WELCOME TO OUR FIRST MONTHLY NEWSLETTER, A DIFFERENT VIEW!
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We’re sending it to people we know personally in our sector, to share useful news and insight from our latest work in health and pharma communications.
A Different View contains six short articles and topical links we think will be helpful, updates on industry people and events and shared expertise and opinions from our members who make the Difference to our clients every day.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
You will only receive future issues if you subscribe to our Different View mailing list. So, if you like what you read, hit the subscribe button below to add yourself to our list!
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If you know anyone else who’d like to get it too, click here to forward it to them so they can subscribe directly.
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THE CRITICAL DIFFERENCE: A CHANGE OF MINDSET IN THE INDUSTRY
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“We are on a mission to prove that work is an activity not a place and that while people might make different choices about where and how they work, they in no way compromise the quality of their work and productivity – in fact the total opposite!”
There’s always an element of fear and self-doubt in launching an untried service model like ours, however good the planning team and their collective health and pharma communications sector knowledge and experience.
We’ve now been in business for two years. And the last 12 months have conclusively proved to me that this way of working has been as attractive as we thought – both to the independent healthcare consultants who make up The Difference Collective and to our clients. Our people may flex the hours they work, but never the quality of what they do. In fact, we have proved that people who work ‘differently’ don’t achieve less, they achieve more.
Our rapidly-growing client base and repeat business prove that a significant proportion of the market understands and values the benefits of this new model. And now, with our two years’ track record of success, we hope it will give more traditional clients the confidence to try us for size when they find that their usual channels don’t fit a particular project or skills requirement.
It’s exciting to have spotted the opportunity for a change of approach in the healthcare communications market. It feels like we’re part of something good, offering comms support in a new way that more and more clients are discovering they want and need.
Angie Wiles
Founder
Connect with Angie on LinkedIn
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They might be familiar faces or new contacts for you – meet two Difference Collective members through five quick Q&As.
CONSULTANT NAME
Jo Willey
WHAT DO YOU DO FOR THE DIFFERENCE'S CLIENTS?
I’m Collective Media Maestro in charge of media relations and media training both for clients and internally for The Collective. So - lots of writing, editing, ideas generation, story and content development and overarching media strategy. And training others to get better at doing all of that too.
WHAT'S YOUR BACKGROUND?
I’ve been a national newspaper journalist for more than 20 years and am the former Health Editor at the Daily Express. I now use my experience and expertise as a media consultant working across the healthcare comms, pharmaceutical industry and charity sectors.
WHAT DO YOU MOST ENJOY WORKING ON?
Media training and messaging workshops. I absolutely love doing them. Helping people work out how to tell their best stories in an impactful and interesting way is hugely fulfilling. It is basically me using my skills as a seasoned journalist to create great stories without being shouted at to file!
GIVE US AN INSIDER TIP: WHAT'S YOUR GO-TO ONLINE RESOURCE, SITE OR BLOG FOR WORK-RELATED HELP AND INSIGHT?
I am still a “jobbing journo”, filing exclusive health and breakthrough science stories to the nationals, so I am constantly scouring the WWW and dealing with contacts to keep up-to-date on the latest developments. This helps in my consultancy work too, knowing what is on the health news agenda and what stories are making in the media.
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 CONSULTANT NAME
Reena Bajwa
WHAT DO YOU DO FOR THE DIFFERENCE'S CLIENTS?
I lead the trade (pharmacy media) PR strategy and plans for a number of key brands owned by leading consumer-focused self-care company, Perrigo, including specialist skin care from Bio-Oil, sleep aids from Nytol, smoking cessation products by NiQuitin and hay fever solutions from Beconase and Becodefence. I’m also working on consumer media relations for HRA Pharma’s COMPEED® range.
WHAT'S YOUR BACKGROUND?
With over 15 years’ media industry experience across general lifestyle and consumer health and beauty, I’ve most recently worked in consumer PR for clients including RB (Scholl, Veet, E45 and Optrex) and dermatology and aesthetic skin care group sk:n clinics. I’m a journalism degree graduate and love to write about three of my favourite things – travel, health and beauty and fine dining – for Luxurious Magazine.
WHAT DO YOU MOST ENJOY WORKING ON?
I feel most at home in the beauty and personal care space and know how to maximise on media relations, including social influencer engagement. I always strive to develop robust plans and a relevant strategy that will resonate through into realistic tactical ideas and deliver on press coverage to reach the right audiences.
GIVE US AN INSIDER TIP: WHAT'S YOUR GO-TO ONLINE RESOURCE, SITE OR BLOG FOR WORK-RELATED HELP AND INSIGHT?
Diary Directory is a useful consumer media lifestyle tool for both PR/brand and journalist database access, media requests and also jobs. I also use the PAGB website a lot for the latest news and information on self-care for Perrigo.
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PROJECT WITH A DIFFERENCE:
COMPEED® SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN
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What we learned about runners and foot pain in our work this month
Our social media campaign planning for HRA Pharma’s COMPEED® brand considered the many occasions that blister plasters are needed. A category leader and kit-bag essential among runners, we developed a series of activities with the UK’s most engaged online running community, UKRunChat. Having sponsored a couple of its tweetchats in 2018 we wanted to deliver something memorable for 2019. To that end, we negotiated a UKRunChat ‘take over’ in May kicking off with a competition that affirmed COMPEED® as a must-have piece of kit for runners. It also served to grow the follower numbers in readiness for hosting two consecutive tweetchats for which we negotiated paid partnerships with two of the most renowned and inspiring names in the running world.
Double Olympic medallist, Dame Kelly Holmes is a household name and Leanne Davies, founder of Run Mummy Run, is a well-known online influencer for women’s running. Pre and post promotion of the tweetchats as well as original and relevant blog content was used to attract participants, add value and set the date firmly in UKRunChat participants’ diaries.
