PR & internal comms - engaging staff in behaviour change
Supporting sustained behaviour change for 35,000 employees - that was the ultimate aim of our PR and internal communications work with cardiovascular disease prevention charity, Heart of Mersey (HOM). As part of an integrated social marketing approach, our PR team supported the Merseyside Hospital Food Project to bring about sustained improvements for NHS employees across ten participating Hospital Trusts.
A systematic two-prong PR approach was developed to ‘sell in’ key messages to CEOs and communications staff at each hospital, as well as local communities using the hospitals. Our team worked closely with HOM to plan and deliver a regional launch event; writing press releases, pre-arranging broadcast interviews, and planning and handling a media opportunity.
After achieving extensive coverage across all of the region’s major newspaper titles, as well as eight different Merseyside radio stations, we wrote and placed a series of opinion pieces and case study articles to showcase this successful behaviour change project on a national platform. This piece appeared in more than 15 different national catering and healthcare titles, all on an entirely editorial basis. In total, this equated to a ROI of £52,000 of coverage for less than two days of PR retainer time.
We also worked closely with each Hospital Trusts’ communications team to brief and support them with the PR tools for planning and delivering their own local press launch event to publicise the project internally, and in their own local communities - achieving further PR activities equating to a further £25,000 of column inch space in regional media titles.
