The Real Science Award for Excellence in Integrated Non-Promotional Communications

Summary of work

One in ten people aged over 65 in the UK is malnourished or at risk of malnutrition. Malnutrition in older people is associated with significant health and quality of life impacts as well as being a burden on our health and social care system.

M&F Health, working for the charity BAPEN and the Malnutrition Task Force, created the first ever UK Malnutrition Awareness Week in October 2018.

The communications strategy encompassed different disciplines. Messaging was based upon insights from market research, the results of which were fed into a disease awareness approach involving nutrition teams across the country delivering local events. Social media was used to good effect to involve health and social care professionals who shared disease awareness resources and echoed the campaign call to action. User-generated content from nutrition teams brought the social media campaign to life.

The campaign delivered impressive media coverage in outlets particularly targeted at older people and messages were amplified because of stakeholder support. This was a low-budget campaign that effectively delivered important health information to vulnerable older people, many of whom were shown to have discovered their malnutrition risk status and received appropriate health advice.

Judges' comments

This was a robust campaign with very strong messages and a simple, but extremely effective approach. There were excellent independent testimonials and the judges really liked how clearly M&F demonstrated the outcomes vs the objectives. A really strong submission.