5
Scotland
Legendary
Scotland
Rory Archibald, business
development manager,
VisitScotland, on the rise
of Scotland’s legends after
winning the ICCA Best
Marketing Award 2018
I
n November 2017, VisitScotland
Business Events kicked off the
organisation’s first-ever digital
campaign, Legends. A year later,
the campaign won the ICCA Best Marketing
Award.
CN caught up with Rory Archibald, business
development manager.
Why did you create the Legends campaign?
When you think of Scotland you may think of
stunning landscapes and beautiful castles,
which we are incredible proud of, but we want
people also to know the country for its
incredible innovative reputation from Alexander
Fleming’s penicillin to Peter Higgs’ Boson
Particle.
We essentially created the Legends campaign
to give the country’s thriving business events
sector a united voice in showcasing Scotland’s
innovative spirit, pioneering ambition and bold
outlook on a global scale.
Every two months we focus on a different
sector which allows Scotland’s cities,
destinations and convention bureaux to get
involved and showcase their individual
strengths in each of those sectors, whether it’s
technology, creative, marine sciences or
surgery.
What sectors have you covered so far?
So far, we have covered six different sectors–
Technology, Education, Creative, Energy, Life
Sciences and Engineering. We’re halfway
through our seventh sector – Marine which
has involved the Scottish Association for
Marine Science based on Oban and the
Marine Alliance for Science and Technology
for Scotland based in St Andrews.
What other opportunities have been
created as a result of Legends?
Throughout the campaign we have created
meaningful relationships with national trade
bodies, associations, academia and industry
sectors.
“The main goal of
the campaign was to
communicate
that events generate
ideas, create
connections and
can be leveraged as a
tool to drive growth”
In June we launched our Young Legends
awards in collaboration with the Year of Young
People. The awards were created to
showcase Scotland’s future generation of
www.conference-news.co.uk
pioneers and innovators. We held the
awards ceremony at the Legends One Year
Anniversary event at the SEC on the 22
November 2018.
Another fantastic opportunity which came
as a result of the campaign, was our
partnership with FinTech Scotland to create
the inaugural ‘FinTech Scotland Fortnight
2018’, which took place 17–28 September.
This collated more than 30 events taking
place in five cities welcoming 2,500
delegates under one banner. One legacy of
Legends is that we are creating a strategy
with FinTech Scotland to develop the event
into an annual occurrence to drive
international fintech related conferences to
the country.
How successful has the campaign
been in its first year?
The main goal of the campaign was to
communicate that events generate ideas,
create connections and can be leveraged
as a tool to drive growth in key industrial
sectors and engage with academics,
industry ambassadors and organisations
across Scotland. The campaign was
designed to be a low cost, high impact
initiative to allow as many as possible to join
the movement. The success of this is
shown in the number of organisations both
within the business events and academic