31st July 2007 – EIBS wishes to congratulate Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB) on their recent win at a prestigious digital awards ceremony. GCMB’s website built and maintained using EasySite CMS has won the chairman’s award in the inaugural Drum Awards for Digital Industries (DADI). (see note 1)
GCMB has been pioneering in its use of leading-edge technology to promote Glasgow nationally and internationally and to help professional conference organisers get the maximum impact for their meetings in the city.
In June, GCMB achieved what is believed to be a world first when the opening forum of the prestigious IEEE International Conference on Communications was broadcast live on the Convention Bureau website. The forum included presentations from chief executives from leading technology companies including Microsoft, BT, Vodafone and Motorola.
More than 400 technology enthusiasts from around the world, - from countries as diverse as Australia, Taiwan, China, Mexico, Slovenia, the United States and Israel – followed the proceedings live through the Convention Bureau website.
The number of monthly page views on www.seeglasgow.com has grown from 800,000 last June to 1.8 million today, while page views for the Convention Bureau section of the website have more than trebled in the same period to 25,000 per month.
Phil Jones, chair of the judging panel at the DADI awards, said: “The chairman’s award was given to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s www.seeglasgow.com because it promotes Glasgow to visitors so well, but it is also used by residents. It is easy to navigate, it shows the best parts of Glasgow, and its effectiveness, in terms of the number of users and page impressions, is astonishing.”
Scott Taylor, the chief executive of GCMB, said: “Technology can add value and we are committed to using it to create significant points of difference for conference organisers. We provide not just a different level of service, but we use technology to deliver significantly higher values to conference organisers. There is no better example of this than our recent live broadcast of the opening of the IEEE conference, which was watched through our website by people from Taiwan to Texas.”
Alexandra Redmond, head of Information and Communications Technology at GCMB, said: “Since we revamped the website last year, the number of visitors has shot up. The big increase in traffic to the Convention Bureau section shows that the meetings industry is using the website to promote the destination, find out about venues and support business, and to discover the range of support that we can offer them.”
Katy Hill, senior event manager of In Conference Ltd, the organiser of ICC2007, confirmed the live broadcast was a major asset for the meeting. “This was great because it allowed people unable to attend the conference to see the keynote speakers and it brings the conference to a wider market,” she said. “This adds value to us as a conference organising company.”
The DADI award is the latest in a long line of accolades picked up by GCMB in the past year: M&IT Best UK Convention Bureau 2007; ICCA Best Marketing Award 2006; MIMA Best Brand Marketing Award 2006; and Marketing Society Scotland Communication Excellence Award 2007. Readers of Condé Nast Traveller voted Glasgow their favourite UK city in 2006, and this week, GCMB’s public relations team was a finalist in the UK’s Best In-House PR Team at the prestigious Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Excellence Awards.
Notes to editors
1. The competition is organised by UK marketing and media magazine, The Drum, and is open to digital agencies, creative agencies, media owners or clients throughout the UK or Ireland but outside of London. For more information of the competition see www.dadiawards.com
2. Funded by Glasgow City Council with contributions from the private sector, the not-for-profit Glasgow City Marketing Bureau has 40 staff engaged in national and international activity comprising:
Development and implementation of the city branding campaign: Glasgow: Scotland with style
Conventions, incentives, meetings and exhibition sales
Conference and event accommodation bookings
Event creation, attraction, management and marketing
Public Relations
Development of the website for the Metropolitan area: www.seeglasgow.com
