Practice what we preach… we did it!

It was a real honour for meto represent PN at LeWeb this year together with Marta. LeWeb is one of the most influential web- and digital media centered tradeshows in Europe and is organized by Seesmic founder Loic LeMeur.

Bertrand Piccard, who had just completed a non-stop flight around our planet in a solar powered airplane, gave us as intro an energizing presentation. “If people tell you it cannot be done, just ignore and do it” was his main credo… and it certainly got us in the right mood set.

So, when we saw one of the attractions of this year’s edition of Le Web, the Renault Twizy -a futuristic 100% electric car that will only be introduced on the market next year- , we decided boldly to win it. The contest required creating your own design (which Marta did using the credo bold pink is nice), and then, that you would share the design with your network and ask them to vote for you. The voting was done via Facebook and the person with the biggest amount of votes would pick up a personalized Twizy at next year’s edition of Le Web. A Challenge we liked: trying to win Marta a car based solely on social influence. We called it Project DCG Rat Mobiel.

Porter Novelli’s Digital Communications Group supported the idea from the very beginning. In order to win Marta’s car, we had to engage our communities. And with Porter Novelli network being our strongest community, it was its power we had to harness most.

We went both through our social contacts, and the Porter Novelli network kicked in. Heavily.

And it worked! Before we knew it, we had votes coming from all over the world from Slovakia, through Singapore to US! The engagement from the network was truly amazing and enabled us to beat our sturdy competing French tech school…. With ONE vote. Yes we can 😉 .

Marta will get the keys to her pink automobile next year at LeWeb, but all together we brought the Porter Novelli network on stage… at the most influential digital media happening in Europe.

The buzz around the contest and our relentless tweeting on the Shows content (amplified through retweets from the Porter Novelli global network) got us mentions for most influential tweeps, delivering most tweets, and most posts.

We were on screen during the whole show, splitting the honors with @leweb and @loic the event handles.

We could never have done this alone… thanks for all the support and amplifying.