Public Relations Awareness about Awareness Months
Awareness days, weeks and months - for everything from fall prevention to diabetic neuropathy - have become a dime a dozen over the years and as a result, have tremendously diminished impact with the news media. While biotech and medical device companies may want to promote their products that tie into an awareness day, we as a PR agency know that it is a hard sell.
That’s not to say that all awareness days have lost their significance. For instance, Heart Disease Month in February and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October are still covered by the media and can be great vehicles as we conduct medical device and biotech PR. Given that October is coming to a close, I thought I would talk about some work that we recently did with our client LifeCell that strives to raise awareness for breast cancer reconstruction. Starting early, we reached out to national and local media to talk about the breast cancer reconstruction as an alternative to surgery. In addition to local coverage in cities across the country, we secured national coverage on breast cancer in Essence Magazine and the Today Show.
Here are some tips to get the most out of your PR campaigns tied to awareness days:
· Extra, Extra. it’s not just your regular contacts. Go outside your traditional media list. For instance, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Mario Lopez on the tabloid entertainment show Extra conducts a segment on new and innovative breast cancer treatments. Who would have thought?!
· Must tie products into hot issues. As a medical PR agency, we know that we will be shot down in seconds if we just say our client X has a new treatment that you should cover because it’s National Heart Disease Month. Rather, the strategic way to go is to discuss a trend, explain its relevance and then use the awareness month as a reason for coverage today, not months down the road.
· Start early. Monthly women’s magazines start planning issues months in advance. In order to make the October issue, you need to start contacting them in the summer.
Do you have any tips or tricks for getting coverage during awareness months? If so, we’d love to hear them.
Tags: biotech PR, medical device communications, medical device PR, public relations
Posted by Lauren Arnold on October 29, 2010 at 3:08 PM
