All posts by rachel_eaton

News

Welcoming fresh faces in to the fold

December 12, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

WELCOMING FRESH FACES IN TO THE FOLD

Award-winning agency prepares for further growth in 2017

Gong Communications has hired two corporate communications specialists, Libby Wyman and James Deacon, as senior account managers to support the firm’s rapid growth. The pair join at an exciting time for the agency, bolstered by six award wins for its diversity and inclusion work with long-standing client, Lloyd’s of London.

Libby joins from Forster Communications, her focus at Gong will be on delivering global corporate and sustainability communications for international clients and developing the agency’s sustainability and social purpose work. Libby commented: “I’m delighted to be part of such a strong and motivated team at Gong; an agency that clearly punches above its weight to deliver award-winning communications for clients as diverse as challenger brands and multinationals.”

After a successful stint at FleishmanHillard Fishburn, James’ focus at Gong will be primarily on the Lloyd’s of London account, centered around the hugely successful Dive In: The Festival for Diversity and Inclusion in Insurance. He’ll also be working with associate director Nikki Francis-Jones on UK focused marketing for the agency. “I’m thrilled to be joining such an inspiring team here at Gong. Delivering a strategy session with a solar energy social enterprise in Madagascar in my third week here is certainly confirmation that I’m in the right place,” James said.

Gong MD, Narda Shirley, added: “Libby and James bring a great range of experience combined with boundless enthusiasm and passion. During 2016 we did a lot of thinking about who we are as an agency and that has helped us attract two standout people who are drawn to the idea of working on clients with a strong purpose.”

The agency took a conceptual brief in early 2015 to create a festival for the promotion of diversity and inclusion within the insurance market, and has scooped a number of cross-practice awards; PRCA (employee engagement), Marketing Week and The British Insurance Awards (diversity champion), Corp Comms Magazine (best live event), Insurance Day (diversity & talent management initiative of the year) and Insurance Marketing and PR (best insurance event). The work was also shortlisted by Sabre Awards EMEA, Guardian Sustainable Business, Personnel Today, ENEI and Insurance Times.

See here for coverage on Gorkana PR News

News

CorpComms: Dive In wins best live event – internal

November 23, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

CORPCOMMS: DIVE IN WINS BEST LIVE EVENT – INTERNAL

When Inga Beale, chief executive of the Corporation of Lloyd’s, unveiled her Vision 2025 for the insurance business, it rested on eight pillars. Alongside Innovation and Capital sits Talent. For the Vision to be successful, by 2025 Lloyd’s will be ‘a place where talented, diverse and socially responsible employees feel proud to work’.

The Corporation’s steering group, Inclusion@Lloyd’s, is working to highlight the business case for diversity and inclusion. The Festival for Diversity and Inclusion in Insurance, branded Dive In by agency Gong, was designed to show how diversity stimulates innovation, promotes productivity and generates better financial returns.

Targeted at key influencers within Lloyd’s member organisations and employees in the insurance broking market, Gong created a pre-Festival buzz with a dedicated website, activities across internal, external and social media, and branded collateral, such as coffee carts which served 19,000 drinks.

The agency also engaged with communication leaders in member companies, providing tools, templates and content for intranets and email blasts. The events took place across four days within the insurance heart of the City of London, EC3. Each day explored a different theme: Women in Insurance; Cultural DNA: Diversity Now and Always; ‘Out’ in the market and Workability, with speakers ranging from celebrity stylist Gok Wan to former BP chief executive Lord Browne.

The festival comprised a mix of panel discussions, debates and workshops to networking, art exhibitions and dance performances. The front of the iconic Lloyd’s of London building was branded with Dive In. More than 2,000 people registered to attend, resulting in 1,762 visitors.

Importantly, 99 per cent of them said that diversity and inclusion was good for business while nine in ten felt they had a better understanding of the topic as a result of the Festival. And 87.5 per cent said they now knew what to do to improve diversity and inclusion within their organisations.

