Summary
London City Day is one of SunGard’s biggest events. In 2010 it was designed to promote our campaign focused around the three pillars that we saw supporting the ongoing development of worldwide financial services: transparency, efficiency and networks (TEN).
London City Day 2010 was a full day event and exhibition. 750 customers and prospects attended from all areas of the financial industry, taking part in discussions about the Transparency, Efficiency and Networks theme.
The day centred around a general session led by Jeremy Grant, editor of the Financial Times’s Trading Room section (a key journalist for much of our business); Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics and former head of the FSA, the UK’s financial regulation body; Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange; and Till Guldimann, vice chairman of SunGard.
Themes and hot topics from all areas of financial services were discussed in panel debates, presentations and networking sessions. These included how financial institutions can establish risk credibility, how the industry should prepare for the changes brought by new regulations, and how to benefit from new business processes.
The day was for debate and conversation between all participants and was structured as morning and afternoon breakout sessions with a general session between, all rounded off with a networking cocktail at the end of the day.
About the company
SunGard Financial Systems provides mission-critical software and IT services to institutions in virtually every segment of the financial services industry. The primary purpose of most of these systems is to automate the many specialised business processes associated with trading, managing investment portfolios and accounting for investment assets.
They address the processing requirements of a broad range of users within financial services, including asset managers, traders, custodians, compliance officers, treasurers, insurers, risk managers, hedge fund managers, plan administrators and clearing agents.
SunGard also provides consulting services that focus on implementation andintegration of these solutions and on software development.
$20 trillion in investment assets are accounted for and managed daily on SunGard systems. More than 10 million trades are processed by broker-dealers and other financial intermediaries on SunGard systems.
SunGard Financial Systems is part of SunGard Data Systems, one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies, serving more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries. It was formed in 1982 as a leveraged buy-out from the Sun Oil Company and is now the world’s largest privately held business software and IT services company.
Strategy
What issues or challenges did SunGard face by launching London City Day?
The challenges faced by SunGard by launching London City Day were to:
- Establish SunGard London City Day as a legacy event and exhibition, gaining
credibility around it. - Compete with other institutions which were doing similar events at the same time.
- Encourage a time poor audience to attend the event.
- Find high profile, relevant keynote speakers.
- Create interesting tracks.
- Engage the audience with the TEN campaign.
- Engage staff internally – getting commitment from sales people and marketers, who are already busy, to commit time to generate registrations and attendance.
- Encourage 20 exhibitors to pay to exhibit at a quality event with quality attendees registered.
How did this campaign aim to address this and add value to the business on a more general level?
- We capitalised on the experience gained from previous SunGard events held in London.
- Integrating an exhibition into the event engaged many business units to sell booths and promote this expo element as well as the wider City Day in order to attract more people.
- The event was supported by local industry influencers, including leading industry publications Financial News and Finextra.
- We used different avenues to promote the event – through our online magazine, our TEN website and social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
SunGard’s TEN campaign focused around three pillars that we saw supporting the ongoing development of worldwide financial services: transparency, efficiency and networks (TEN). These areas were chosen to provide a common voice to the many different aspects of the financial industry that our business addresses and to resonate with our customers globally.
TEN is and was a very strong and relevant message to the audience, it differentiates us from our competitors and it’s one that they could all identify with either from a regulatory perspective, market perspective or industry trend perspective.
- We built a strong agenda – headlined by two prolific and opinionated keynote speakers Sir Howard Davies, director of the London School of Economics, and Xavier Rolet, CEO of the London Stock Exchange. This was supported by 9 industry focused breakout sessions that focused on key issues that their audiences would engage with.
Time poor audience
- We provided a flexible, online agenda that allowed people to select relevant sessions and construct their own tailored agenda out of them.
- By holding the event for a full day we encouraged the attendees to come and go as they pleased. This also enabled our exhibitors to benefit from the many networking sessions and breaks throughout the day to engage with attendees.
Engaging the market
- Strong, compelling communications were used to attract people to the event, both online and printed. Pre event videos of keynote speakers advertised their involvement.
- Media coverage and endorsement was gained through publications including Financial News and Finextra.
- Industry experts and analysts were involved to provide their endorsement.
- The event was promoted at other industry events and tradeshows where we were present, including the 2010 Trade Tech event (the largest trading and technology event in Europe).
Internal engagement
- London City Day and the TEN campaign around it was promoted internally to all staff – through a poster campaign in all offices, screensavers, newsletters and internal events.
- Staff were encouraged to share ideas and strategies for achieving their event commitments by regularly reporting on progress in group update sessions.
The target audience
The campaign was designed to appeal to our target base of customers and prospects, as well as industry influencers. These range from C-level executives and end users (including traditional amd alternative asset managers, bankers, insurers, risk managers, heads of IT, regulators) to analysts and press. This audience was based on 85 per cent in the UK and 15 per cent outside of the UK.
The issues associated with appealing to this audience was mainly around time, in encouraging them to leave the office for our event. Similar industry events were taking place at the same time and people’s diaries are full: as a result, we had to provide relevant content , pitch relevant topics and find the right balance between workshops and networking.
Media, channels or techniques used
We used a variety of channels to support this campaign.
- Email communications: Save the Date and invitation.
- Printed material : Save the Date and invitation.
- Online via TEN website – dedicated event area where people could learn more about the event and register.
- Advertising in financial services publications:printed and online adverts in Financial News and Finextra.
- Wall advert at London City Airport to attract and raise awareness of the event to people travelling in and out the UK.
- Newsletters.
We needed to utilise the full range of advertising in order to reach our audience, who are constantly on the move and need precisely targeted information. The combination of print and online through various media achieved this.
Timescales of the campaign
1. Find the venue – 10 months before the event
2. Find Keynote speakers – eight months before
3. Define the agenda and the theme – eight months before
4. Consolidate the invitee list – four months before
5. Send out the Save the Date with the theme and names of keynote speakers four months before
6. Send out the invitation with theme, keynote speakers, agenda and theme of the breakout sessions- three months before
7. Follow-up and post event process – one day to one week after the event
a. Extract data from registration scanners to give total number of attendees
b. Enter the data in the SalesForce.com marketing tool for the sales teams to follow up with contacts, leads and opportunities
c. Send out the ‘Thank you for attending’ email
d. Update the TEN website with videos, podcasts and pictures of the event
e. Update the TEN website with speaker presentations
f. Extract and analyse data from feedback forms to provide perception data
Results
London City Day 2010 raised our profile as a thought leader, increased our brand awareness, encouraged the audience to join the conversation around our theme, and added to our local deal pipeline.
Total touches: 31,759
Total responses: 1,476
Number of opps added to pipeline: 11
Client testimonial
“SunGard’s TEN campaign focused around three pillars that we saw supporting the ongoing development of worldwide financial services: transparency, efficiency and networks (TEN). These areas were chosen to provide a common voice to the many different aspects of the financial industry that our business addresses and to resonate with our customers globally. London City Day proved to be a highly effective forum for bringing the campaign to life and successfully created a platform for the local finance community to engage and address these topics.” Tanya Cooper, director, financial systems marketing EMEA, SunGard
