Paddy Power is known for its distinctive branding, stunts and mischief. The entertainment giant has operations in Ireland, UK, Bulgaria, the Isle of Man and Australia. It has over 5000 employees and 550 shops across the UK and Ireland. Rosie Valentine, Head of Internal Communications, is a fan of the CrowdComms event app and tells us about her experience.
It didn’t take me long in this role to discover that our internal communications needed some serious attention. For such a dynamic business our channels were antiquated, messages were inconsistent and there was a lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing among employees and little communication between offices.
Throughout 2015 I focused on streamlining our comms and getting them to a stage where we do the basics brilliantly. Our employees would know what to expect and feel much more a part of the organisation.
We had already gone digital working with Newsweaver to produce our weekly newsletter. It was at a Newsweaver conference that I first came across an event app used well. The experience was amazing – utterly seamless and so slick: I was hooked!
As a result we created our first event app with CrowdComms for our bi-annual senior leadership meeting in September 2015. It was the highlight of the event.
From my point of view, not being particularly tech savvy, it was appealing that I didn’t have to build something from scratch. All the testing had been done and security was not an issue.
I loved the fact that I didn’t need to rely on our technical team’s time and resource to get up and running. The platform set up and access is so straightforward and the support from CrowdComms is brilliant.
By this time, I’d seen CrowdComms’ event apps used at several events. Although the core functionality was the same they all looked and felt utterly bespoke.
It was simple to brand our event app for our event and I was able to upload the attendee list with photos and profiles of everyone. This was great for networking and finding out more about people’s roles and how they could work together on some key projects.
We opened the event app one week before the event and gave people the opportunity to get familiar with it and view the event information. Every leader I met was encouraged to download the app and adoption levels were up to 81% .
The event apps anonymous Q&A feature gave people the confidence to speak up, helping surface some of the burning issues post merger and enabling answers to be prepared.
Flush with success, we then launched an event app, a mobile and a web version this time, for our Talent and Development day which was set up like a festival with lots of different sessions running at the same time.
With around 1,000 employees present, the event app was fantastic for helping them navigate around the event and book themselves into the sessions they wished to attend.
Push notifications is a great feature and really helped drive engagement and keep up the talkability factor.
This particular event was big on gamification. Arranged like a scavenger hunt, there were things like key quotes from talks to collect and a quiz about the day’s events.
Our CEO wanted everyone to really get involved in the day and it worked. People were running around all over the place to get their answers and see their name up on the real time leader board.
It was a great atmosphere and entirely suitable for Paddy Power. Adoption levels were high, active engagement was high and most importantly, our people felt that they had been invested in and really involved. It was great kudos for the IC team!
In terms of success, using the event app saved us huge amounts of time in the run up to the event which we could spend on other tasks – that alone justified it.
But the event apps analytics and data are very comprehensive and it’s easy to see how well people engaged with the event, what was strong and what was less so.
The important thing is make sure you have a clear purpose for your event, that you know what it is you want to measure, and what success of the event looks like for you.
This is an adapted version of an original piece featured in the smileguide white paper.
