For medical organisations and patient groups, disease awareness days play a vital role in consumer advocacy. They help to shine a spotlight, be it for a day, a week or a month, on conditions affecting thousands, even millions of people around the world.
They can be an opportune time to reach out to media to further expand the reach of your advocacy, putting forward your case as to why your organisation is leading the charge to combat some of the world’s biggest healthcare issues.
The logic is sound: it is the time for peak awareness of this issue, so journalists must be interested, right?
The reality however, as most things are, is much more complicated than that.
Every day, journalists are graded internally about the content they are putting out into the world, how many people are reading it? Are people reading the whole article or just skimming it? Is the journo bringing in exclusives that set their organisation above the rest? The list goes on.
Every journalist, especially in specialised fields such as medical journalism, have to find stories that will interest and inform their readers, not simply regurgitate that today is a day to care about a particular medical condition.
The other important thing to remember is that if you care enough to send out media opportunities to journalists and newsrooms, the likelihood is that other organisations will too.
Organisations need to have captivating stories available of the issues surrounding a disease state, but also the work being done to overcome it. Patients, key opinion leaders and important new data are all cornerstones of making your media engagement stand out from the crowd.
But most importantly, waiting until an advocacy day to make your impassioned calls for change can be one of the least opportune times to do so. You can and will be fighting a rising tide of all others who care just as deeply as you trying to get their messages into what are increasingly contracting newsrooms.
Consistent advocacy with captivating storytelling throughout the year, especially at times where newsrooms are low on content, builds trust and authority that you and your group are subject experts.
This not only helps in the short term, but also provides long term benefits as you become a relied upon source known for providing information quickly and helping to put together stories that inform appropriately.
London Agency helps our clients build year-round communication strategies to maximise organisational reach and provide captivating media. To learn more about our services, contact us here.
