Using public relations to build on top of Devoteam’s thought leadership efforts:
Devoteam takes a look into the future
CASE: Devoteam
Devoteam works with IT and digital transformation of organisations in Denmark, and they are passionate about advising their clients on the developments within technology. After just two years, their New Year’s reception in January has become quite a crowd-puller. Many decision-makers from both public-sector institutions and private businesses want to listen when Devoteam share their insights into the digital future. The New Year’s reception “Digital Predictions 2018” was no exception.
Communication strategy considerations
Predictions are a widely used PR tactic, and the New Year is an excellent opportunity for companies to make predictions about developments within their specific expertise.
Of course, many companies want the media to cover their predictions. This is certainly possible but needs to be handled in the right way. The New Year reception was quickly sold out, and this was a strong indication that Devoteam’s predictions had a much larger audience than there was room for at the event. They wanted to meet this demand, and we agreed that the messages from the event itself should also be given a life in the digital realm, so they could reach a much larger audience.
How Devoteam reached out to a larger audience
Devoteam’s consultants have a strong employee advocacy programme, which is run by solid in-house efforts. Video is a hit on social media, so a logical first step was to shoot a series of videos which the consultants could share in their personal digital networks.
Therefore, we attended the event together with a camera crew to record the entire show and conduct as many interviews as there were predictions. You can watch the five videos here:
Spreading the message via the journalistic media
The next step was to concentrate on one of the digital predictions and pitch that message to the press. The journalistic focal point was the prediction that “Data science will be in short supply”.
1. Corporate PR
On the day of the event, we set up interviews between Devoteam’s Associate Partner, Søren B. Sørensen, and the online industry magazine ITWatch. The hook for the story was Devoteam’s establishment of a new Data Science Unit to assist their clients with the next phase of their digital transformation, which is fully in line with the prediction that “data science will be in short supply”.
2. Thought leadership PR
We also supported the message that “data science will be in short supply” with an opinion piece that was published in the Danish business daily Børsen.
“My Discus team is always ready to give a hand when we call (and we’re rarely in good time). They step in when we need assistance – also outside normal working hours – so we can achieve our goal under difficult working conditions with many stakeholders in play. They ask critical questions, so we nip and tuck, and end up with a communication that is spot on. To top it off, they understand and work well with our organisation, contributing, challenging and fighting for our common victory. High five from here!”
– Camilla W. Poulsen, Head of Marketing, Devoteam.
Results
- Video of the entire session for the Devoteam employees, who could not be present themselves
- Production of 5 videos for Devoteam’s digital channels and employee advocacy programme
- Press coverage gave a potential reach of 483,000 readers