Tencent Technology - WE Summit 2017

Name of Organization / Company: Tencent Technology
Category: C01 - C12 Award for Innovation in Communications / PR > C05. Award for Innovation in the Use of Celebrities or Public Figures

Entry Title: Tencent: WE Summit 2017 - Inspiring people to work together to create solutions to the many challenges facing all of us

Essay:

Situation Analysis

We are now living in an era of uber innovation – and a particular boom in science and technology development. Such accelerated technological advancement gives hope to people to look for technological breakthroughs that not only deal with today’s problems, but the anticipated challenges of tomorrow.

As a technology pioneer, it has always been Tencent’s mission to empower people and make a positive impact to mankind through innovation. This is why the Tencent WE Summit was initiated in 2013 with a focus on exploring solutions to human challenges. To mark the Summit’s 5th year anniversary in 2017, the organizing committee invited world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, along with the world’s foremost scientists, to deliver keynote speeches around space exploration, life science and future inventions.

Objective

• Expand the reach of WE Summit to the general public
• Maximize the influence of WE Summit and Tencent among target stakeholders
• Drive science innovation discussion to strengthen Tencent’s leading position in the industry

Strategy

• Create excitement and drive discussion of WE Summit by profiling Hawking and other famous scientists and their researches prior to and during the event
• Engage key stakeholders to deepen the exposure and impact of the event
• Drive thought leadership to lead the science innovation discussion to enhance credibility Implementation

A series of activities were carried out in phases to promote WE Summit:

Pre-event

• Profiled Hawking’s participation at WE Summit through the event’s official website to promote the event and partnered with key online platforms to create user generated content to drive discussion
• Arranged a total of 20 media group interviews for speakers a day before to create wider audience interest in the event.
• Announced a strategic partnership with the world’s leading science academic publishing group - Springer Nature, to jointly support the development of young scientists.

Event Day

Leveraged Hawking and other scientists to successfully:
• Invite over 100 Chinese and International media to join the event.
• Engage and strengthen relationship with important stakeholders.
• Partner with 10 prominent media platforms and universities to arrange online and offline broadcast of the event, reaching more people and students

Post event

• Leveraged Hawking’s WE Summit video to extend the reach to audiences outside of China through online amplification.

Evaluation of Success

Tencent WE Summit 2017 achieved significant results, as listed below, that all contributed to strengthen the brand image and recognition of Tencent as a technology leader.

• The event was attended by over 2,000 participants. All tickets were sold within two weeks while the sales revenue increased by 47% compared to last year.
• Government officials from State Council, National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology attended the event to show their support.
• The official live broadcast received over 9 million online views, a 14% increase from the previous event.
• The broadcast at the university campus extended the influence and reach to more than 15,000 students from 15 top universities including Beijing University and Fudan University.
• A total of 137 media covering dailies, science, online news portal and new media, attended, generating over 1,000 pieces of positive, on-message news coverage within a week. This project generated a total PR value of over USD45.6 millions. Among them, 340+ articles were received from prominent foreign media including CNBC, CNET, Daily Mail, Forbes, Mirror and USA Today, etc.
• The post-event online amplification has generated over 35 million impressions and 108,000+ page views.

Links:
http://we.tencent.com/html/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMDW6k71CMRHuJ-u2EGRDVS-f9ToqCdm5
http://v.qq.com/detail/v/vu9ahvd6gmlm8fo.html