Marketing Excellence Awards: JOIN US

HKS, Inc. (Dallas, TX), a 1,000-person architecture firm, is taking home third place in the Special Event category of Zweig Group’s 2015 Marketing Excellence Awards for its JOIN US event. 2014 marked HKS’ 75^th anniversary. The team at HKS wanted to celebrate 75 years with a bang – no boring paperweights or bulky, hardbound history book. JOIN US was a yearlong campaign where thought leadership and captivating stories were shared with clients, colleagues, and employees. Goals for the event included creating a culture of knowledge sharing; connecting HKS staff, clients, consultants, and the community with informative topics; and finally, getting it out to the masses. There was a series of 52 short, compelling presentations at the HKS Dallas headquarters Learning Center. The JOIN US presentations were featured live via streaming video – accessible to clients and consultants – as well as being available afterward via on-demand channel. The talks were also e-blasted to company contacts and promoted on the HKS intranet, website, and social media pages. A JOIN US microsite was created to house the calendar of events. All events were promoted on the site prior to the event and stored in “past events” following the talk. With JOIN US, HKS created a culture of knowledge sharing that was so successful firm-wide that the program was continued in 2015. On average, 150 people participated in Dallas and online at each of the 52 JOIN US talks. Visits to the microsite and knowledge center averaged 100 hits per day. The integrated communications team at HKS even received calls from clients and consultants asking if they could hire them to implement similar programs at their businesses. For more info on the Marketing Excellence Awards click here. The 2016 Marketing Excellence Awards are open for registration! Click here to register your firm.