and gives them opportunities that they wouldn’t necessarily have access to” said Evans.

Evans loves the vibrant atmosphere at the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay Mumbai.

Like his colleague Adam Roberts in the previous article, Evans also understands the challenges that come with a global audience. “We need to factor in all the language variations for all of our content that goes to our followers across the world. We distribute content in Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese as well as English so there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure that our content is appropriate for each audience around the world.”

But Evans had no hesitation when we asked him what his favourite race city was: “Mumbai without a doubt. We’ve only had two races there but they’ve really taken the race to their hearts. You can really feel the positivity and vibrant atmosphere coming through all social media posts. It’s fantastic.”

The future is bright for the Bloomberg Square Mile Relay as an excited Evans explains; “We’ve made some great enhancements to our digital channels over the last 12 months, and there is more to come which we are excited to roll-out this year. The opportunity for continued growth on all of our channels is really exciting and growing our digital community is at the heart of that.”