Firefly supercharges international customer event for Cornerstone

Insight

Cornerstone OnDemand is a global leader in people development solutions and every year in London the company hosts Cornerstone Convergence EMEA in late Autumn. This annual client and partner event brings together around 2,000 HR, business and talent management professionals from all over Europe to take part in networking and keynotes. sessions and discussions inspiring success in talent management.

Cornerstone carefully curates its conference to bring together industry experts, clients and partners so that all parties use the collective wisdom to tackle talent management challenges together. For Firefly, it is essential to make the most of so many impressive people in one space, amplifying the stories and thought leadership to inspire other clients and prospects.

Plan

Cornerstone Convergence is already an extremely well planned-out conference, so Firefly had to carefully overlay PR activities so that attendees taking part do not miss essential parts of the agenda. 

Prior to the event, Firefly and Cornerstone worked through lists of clients and Cornerstone executives to determine who would be available and happy to take part in media interviews and filming. Many of these individuals were also speakers in various sessions and workshops, so Firefly had to be mindful of schedule clashes. 

Once this core list of executives and clients was determined, Firefly helped craft media interview talking points and video scripts so that everyone felt fully prepared. The stories and expertise spanned a whole host of topics from recruiting strategies, new learning and development techniques and innovative technology to aligning all talent management touchpoints with an organisation’s objectives.

Deliver

Firefly’s focus was to ensure invited media from all over Europe were looked after by the local PR team members, media interviews with Cornerstone executive and clients happened on time and in the right place, and all the client filming went smoothly. There were also last-minute media requests and adjustments to the schedule to handle. 

Firefly and team members from the Cornerstone’s European PR agency network also attended all sessions and workshops in order to feed Cornerstone’s content pipeline.

Evaluate

In 2019, Firefly and Cornerstone’s PR agency network achieved 28 media interviews over the two days and 13 client videos filmed during the conference. These results supported the efforts of the Cornerstone marketing team and helped improve Cornerstone’s search ranking in each of the countries through a boost in backlinks. 

The content from Convergence helped feed the PR programme in 2019 and early 2020 resulting in media coverage numbers doubling in Q1 2020 versus Q1 2019. 

“Cornerstone Convergence EMEA is a major milestone every year, bringing together our clients, partners and prospects to celebrate successes and inspire others. Our PR activities play a vital part in amplifying our client success stories and thought-provoking insight from the leadership team at Cornerstone. Coordinating clients, PR teams from seven countries and Cornerstone executives means there are many moving parts, and with Firefly, every year is more successful than the last. Even under pressure, the Firefly team are diligent, tenacious and go above and beyond.” 

Susan Hilliar, Senior Head of Public Relations & Communications at Cornerstone OnDemand