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Macmillan Cancer Support visited the Idea Shop with a campaign brief outlining the need to raise awareness that people with rarer cancers should get fairer access to the drugs they need to prolong their lives. It’s a really important issue that the Idea Shop team were only too happy to help with.

The challenge:

The benefits of drugs to treat rarer cancers, while often hugely valued by patients, frequently prove non cost-effective under the NICE Technology Appraisal processes and aren’t widely available on the NHS as a result.

The campaign brief detailed a range of audiences that Macmillan Cancer Support intend to target including MPs, Health Thought Leaders, NICE, health correspondents, influential bloggers and the general public. The aim of the campaign is to generate national and regional coverage to raise awareness of the issue amongst the target audiences and encourage the public to get involved and write to their local MP / newspaper.

The solution:

We talked Macmillan through the need to pull together a detailed communications strategy setting clear guidelines on timing.  We recommended stretching the initial deadline to beyond May as the campaign would still be equally as effective working as a sustained campaign, rather than an immediate push before the general election when the media will be incredibly crowded with competing messages.

The Ogilvy team recommended splitting the target audiences into three distinct groups that each require different messaging and tailored approaches.

Ogilvy stressed the need for a case study in order to help people to engage with the story in a personal manner. An individual’s story would greatly assist the campaign in terms of the strength of the argument created for enabling fairer access to drugs.
We batted around a few ideas for ‘lines’ to promote the campaign, which we’ll keep under wraps for now.

Macmillan is currently very strong in terms of generating media headlines. Therefore we recommended focusing on amplifying current online activity – such as utilising the Facebook page and creating a Twitter stream purely for the campaign to raise awareness of the issues these people are facing. By utilising digital streams Macmillan can create a value exchange, enabling supporters to actively engage in the campaign and share their views in addition to spreading the word about the need for fairer access to drugs that treat rare cancers.
To that end we talked about initiating a “retweet campaign” to support the call to action to write to MPs or sign a petition.

Ogilvy talked about the importance of listening to what is currently being talked about online and then engaging in that conversation. Engaging influential bloggers is key to spreading online chatter and we recommended a listening exercise in order to help Macmillan identify relevant individuals.

We also talked about right and wrong ways to approach bloggers and active twitter users – think of it as a conversation you are joining, be respectful, earn your right to be there, then add your two cents, just as if you were joining a conversation down the pub or over the garden fence.

The chatter online will drive traffic to a dedicated part of the Macmillan Communities site where the call to action will be clearly stated, either in the form of a petition or a template letter.

Macmillan is keeping Idea Shop updated on their progress and we are fully behind the campaign.

Keep your eyes peeled for the latest coverage:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7189796/Terminally-ill-patients-being-penalised-by-Nice-for-having-rare-conditions.html

Get involved: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/macmillancancer http://community.macmillan.org.uk/whatsnew/default.aspx

Post by Sophie Gray, Ogilvy PR

We had an intense ideas session with “Steve and Steve” from the Merton and Lambeth Citizen Advice Bureau.
This Local Citizen Advice service provides free, independent and impartial and confidential advice to everyone within their community.

Currently they face a few challenges in a time of recession, namely the recruitment and engagement of more volunteers, giving an even better quality of service to Clients seeking advise on rights and responsibilities and the general awareness of what their services are all about.

Being a stand alone advice centre can be challenging with limited funds, so we suggested cost effective ways to get their messages out.

Once we started to focus on 3 key marketing channels namely PR, partnerships and social media networking, the ideas started to flow…
In order to reach a high number of people in the community CAB can partner up with local newspapers and address some key social issues in the form of a column. This will generate mass awareness and position them as a body that gives advice that makes a difference. Blogging is a very powerful medium where the community can engage and discuss on certains forums and CAB can facilitate these blogs on their own website. Another way to get mass exposure is to tap into events in the community and act as a partner or sponsorship. We explored multiple ways to maximize the web as a tool to engage with both Clients and volunteers. Lastly we thought about using more video content to expose CAB in a positive and real way to the community, as this will help inform the public about the projects handled and what kind of services CAB offer.

Ideashop will follow up with a few local contacts established over the 3 day session in Brixton and recommend CAB to partner with them and make sure that there will be some element of networking taking place to leverage one another’s profiles. Using partner companies will be key to CAB’s future success. www.mertoncab.org.uk: