Many companies come to us and request that we help feature various aspects of their company culture in order to help them stand out and highlight their uniqueness.
The Client and the Request
Citi boasts the largest presence of any foreign financial institution in Israel and has both an innovation center as well as a Fintech accelerator and a venture arm. Citi wanted Extra Mind to create a campaign to highlight its diversity policy.
Extra Mind thought it would be a great idea to hold a pitch event that takes place in complete darkness – what better way in which to show there is no prejudice when your appearance is not part of the pitch.
In order to do so we organized the event at the Na Laga’at (“please touch”) center in Jaffa, a non-profit center which aims to raise awareness of the obstacles faced by the deaf and blind populations.
The center has a theatre company that hosts performers who are blind or deaf while a restaurant enables non-disabled people to experience eating in pitch darkness. Extra Mind appreciated that not only the event was unique but the setting helped the participants experience the huge vacuum felt by those who cannot see.
The Plan
Citi accepted the idea and Extra Mind started to plan the campaign :
- Media Partner : Calcalist – one of Israel’s top 3 financial newspapers was selected as the media partner. The use of a media partner like Calcalist helps promote the event as well as be a place to call for proposals and announce the participants and contestants in the pitch.
- Content Creation : we created content and assisted Calcalist in building a dedicated mini site for the competition. We also worked together with the paper’s online media department on an ad campaign to encourage submissions.
- Logistics – As an A to Z agency we produced the event and negotiated the terms with the Na Laga’at center (the location for the event), the lineup and planned and executed all PR activities and pitching around the project..
- “The idea of the competition is to promote diversity, What you hear is the idea, the technology, the product, without seeing the person behind it”, Tsafrir Attar, head of Citi’s accelerator in Israel
The Event
The event generated a lot of buzz in the industry, the companies attending were both surprised and thrilled by the notion of pitching in the dark. The judges were impressed by the contestants and Citi gained a lot of quality dealflow through the event.
We demonstrated how in an entrepreneurial ecosystem where there are so many events, and it is difficult to stand out, the right PR team and an innovative client can make special things happen.
What Next?
We continue to work with Citi and other clients in finding the right concept for their events – we like to add that something EXTRA in order to help our clients highlight their uniqueness.
Do you have an event or service you want to highlight? Speak to us – we promise to come up with a great idea!