Glasgow City of Science and Innovation
Using newsworthy PR and paid social media to drive event attendance and engage SMEs
The Brief
Glasgow City of Science and Innovation aims to raise the profile of the Glasgow City Region as a world-class destination for science and innovation, helping to drive greater productivity and growth. The organisation hosts Scotland’s annual CAN DO Innovation Summit, connecting start-ups and small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with leading innovators and academics to explore how new technologies, leadership and the right business cultures can tackle the challenges faced by Scottish industry and society.
With the CAN DO Innovation Summit in its fourth year and in-person for the first time since the pandemic, Glasgow City of Science and Innovation approached Perceptive to raise awareness of the Summit, attracting sponsors, exhibitors and attendees to the CAN DO Innovation Summit 2023.
Our Approach
Perceptive developed and delivered an effective communications strategy focused on outcomes, target audiences and key messages. This strategy built and maintained awareness in the run up to the Summit, with Perceptive becoming an extension of the Glasgow City of Science and Innovation team to provide efficient comms support and maximise outcomes.
Perceptive’s approach focused on the most newsworthy aspects of the Summit, kicking off with a press release to announce the keynote speakers. The Summit had an impressive line up of three female keynotes, speaking about futurism, big data and artificial intelligence.
To continue momentum, Perceptive also drafted an opinion piece for Glasgow City of Science and Innovation programme lead Dr Susie Mitchell, published in the Scotsman with two weeks to go. All comms activities included the Summit website as a call to action, providing a direct link to register for summit tickets.
Alongside PR, Perceptive led on a two part paid LinkedIn advertising campaign, designed to reach SMEs and drive event sign ups. This included an awareness phase, followed by targeted remarketing to drive action from engaged individuals. Perceptive also created a LinkedIn Event page for the event to further increase attendees.
Key stakeholders also launched an action plan and memorandum of understanding at the Summit, with Perceptive supporting Glasgow City of Science and Innovation to contribute a quote to this release and review communications materials, leveraging the events and showing the outcomes achieved by the Summit.
The communications strategy complemented ongoing communications activity from Glasgow City of Science and Innovation, including organic social and newsletter content.
The Results
Media
35 pieces of coverage over a 3 month window, with 13 articles including a direct URL to the Summit website
9.08 million reach, with key outlets including The Scotsman, The Herald, MSN, Daily Business, Scottish Financial News, High Growth Scotland, Silicon Scotland and StartUps magazine.
The content was re-posted by both Glasgow and Edinburgh Chambers of Commerce, further reaching engaged SMEs.
Paid Social Media
The two phase LinkedIn campaign resulted in over 105,000 impressions and 47,000 people reached.
The campaign's cost per click was less than one third of LinkedIn’s average, providing a strong return on investment.
Outcomes & Impact
The event achieved an early sell out with 1,200 people marked as attending a week before event day, above the target of 1,000 registrations. Following these strong early results, the paid social media campaign was paused early to avoid oversubscription.
This significant number of sign ups translated to great attendance on the day, with over 750 attending in person at the Glasgow Science Centre, plus hundreds more joining remotely.
Great feedback from event sponsors who were pleased with coverage achieved and the significant boost to their brand profile, as well as positive feedback from attendees on the day, demonstrating how the campaign resonated with key target audiences.
