Taking a brand global with effective event PR

Pan-European client Vimeo runs bi-annual Vimeo Festival & Awards (VFAs) to celebrate creative talent.

Insight

Much of Vimeo’s credibility used to sit within the USA (and specifically New York) creative community. When Vimeo hired Firefly as its pan-European PR agency, it was only two months before their 2012 VFAs. It was Firefly’s challenge to make this their first ever global awards, to pave the way for Vimeo’s international expansion.

Firefly advised a creative campaign that highlighted and celebrated the global nature of the awards – picking out bespoke local stories based around film locations, creator backgrounds and celebrity judges’ heritage.

Plan

Firefly delved through thousands of VFA category entries, to find those with European relevance, focused on Vimeo’s four key European regions: the UK, France, Germany and Spain.

These multiple story strands were initially used to gain the interest of high-profile national media, to invite them to attend the VFAs in New York and report live from the event.

In phase two of Firefly’s media relations campaign, they were also used to enable broader media outreach and drive large-scale PR coverage on all of the event content.

Deliver

Firefly planned and hosted an international press trip, which saw five UK and European press involved both on-the-ground and via webinar.

While the press trip took place on the ground in each country, local PR teams pitched Vimeo VFA stories to a range of titles. Intensive media relations with hand-picked story angles drove coverage from within and outside Vimeo’s existing comfort zone – from (in the UK) the creative titles like Dazed and Confused, to lifestyle press like Stylist and Elle Online.

Evaluate

Increased audience engagement from across Europe as a result of PR coverage.

Firefly gained coverage in high profile media including (for the UK): GQ, Wired, Stylist, The Guardian, the BBC News, Associated Press, The Independent and Dazed Digital.

Firefly hosted five European press at the event, including The Independent and GQ from the UK. Both UK press contacts tweeted throughout the event from official feeds, produced bespoke video content, and published minimum two-page features; all as the start of on-going long-term relationships.

In total, 166 pieces of coverage were achieved by Firefly, across Europe. The sustained media interest in the VFAs, drove an increase in international viewership and voting figures – demonstrating a hunger for the Vimeo brand and offering that goes well beyond the USA.