Hill+Knowlton Strategies have partnered with Drive Forward for 3 years now, offering young people an opportunity to thrive through our work placement scheme. During H+K’s Aim Higher Day, nine young people visited the office and we pulled out all the stops to showcase our creative environment, as well as provide an insight into what it means to work for public relations and integrated communications agency.

The most interactive part of the day was the group’s introduction to our process of Creative Ideation. We challenged our guests to come up with an idea to celebrate adidas’ 70^th birthday using social media and David Beckham to galvanise followers. We were bowled over by how engaged they were!

Robyn, a previous candidate, could not recommend the placement highly enough, encouraging the group to apply; “this has been a life-changing experience and I hope that people will continue to work with Drive Forward, to enable other young people that have had a more trying past than most to get the experience within big companies that will help them grow as people and get the future they have worked hard for.”

On Thursday, Danielle and Matteo from the E+I team went to Victaulic headquarters in Ghent, Belgium to train its sales team on the use of Social Media platforms. Discussions focused on the use of LinkedIn, and how to utilise it to liaise with prospects and promote the company and industry through thought leadership and high quality content. The sales team was incredibly interested in hearing our insights on this topic and H+K established strong networks with senior members of the sales team.

On Tuesday, our Director of Social Media, Candace Kuss, spoke on the #CannesUncovered panel at the annual PRCA post Cannes Lions event. The evening featured a discussion around some of the winning work and connecting themes. Brands as a force for good was the key trend as illustrated by The Bank of Åland’s innovative Åland Index which addresses the environmental issues facing the Baltic Sea area, which won a Cyber Grand Prix for H+K Sweden. Another reviewed Grand Prix, in both Integrated and Promo categories was Boost Your Voice. This initiative showed the brand taking a stand to help their local communities vote on election day. On a lighter note, Candace showed the crowd pleasing Hungerithm from Snickers which is one of the most creative uses of social date we saw at the festival.