Background:

The 45th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC 23) brought together biomedical engineers from across the world to discuss futuristic developments in biomedical technology. Computer brain interfaces that translate people’s thoughts to text and a computational model of the entire human body were some of the thought-provoking innovations discussed at this groundbreaking conference.

Challenges:

How to convince international attendees to make the big trip Down Under?

A key objective for the Organising Committee was to expose biomedical engineering students to the international community. Being an in-person only event, this meant attracting a genuinely international audience to Sydney to attend the conference. The hurdle to this was to convince delegates that EMBC 23 would be worth the cost and long-distance travel, particularly after the previous two editions were held in the European hubs of Berlin and Glasgow, providing easy access to European attendance.

Solution:

A persuasive marketing strategy was required to encourage overseas delegates to come to Sydney. A campaign was devised that included developing a series of videos highlighting select keynote speakers and revealing some of the cutting-edge research to be discussed at EMBC 23. Arinex enlisted support from partner Tourism Australia to financially support the video creation and deployment, which added great clout to the marketing campaign.

Outcomes:

The series of videos were created and included invitations to Australia from renowned international biomedical engineers including Professor Peter Hunter (University of Auckland) and Professor Rylie Green (Imperial College London). The videos were deployed across a number of channels – including social media, direct email marketing and via the EMBC 23 website – and wielded strong results; 2,300 delegates with a huge 87% international. This equated to an estimated economic impact of $7 million into the Sydney economy.