HomeServe wanted to reignite cross-region networking in their global leadership team, and to deliver new thinking around the latest brand messaging: Good to Great, The HomeServe Way.

To overcome the challenge of engaging leaders from around the world during a pandemic, when travel was out of the question, the multinational home emergency repairs and improvements business turned to creative brand experience agency Cheerful Twentyfirst.

The solution

Inspired by the VAK learning and adoption theory, Cheerful Twentyfirst designed a virtual leaders conference with visual, auditory and kinesthetic touchpoints to provoke audience collaboration.

Uniting multiple teams in multiple regions doesn’t just happen. The agency dug a little deeper to better understand the shared values across HomeServe teams. One key thread came back: the teams were fiercely competitive.

Cheerful Twentyfirst created the concept around a sports theme, taking influence from global cityscapes and building the event identity from scratch. The custom branding was designed to show agility and movement, with the line drawings of cityscapes representative of the guests and leaders from across the world. The unique look and feel spilled into every facet of the experience: the centralised event website, the communications journey, the content, even the physical set.

The HomeServe audience was further unified through gamified workshops, safe networking spaces and exceptional content. The digital team developed a custom-coded online world, including integrating a bespoke fitness challenge that saw guests travel 6500KM for charity.

In detail

From a purpose-built studio, the US and UK co-hosts delivered strategic growth plans and key updates to the new Good to Great brand handbook. Live Q&A presenters were beamed in to enhance the conversational ‘sports commentary’ setting. Cheerful Twentyfirst helped presenters deliver their best performance with dedicated speaker coaching sessions in the lead-up to the event.

The four-hour leaders conference was delivered without a single PowerPoint presentation. The agency’s Moving Image team worked closely with the client to create 20 international films to drive home new messaging and take the audience around the world.

The results

Compelling video content and clever communications, interwoven with live hosts and dedicated workshops, resulted in impressive audience engagement. More than 950 comments were recorded in the chat feed during the live event. The attendance adoption rate was 95 per cent, from registration to live event.

Guests amplified personal relationships and walked away with a newfound understanding of their role to play in the new Homeserve strategy. The KIT-hosted event site will remain live for six months post-event so that the community can revisit the learnings, the new connections, the (friendly) competitions and the fun.

“Huge thanks to Cheerful Twentyfirst for inspiring our first foray into virtual conferencing. The team were creative, reliable and delivered exactly what they promised – a joy to work with. Our event was a massive success and took our internal communications programme to a new level,” said HomeServe’s Group Communications and Investor Relations Director.