Clickboost principal Michael Simonson was hired to coordinate PR, online advertising and content for a 2017 New York City conference headlined by Richard Branson, Gary Vaynerchuk, Malcolm Gladwell and 11 other prolific speakers.
The Brief
After successfully organizing two massive business and networking conferences in Russia, Synergy Global Forum scheduled its first North American event for late October 2017 at The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
Because Synergy Global Forum lacked name recognition in the U.S., and its executives were unfamiliar with the North American market, they were struggling to generate media coverage and ticket sales.
The Deliverables
Messaging, PR & Online Advertising
Michael began by changing Synergy Global Forum's slogan t0 "A Master Class In Disruption", which conveyed the magnitude of the headliners' accomplishments and the value in attending.
To maximize media coverage, Michael conducted an exhaustive search of local, national and global marketing agencies, culminating in the hiring of legendary agency Rubenstein PR.
He worked closely with Rubenstein to execute a comprehensive PR program that generated millions of organic impressions in some of the country's biggest publications.
Michael also hired and supervised an online advertising manager who executed paid ad campaigns on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter that brought in thousands of dollars in ticket sales.
Content
While most of the headliners were booked before Michael's arrival, he played an instrumental role in coordinating the forum's four panels, adding an element of spontaneity to the event.
This included engineering a promotional partnership with Entrepreneur Magazine that resulted in a panel on building a multi-million dollar business; panelists included Boxed co-founder Chieh Huang.
Michael collaborated with Nue Agency to create a panel on "The Art of Disruption", which included CNBC host Bonin Bough, Elite Daily co-founder Gerard Adams and wearable tech pioneer Billy Whitehouse.
For a panel on the future of tech, Michael worked with AMW PR to sign up four prominent venture capitalists, including TechStars NYC Co-Founder David Tisch and former Draper Fisher Jurvetson Managing Director Jennifer Fonstad.
The tech panel was moderated by Maneet Ahuja, the acclaimed CNBC producer, author and co-founder of the Delivering Alpha conference.
Filling the House
To ensure the Theater would be filled to capacity, Michael partnered with Propelify Festival founder Aaron Price to advertise an exclusive discount to Propelify's newsletter subscribers.
Over 1,100 Propelify subscribers claimed the discount, which led to a packed venue, a Twitter trending topic (#SGFNYC), over 1,000 forum-related posts on Instagram and 5,000-plus happy attendees.