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We learned:
- Brand affinity and advocacy worked particularly well because we put the brand at the heart of a community where it’s well known and directly relevant
- Carefully picking two exceptional influencers and role models paid off with their strong and immediate appeal to the running community
- Using a well-established online community to host high-profile influencers and content made it easy to access the target audience and convey key messages about the brand to more people
Vicki Harper
Head of Digital & Social Working Group
Connect with Vicki on LinkedIn
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WATCH THIS
Brené Brown – The Power of Vulnerability
Researcher and best-selling US author Brené’s TED talk is funny and insightful and changed my perspective. It's an old favourite but it's good and enduring advice. The opening section on being called a storyteller particularly made me laugh!
If you love that, then watch her newest talk 'Call to Courage' - now live on Netflix.
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CONSIDER THIS
Why it’s time to add some colour to the white coats
Trials, research and expert opinion are no longer enough. Healthcare comms needs to engage hearts as well as minds. Experience and views in this blog post from former journalist, strategic creative and Difference Collective consultant Chris Lawrence.
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READ THIS
Work Like a Woman
Mary’s book calls for a move away from an outdated alpha culture to embrace female qualities like trust, collaboration and flexibility in the workplace, and to bring your whole self to work in a way that benefits both men and women. Hear, hear!
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TAKE A TIP FROM THIS
Change your email habits to find more time
Tim Jackson’s blog post shares email productivity advice for entrepreneurs and CEOs. You might not be able to do everything on his list but taking even one tip could free up a few minutes a day – and they all count!
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Charlie Hobson |
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TAP THIS APP
Capture paper receipts, invoices and anything else you want to convert to PDF with Scanbot. It can enhance the scanned image and automate uploads to Dropbox or other cloud services. Perfect for organising all those bits of paper – and it’s FREE!
Download Scanbot for your iPhone or Android device.
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James Staples |
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PROBLEM PAGE:
CONSUMER HEALTH INFLUENCERS
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Our expert of the month picks up The Difference Collective’s agony aunt pen. Jo Williams, Social Media consultant, shares some good advice based on recent experience in the consumer health arena.
QUESTION
Dear Jo
We're seeing more and more of our consumer health competitors working with influencers as part of their consumer health campaigns. Should I be setting up an influencer programme? If so, what do I need to consider and how should I get started?
ANSWER
Yes, you should! Influencers can help you reach and connect with new and bigger audiences. They can help build trust and engagement for your consumer health brand, as well as providing a rich source of valuable and credible content. But to get the most from your influencers, you must choose and manage them wisely. We advise that advocacy like this needs to form part of an overall social media and comms strategy – you need to be established as active and engaging on social media to provide context and support for your influencers.
First, identify influencers who are a good fit with your brand and its values, who can talk credibly about their use of your products, and ideally who already have an affinity towards it. They need to say the right thing in the right tone in a way that your target audience wants to be talked to.
Think less about the size of influencer's following and more about the quality. We've seen great results with micro (up to 50,000 followers) and nano (1,000 - 5,000 followers) influencers who have built really engaged communities around particular niches. Also consider how you might work with them off social media platforms: sponsorship, events or as brand ambassadors
Work closely with the influencers you’ve chosen to create authentic content that resonates and engages with their audience. Don’t try and impose an idea on them. Authenticity is critical for credibility.
Finally and very importantly, know and work within the ASA/CMA rules for paid partnerships. These regulations are being enforced with more rigour and social media users are increasingly savvy about them too. Discuss them and write them into your influencer contract.
Get more consumer influencer campaign insights from our blog penned by Vicki Harper
Jo Williams |
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COMPETITION: WIN FIZZ OR FLOWERS!
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Put someone else in the know about pharma and healthcare comms and you could win! Just spread the word about our first newsletter on social media by retweeting or sharing our posts about it on either Twitter or LinkedIn.
Do it by 30th June and we’ll pick a winner at random from each platform. We'll let the winner know by private message (and share their names in the next newsletter).
They can choose a prize of either a bottle of Fortnum & Mason champagne or a beautiful XL floral box from Bloom and Wild – we’ll post them out asap.
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NEED TO KNOW BASIS
How and where our paths and priorities might cross in health and pharma this month.
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New faces at The Difference Collective: joining us this spring are seasoned healthcare and pharma comms experts Andrew Day, Charlotte Messer, David Avitabile, Natalie Cheshire and Ruth Wilson. You might have come across Andrew in previous roles at Merck and Link Medical. Charlotte has a long track record in PR consultancy and runs Aquamarine PR. Entrepreneur, start-up and biotech specialist David has 20 years’ policy and strategic experience working for a range of global pharma clients. Natalie has worked in London and Sydney on a wide range of healthcare, medical and consumer accounts. Ruth’s career has taken her via Pfizer, the ABPI and Teva into independent pharma consultancy and health communication. We’re delighted to have their expertise on tap for our clients. Reach out to them on LinkedIn via The Difference Collective.
On behalf of The Difference Collective, Angie has recently joined Women in PR to keep up with and contribute to the latest developments in PR, particularly around flexible working. As a member of the PRCA’s new Virtual PR Agency Group, she is helping to characterise the virtual industry model in PR. We are now a group member of the HCA. We’re committed to supporting and leveraging its activities – look out for Difference Collective members including strong supporter Julie Saunders at events and contributing to discussion and debate online and face to face. |
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We hoped you enjoyed the first issue of A Different View!
You will only receive future issues from us if you subscribe to our Different View mailing list. So, if you like what you've read, hit the subscribe button below to make sure you are on our list!
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