Our Events Director, Zoe Jones, reflects on the Global Soft Power Summit hosted by Brand Finance.
Brand Finance’s Global Soft Power Summit 2022 brought together delegates from across the globe to explore the results of the latest iteration of the Global Soft Power Index and to debate the role of soft power at a time when hard power is looming large.
Hosted in partnership with BBC Global News, the Summit was held as a hybrid event, both in-person and streamed virtually from the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London. The Brand Dialogue team managed the logistics for the conference, including venue coordination, catering, speaker booking and liaison, and internal and external venue branding. Special attention was attributed to audio-visual and technical requirements to facilitate attendance from both delegates and speakers from overseas who were unable to join the event in-person.
The Summit was promoted across all available channels, both online and offline, through a robust targeted marketing campaign. As a result, we were delighted to welcome nearly 300 attendees at the venue, and an additional 500 virtual delegates worldwide.
Innovation, Promotion and Soft Power
The event featured a keynote speech and two panel discussions consisting of world-renowned expert speakers, including the former Prime Ministers of Denmark and Finland, government officials, and global business leaders. This year, we focused on the role of innovation in driving soft power, the importance of promotion for building a nation brand abroad, and how we foresee their significance evolving in future years. The topics sparked lively discussions between the panellists, moderated by the BBC’s Zeinab Badawi. The audience was also invited to participate in the debate, with an opportunity to ask questions to the panellists on stage.
We were delighted to be joined by Former Belgian Prime Minister, Member of the European Parliament & Co-Chair of The Conference on the Future of Europe, Guy Verhofstadt, as our keynote speaker. We also featured special guest speaker presentations from the Shadow Immigration Minister, WIPO, British Council, and the Ukrainian Institute.
In addition to the morning conference, the Summit featured a series of topical afternoon workshops, and plenty of in-person networking opportunities over breakfast, coffee, and lunch. It was great to physically bring people together again after two years of hosting exclusively virtual events, as well as enable international delegates to join online who would have been otherwise unable to attend.
For more information about events at Brand Dialogue and Brand Finance, please email events@brandfinance.com.