ICCA statistics are just one option when ranking cities

Using key global city rankings to help your destination stand out in the meetings industry

ICCA has partnered with our friends (and ICCA Congress speakers) Greg Clark and Tim Moonen at The Business of Cities to share with ICCA members their comprehensive analysis of the most useful and insightful global cities rankings.

Next week marks the release of ICCA’s eagerly awaited and widely promoted annual city and country rankings based on the number of rotating international association meetings hosted. This additional city ranking resource demonstrates that there are numerous alternative approaches to the analysis of competitive position and performance!

How can destinations take advantage of their ICCA rankings?

 

It’s time to take advantage of your ICCA ranking! ICCA’s 2015 country and city rankings will be published on 17 May at noon CET.

Your destination’s ranking in the ICCA Statistics reflects your position in the international association meetings market and offers some very valuable PR opportunities which you should not miss out on.

Here are 5 reasons why you should start taking PR-advantage of the new ICCA rankings:

ICCA announces Best PR Award 2015 shortlist

ICCA announced the shortlist for this year’s ICCA Best PR Award, who will share their PR campaigns as examples of good practice at the 54th ICCA Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The shortlisted 2015 ICCA Best PR Award candidates are (in alphabetical order):

• Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCEC)’s campaign to generate an international profile for Brisbane as a centre of science and research excellence around hosting the G20 Leaders Summit
• Dubai Business Events, for its PR strategy to position Dubai as a new destination for associations and business events
• Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s PR strategy based on partnership with their clients to support their events and showcase the city to potential clients
• Greater Bogota Convention Bureau for their PR campaign supporting the bid for the One Young World Summit
• London & Partners for their ‘Love the event & Love the experience’ campaign

ICCA members’ press releases part 2 – topics and creativity

We viewed and categorized a total of 48 press releases published on the ICCA website in July to share some observations.

The majority of texts introduce changes in infrastructure, new developments, strategies and concepts – 19 % of the 48 July releases are in context with sustainability matters in one way or the other.
Announcements of congresses won and awards/competitions are the other topics used for the releases. Some articles fit into more than 1 category; hence the majority of press releases are on the factual rather than on the inspiring – story-telling – side.

Preparing for PR Award 2015 – looking at ICCA members’ press releases

This Meetings PR blog looks to inspire and help ICCA members to improve their PR and content marketing efforts for better commercial gain and success.

Obviously you as a reader are interested in what is good and smart PR in the meetings industry!

The PR award panel currently works on identifying ICCA members with  ‘good’ PR, to nominate them for the ICCA PR Award during the Congress in Buenos Aires. I’d like to share some analysis and aspects that I come across during the process, in this blog.

To see what kind of ‘stories’ are presented in the associations community, my team and I did an analysis of press releases published on the ICCA members press releases section on the ICCA website during the month of July 2015:

We have looked at a total of 48 press releases, which we viewed one-by-one, categorized them and would like to share some findings with you.

“The meetings industry is bad at PR”

(Not many people understand the importance of an impactful headline, for example!)

ICCA Best PR Award Judging Panel stresses the importance of storytelling in the digital age and adds Johanna Fischer of tmf dialogue marketing as a chairperson and moderator.

Digital and social channels are rapidly changing the field of PR. However, the core values of effective PR remain the same: Both traditional PR and social- and content marketing are about the art of getting others to talk about you in order to amplify and spread your message, and using creative storytelling to achieve this goal.

The ICCA Best PR Award, which was set up in 2012 with ICCA Business Partner International Meetings Review (IMR), aims to increase the PR efforts of ICCA members, the main suppliers to the international meetings industry.

Johanna Fischer

Johanna Fischer is the Managing Director of tmf dialogue marketing, which provides marketing and PR services to ICCA members and has been an ICCA member for almost 10 years. Ms. Fischer will not only be part of the judging panel, but she will also be moderating a session on best practices in PR at the ICCA Congress, in which the Best PR Award finalists share their PR cases with ICCA members: “Great PR builds on the best combination of meetings journalism and marketing/sales driven stories. There is lots of new education for meeting professionals in how social media and a variety of communication channels can work and interact with each other to reach the final goal – marketing and “selling” your meeting product.”

Martin Lewis, Managing Editor at CAT Publications and Chairman of IMR’s Editorial Advisory Board said: “We believe the meetings industry could be much better at PR. By finding and sharing strong case studies of ICCA members’ activities we hope to increase the PR efforts of the whole meetings industry. PR is all about being creative and finding angles to create a story that engages readers, and which communicates your key messages and brand values. The same principles apply to digital PR.”

5 Reasons why destinations should take PR advantage of their ICCA rankings

It’s time to take advantage of your ICCA ranking! ICCA’s 2014 country and city rankings will be published again right before IMEX (See release dates). Your destination’s ranking in the ICCA Statistics reflects your position in the international association meetings market and offers some very valuable PR opportunities which you should not miss out on.

Here are 5 reasons why you should start preparing your PR activities around the new ICCA rankings NOW:

Remember your Ps

Public relations is about credibility. To have an objective third-party (the media) talk about your product (destination, venue) – even if what is being said is not entirely positive – is to achieve a kind of validity that lies beyond the reach of advertising. That’s why PR firms can charge those eye-watering retainers. That’s why businesses with deep pockets don’t think twice about paying them.

But the meetings industry is not entirely awash with money. There are plenty of convention centres, PCOs and convention bureaux that don’t have limitless cash to splash. What then? Well, now I’m going to let you into one of those little secrets that you probably knew already: Public relations is not rocket science.

The same could be said about journalism, of course. The thing is, just because something is not rocket science doesn’t mean you can’t mess it up. And it doesn’t mean those PR firms who get results for their clients are necessarily over-charging. It can take a lot of patience, hard work, and – yes – skill to do relative simple things exceedingly well. It’s much easier to be half-arsed about it.
As a journalist I receive dozens of press releases every day. I don’t really think about it now, but subconsciously I’m looking for the three Ps. Point (or Purpose), People, and Pictures.

Social Media & Events Report 2014: The meetings industry increases its social media activities

How is the meetings industry using social networks for event marketing? ICCA once again was a media partner for XING EVENTS’ (before: amiando) annual Social Media & Events Survey. Beginning in April until the end of June 2014 XING EVENTS surveyed about 2,000 event organisers in order to learn how organisers utilize social media as a marketing instrument, what the latest trends and where the biggest challenges lie:

New social media toolkit released by Tourism Research Australia

Australia’s most successful and growing regional events are using social media platforms to create strong event attendance and reputation. By connecting their events to communities of interest, they create networks of advocates and take the pressure off marketing budgets.