The Festival generated 40 videos, which are accessible via the Dive In website, which received more than 23,000 visitors during the event. The industry’s trade publication Insurance Times has also agreed to carry monthly blogs on diversity and inclusion.

‘This was a highly creative event which challenged the old ‘pale and male’ images of Lloyds,’ said the judges. ‘It is great that this is now being exported to overseas markets.’

Insight, Uncategorized

MY TWO CENTS TO ALL STUDENTS… ‘DO AN INTERNSHIP!’

October 17, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

Sara Bonafair

Kick the habit of ignoring advice given by parents and career advisers, just this once, and take it from a peer – internships are worth your time. As a recent grad, I know the feeling of having just barely survived another round of exams and essays. The last thing you may feel like doing is researching, applying for and doing an internship – especially, if you are young and lucky enough to still consider career pressure a distant prospect. Nonetheless, I believe you can never be too young to embark on the trial-and-error process that will lead you to a career in an area you will enjoy in the years ahead.

That’s not to say that we don’t all change between the ages of 17 and 20 something, but if you start the learning process early, it can grow with you. Starting now takes some of the guesswork out of deciding where to direct your focus when you graduate and minimizes some of the stress of committing to your first job. Internships are an integral part of understanding what you want to do, how you want to do it, who you want to do it with – and, crucially, what you don’t want to do.

I took the advice of my career adviser, when pressure and my resume were still pretty non-existent, and ‘playing professional’ seemed almost exciting. From the age of 17, I explored every interest under the sun, from art to financial services, navigating the ocean of opportunities offered to students searching for experience. I worked for small firms, large firms, start-ups, and corporations, making my mantra ‘you never know until you try’. By my last year, a process of elimination allowed me to be able to say with conviction that I wanted to work in the communications industry.

In my last year, I tried advertising in a small firm and while I enjoyed the personal mentorship that was possible in a close-knit team, found advertising wasn’t for me. I tried PR in a large firm, on a B2C team, I enjoyed the type of work, but found the lack of opportunity to slow down and ask questions to understand the bigger picture and strategy frustrating. This learning process was essential to understand what I was looking for – a small PR-firm.

Soon I discovered Gong, which was not only what I was looking for in terms of being a small award-winning corporate communications agency in London, but also what I was looking for in terms of combining my personal and academic interests in my daily work. The supportive and collaborative environment that Gong cultivates had become an important criterion for me. Sitting next to project heads, I was able to really understand everything necessary to produce Gong’s marketing and communications services to its clients, feeling no hesitation in asking how to do things and why. As I developed my skills in the nuts and bolts of PR, I felt I was, at the same time, contributing to impactful work on client briefs that I was proud to be part of.

I can imagine why employers are just as keen as experience-hungry students to offer internships. They give the management team the invaluable opportunity to witness prospective recruits in action rather than relying on intangible words on a CV and an interview.

In short, internships permit you to first realise the industry you want to be a part of, then to envision your ideal role and the environment in which you want to perform it. Internships can also be a ‘getting to know you’ period, for yourself and your future employer. It’s a quick way to learn how to perfectly position yourself after graduation for a rewarding first job to kick off your career. So my advice is, at the end of term, instead of a week of box-sets in bed to take your head off exams –get out there and get an internship!

News

PRWeek on Gong’s democratic approach to CSR

September 26, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

GONG’S CSR IN PRWEEK

Gong Communications received a mention in PR Week as winner of the “Good chap of the week award”

“Christmas, Flack hears, is a time for giving, so congratulations to Gong Communications for setting up a programme to support Holy’s Home for Children, a small charity constructing an orphanage to support up to 30 vulnerable children in rural Ghana.

It might not sound anything exceptional for an agency to start this sort of thing – but Flack was impressed to hear not only that the charity was founded by senior account manager James Deacon, but that he secured the opportunity for his charity in a Dragon’s Den-style contest pitching to his new colleagues, on his very first day at the agency last month, against several other charities.

