Welcome to the Communiqué Awards

Welcome to the Communiqué Awards 2020. It’s time to start thinking about your entries!
Don’t leave it until the last minute. Why? Because the winning entries reflect your best work. And an award entry about your best work deserves some deep thought and careful preparation to really do it justice, a little time and space to show it off to its best. The best Communiqué Award entries reflect the same smart thinking that went into conceiving, implementing and evaluating your healthcare communications initiatives in the first place.
It’s not unrealistic to say that winning a Communiqué Award can transform the career trajectory for individuals and boost the reputation of organisations. That’s because the Communiqué Awards are judged by leaders in the healthcare communications industry: panels of experts from agencies, clients and associated industries. The winning entries are the ones your peers wished they had been part of! Last year we brought on board 19 new judges with a particular emphasis on in-house, medical and patient groups. This has widened the capabilities and added new perspectives around the table which has made the judging at Communiqué even more rigorous.
So what makes a winning entry? People are the lifeblood of this industry and the winners last year were the ones who demonstrated a commitment to nurturing and developing talent and also showed that they were tackling challenges with diversity, career development and well-being issues head-on. We are also an industry which can help transform lives with better healthcare. Last year we changed the award entry kits to ask entrants to more explicitly explain the positive impact their work has on patients, the public and healthcare providers. As a result the winning entries showed excellent communication of scientific and real-world evidence which, for example, has helped patients gain access to new treatments and empowered them to manage their conditions more effectively. The other feature of a winning entry is a focus on outcomes not outputs; measurement matters in our industry and we need to demonstrate the value of what we do to all audiences.
We hope you agree that last year’s awards maintained the high standards you have come to expect of the Communiqué Awards and that the underlying changes we made were beneficial. But – like our ever-changing healthcare environment – we are not standing still. Since the summer we have been consulting with many stakeholders in the industry to widen our focus and ensure these awards remain the industry best. You will see some changes to the award categories to reflect the increasing proportion of medical activity in healthcare communications. Please look out for these awards and also note some subtle changes to the award categories to encourage a wider diversity of agencies and in-house teams to take part. As ever, please send us your feedback and ideas.
We can’t wait to see you all again next year as a judge, entrant, participant or winner.
Communication Awards Co-Chairs:
Louise Dunn, Communications Consultant and
Annabelle Sandeman, Global Head of Commercial Strategy, Huntsworth PLC