Red Agency handles corporate communications for SuccessFactors, a SAP company across Australia and New Zealand. One of the many activities we undertake is to support its annual customer networking and learning event, SuccessConnect.
This year SuccessConnect 2012 took place on May 22–24 2012 at the Hilton Sydney. This highly anticipated conference brings together customers, partners, and select prospective customers to “Make Connections in the Cloud” starting with a headline keynote from customer Sanjay N. Bharwani, Senior Vice President for Human Capital Strategy & Policy at Mandiri Bank, who shared with the delegates how the largest bank in Indonesia used SuccessFactors’ cloud-based business execution software to transform their employee and customer experience.
Other notable speakers at the event included SuccessFactors’ Vice Presidents Peter Howes and Paul Brook, as well as Chief Learning Officer Dr. Karie Willyerd, followed by presentations from ASB Bank, Animal Logic, Deloitte Digital, Essar, Laing O’Rourke, National Australia Bank, Tata Communications, Telecom NZ and the Australian Public Service Commission. Renowned thought leader, Scott Snell from the E. Thayer Bigelow Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia also shared his insights on Leadership and Strategic Management at SuccessConnect Sydney.
SuccessConnect 2012 is particularly important for SuccessFactors as it marks its inaugural year as an SAP company. Red Agency developed a string of strategic and proactive media tactics to help drum up awareness for SuccessConnect prior and during the event.
Tactics
Media releases
This year SuccessFactors offered a broader variety of educational tracks, networking and learning opportunities to address the most important challenges customers face in business execution.
In the lead up to and during SuccesConnect, Red Agency drafted and distributed a total of five media releases to Australian media. To date, there have been 13 articles covering the announcements, including in-depth articles in ITWire, Fast Thinking, ARN, Sky Business News, Shortlist, HR Daily, Technology Spectator and ZDNet.
Media interviews and briefing
Other than hosting a series of on-site 1:1 interviews with SuccessFactors, Red Agency organised an intimate media briefing over lunch at the Glass Brasserie in the Hilton for selected target media. Journalists were able to meet and discuss current trends and share their insights with SuccessFactors executives. Red Agency also invited an SAP representative to lunch, so as to add another perspective to the SAP/SuccessFactors integration. A range of Tier 1 media attended the lunch briefing, including publications such as Human Capital, BRW and ARN.
Hosting media at conference sessions
Red Agency piqued the interest of relevant media to attend various customer keynote sessions over the two day conference. Altogether, Red Agency secured attendance from six journalists across HR, Technology and Government publications including the Sydney Morning Herald’s IT-Pro, HR Daily, Shortlist and Australian Banking + Finance, which resulted in more in-depth media coverage for the event.
