A Roundtable for Content that Matters
Content Matters is WE Communications’ annual regional research publication that focuses on content, the very basic building block of service offerings provided by marketing and public relations agencies. In its third series, the agency delved into the issue of time and how it heavily influences consumer purchase decisions rather than demographic indicators. This year, WE released the results one market at a time, unlike the one-off release for nine markets approach adopted for the past two editions.
India was the first within the region to release their report and they had partnered with trade publication PR Moment to host an industry roundtable comprising of marketers, communications leaders and business heads. The localised event allowed for more bespoke market execution and helps to broaden the awareness of the research study which has the potential to support business decisions.
To start off, however, the team already had a big challenge: the stretched teams was only able to run the event on a public holiday when many people will not be in town. The challenge was further compounded as they had a limited budget to support their activities.
Thinking on their feet, the WE team adopted a few strategies:
• A list of invitees was created using LinkedIn and personal contacts, adding on to the existing database
• Team members personally reached out to each and every person to ensure that the recipients received the invite and got hold of their confirmation
• For the invitees who couldn’t make it for the roundtable, we took the opportunity to showcase Content Matters report at their office, adding a personal touch
On March 7, the team’s effort paid off: senior communications and marketing representatives from top local and multi-national organisations such as Marico, Sony India, PWC and Avantha Group joined the two hour session. The feedback was highly positive, many in-depth discussions were sparked off based on the Content Matters report and relations were deepened. The social media chatter was also very rewarding with over 140 retweets from the 51 Twitter posts shared during the event while three simple Facebook posts hit a reach of 322.
The team was dealt with a bad hand from the start but they marched through the scrappy situation undeterred and the success spoke for itself. With riveting insight from the Content Matters report, they found ways to craft transformative stories with industry leaders and hosted a session that created lasting relationships with all members. This is a showcase of WE being at the intersection of people, brands and technology.
