Global event agency emc3 has opened its first Australian office, marking the group’s expansion into the Asia Pacific region.
With offices located in London, Boston and Nigeria, emc3 is setting its sights on APAC following an increase in requests for events in the region.
The new Melbourne office will be led by Rebecca Kennewell, who joined emc3’s London office a year ago as a senior event producer, producing events in 12 countries for brands including LinkedIn, Bullhorn and Rapid7.
While it might seem like a risky move to expand an agency during a global pandemic, the impacts of COVID-19 actually helped everything fall into place.
“Our CEO Alistair Graham has always had a vision for expanding into the APAC region but a date hadn’t been confirmed for our future planning prior to COVID-19,” Kennewell told Spice News.
“My UK visa had ended and we were in the process of applying for my sponsorship to be able to continue living and working in the UK. I arrived in Melbourne in mid-March and spent the lockdown period with my sister and nieces.
“With the effects of the pandemic increasing the visa offices were closed down indefinitely meaning my visa was on hold. After spending time such a long time with my family I realised I wasn’t able to leave them and made the hard decision to stay in Melbourne.
“Luckily it didn’t mean the end for my relationship with emc3 and that’s when emc3 APAC was born!”
The emc3 team is excited to be launching in APAC as organisations begin their planning for future events.
“Being a full service agency, Emc3 are excited about the opportunities to bring our event canvas workshops to the region and to be a part of the business planning organisations are now starting to work on and to be a part of the planning a lot earlier than an agency would traditionally be brought in,” said Kennewell.
“Emc3 developed the event canvas workshops in 2019 as a tool that starts with understanding the purpose, internal mission and vision statements, and establishing an agreement across all stakeholders.
“That is then mapped out into a step-by-step strategy, creative ideation process, reinforced with logistical expertise at every touch point.”
With a new presence in Australia, Emc3 have begun expanding relationships with existing clients to work on their APAC events.
“Now that regulations are lifting across Australia and New Zealand, we are starting to see businesses regroup and work on their plans for the second half of 2020 and beyond including how they rethink their business events strategy,” said Kennewell.
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