Nowadays, health is everyone’s business. Patients, prescribers and policymakers have never had readier access to opinion and advice, whether it’s from a thought leader, brand, influencer or traditional publisher, and the way in which we – as agencies – produce, package and share information is slowly adapting to the new ways people consume health content. Moreover, patients are well informed and expect to be involved in managing their health alongside their physician. How can we adapt to the challenge of making sure our client’s message cuts through the noise?
The solution may be more obvious than you think. If you want to ensure a project is visible, you need staff who have a proven track record of grabbing people’s attention. If you want to ensure you communicate effectively with your target audience, then you need staff who are great at getting a message across. If you want to make sure communications are trustworthy and held to high scientific rigour, well, you see where this is going.
Regardless of what a prospective applicant’s CV might say, not many people are great at all these things. Yet this is something that most clients will expect from their agency partners. Therefore, it is critical that healthcare communications agencies have instant and consistent access to all these interconnected, yet varied, skills and abilities.
Collaboration and diversity of thought are at the centre of great achievement; think about the description of DNA – an American male zoologist, British female biochemist and a British male physicist – all experts in their fields, thinking about the same problem from a different background and point of view, integral to the final answer, making sure nothing is overlooked.
In our industry, we must bring together core healthcare communications disciplines in the same way, from the start of each new project. This way we can ensure cross fertilisation of ideas, immediate access to skill bases, combined creative craft and powerful strategy, all of which are underpinned by scientific rigour. By supercharging our synergies in this way we can push the creative boundaries of healthcare communications – resulting in smarter solutions for our clients.
Harry Yeates is Strategy director at Langland UK and Marc Astick is a Medical Writer at Real Science Communications