Bravo, James – and Bravo, Gong, which will make a monthly donation to the charity, in addition to other support throughout 2017.”
PR Week, 09/12/2016

Read the full article here

Insight

Beyond diversity: The business case for developing an internal culture of inclusion

July 6, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

BEYOND DIVERSITY: THE BUSINESS CASE FOR DEVELOPING AN INTERNAL CULTURE OF INCLUSION

Philip Dundas

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are on the agenda for most organisations in terms of recruiting a broad talent base. But it is increasingly recognised that the diverse and inclusive perspective you get from that workforce can enrich the internal DNA of a company. This helps to shape its strategic goals beyond the thinking of senior leadership across the whole organisation. In the global marketplace the most innovative companies recognise that to impact on their strategic goals, diversity isn’t just about the range of people within an organisation but the diversity of thinking that reflects.

Equally important as an organisation is how inclusion connects to diversity: your ability to reflect the world around you in your workforce is just the start. The 2014 Deloitte report Global Human Capital Trends, clearly defines ‘diversity of thinking as a business imperative’. Diverse teams draw out better ideas, smarter conversations and ultimately better business decisions.

Lots of organisations have identified inclusion as a bedrock of innovation and to that extent drive and foster the diversity and inclusion agenda across their sectors, seeing how it can shape and transform their organisations and their people. It’s not always in the most obvious places that D&I shapes the way businesses function. Well-managed and effectively implemented D&I policies emerge through a much wider range of issues; from how to adapt the built environment for workability and getting the most from a cross-generational workforce to understanding the implications of working globally and the importance of inclusive leadership.

The benefits of D&I go way beyond compliance into every aspect of a business. From senior leadership right down to graduate entry employees, an inclusive organisation relies on the diversity of thinking from an ever inclusive workforce to be ahead of the game.

Case Study

True Office

June 29, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

BUILDING VALUE FOR ENTREPRENEURS

Gong was appointed to launch True Office in the UK and the US after the successful exit of the founder’s previous company, Fifty Lessons, another Gong client.

Gong was tasked with building True Office’s profile and illustrating the relevance of its innovative game-style training to financial services.

Gong focused on linking True Office’s compliance training proposition to the news agenda, leveraging its participation in the FinTech Innovation Lab. This strategy evolved to include an invitation to build and host a bespoke mini game on the FT’s Alphaville website.

Gong achieved international media coverage in the Fortune 500 issue, Forbes, Sunday Times, Reuters and American Banker, while the FT’s Alphaville blog generated 400 new business enquiries from its target audience and created a storm of Twitter discussion. True Office was bought by the NYSE.

Case Study

Secrets of CEOs Book Launch

June 29, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

BRAND POSITIONING AND BOOK LAUNCH

Heidrick & Struggles, one of the world’s leading executive search firms, asked Gong to create a campaign to reposition and reinvigorate the CEO & Board Practice in the UK under its new leader in order to support the development of more board-level search work.

Gong helped devise and refine a plan to interview FTSE 100 CEOs by teaming up the practice leader with city journalist, Andrew Cave. Their fascinating interviews yielded material that was good enough to be published as a book. Gong ran the process to find the right publisher and the resulting book, Secrets of CEOs was trailed in The Daily Telegraph pre-launch over a week.

Gong secured worldwide coverage for the book’s publication in top broadcast and print media. The book topped Amazon UK’s Business and Finance list in its first week of publication and its author, who had engaged over 70 FTSE 100 CEOs in one-to-ones, was invited to present at a host of business events. The Board Practice won half a million pounds of new business as a direct result. This campaign was a finalist in the best B2B section of the PR Week awards and led to Gong being asked to launch Heidrick & Struggles’ new global alternative energy practice.

News, Small Grid

Gong rings out the changes with rebrand

June 5, 2016 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

GONG RINGS OUT THE CHANGES WITH REBRAND

New visual identity and vision for Gong marks milestone in company’s growth

London, 6th July 2016: Since Gong was launched 12 years ago, the communications industry has undergone seismic changes. Then, there was no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat. LinkedIn was only a year old with 756,000 users compared to upwards of 350 million now. Digitalisation and globalisation have changed, beyond recognition, the way we communicate. It’s not only this industry as a whole that has evolved; Gong has too.

Gong Creative and Gong Kenya were opened in 2012, a new team is on board, and already this year Gong’s client work has won or been shortlisted for seven awards. Narda Shirley, managing director of Gong Communications said: “It’s been a year of significant growth and success for Gong so we’ve looked inwards and done something we advise our clients to do; refreshed our brand. We’re attracting some talented young minds and we’ve taken the opportunity to reflect more closely on who we are and what we cherish in our work. We value purpose in the work we do for our clients. The time was right to rebrand to mirror this vision.”

Gong’s rebrand from concept to identity to new website has been designed and produced entirely in-house.

News, Small Grid

Gong & Lloyd’s of London win Marketing Week’s award

May 13, 2016 rachel_eaton

GONG COMMUNICATIONS AND LLOYD’S OF LONDON WIN MARKETING WEEK’S DIVERSITY CHAMPION AWARD FOR DIVE IN FESTIVAL

London, 13 May 2016: Praised as a ‘bold and brave’ event, the Dive In Festival for diversity and inclusion in insurance has won a prestigious industry award. Curated by Gong for our client Lloyd’s of London, Dive In won the Diversity Champion category at the Marketing Week awards beating off some stiff competition. The judges also said: “Dive In ran a prominent event and really made their mark ensuring they are committed for the long term.”

The award was presented by Sir Lenny Henry at a glittering ceremony at the Roundhouse in London on May 12^th.

“We are absolutely thrilled that Dive In has received this high profile recognition,” commented Narda Shirley, managing director at Gong Communications. “It was an honour to have been an integral part of a very exciting ‘first’ for the insurance industry with a wide-ranging brief spanning branding, video, events and workshops. Dive In 2016 is already looking even bigger and better!”

Following on from the hugely successful 2015 event, Gong has been re-appointed by Lloyd’s to curate Dive In on behalf of the Inclusion@Lloyd’s steering group. This year’s festival will be held between 27^th-29^th Sept 2016 and will include branded events across the globe as well as expanded participation outside the Lloyd’s Market.

Event, News

The 13th Annual AVCA Conference

May 10, 2016 rachel_eaton

THE 13^th ANNUAL AVCA CONFERENCE

Dates: 25^th – 27^th April 2016

Location: Sheraton Addis – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The AVCA Conference is the flagship event for the African Private Equity and Venture Capital industry and provides an important platform for GPs, LPs and investors interested in the continent to discuss the most pertinent opportunities and issues of the year.

The 13^th annual conference focused on making the business case for private equity in Africa by highlighting the wide array of investment opportunities, strategies employed and success stories. It also saw the launch of two AVCA research reports, the AVCA/EY Exit Study, providing valuable data about the exits landscape in Africa, coupled with key information on how fund managers create value and deliver commercial returns; and finally the AVCA Sustainability Study which examined how private capital is helping to drive ESG standards across the continent.

Gong was on site managing all communications requirements of the conference.

https://www.avcaconference.com/

WELCOMING FRESH FACES IN TO THE FOLD

CORPCOMMS: DIVE IN WINS BEST LIVE EVENT – INTERNAL

GONG’S CSR IN PRWEEK

BEYOND DIVERSITY: THE BUSINESS CASE FOR DEVELOPING AN INTERNAL CULTURE OF INCLUSION

BUILDING VALUE FOR ENTREPRENEURS

BRAND POSITIONING AND BOOK LAUNCH

GONG RINGS OUT THE CHANGES WITH REBRAND

GONG COMMUNICATIONS AND LLOYD’S OF LONDON WIN MARKETING WEEK’S DIVERSITY CHAMPION AWARD FOR DIVE IN FESTIVAL

THE 13th ANNUAL AVCA CONFERENCE

THE 13^th ANNUAL AVCA CONFERENCE