How our creative Christmas campaign hit the national press
I know this guy right… he’s mega-happy, has an ultra-rewarding job and he technically only works one day per year. I tell you what though, his health is shot! I’m talking, of course, about Santa Claus….
Having worked in healthcare PR for 15 years I know the seasonal shifts in the kinds of stories the media are looking for. The truth is, no one is focused on their health in December - we are all too busy eating, drinking and being merry - and so in the festive period, it’s the lighter stories that perform best.
In media terms, that festive period started later than usual this year as the frenzy of a General Election meant that all those stories were saved until the final few days, making things ultra-competitive.
Fo the last few months, we’ve been working with a client called BP Owl, who produce the top-rated blood pressure app on the App Store. In fact, you may have already read about them in The Metro (another success for Evergreen PR!).
In the run-up to Christmas, we wanted a story that would keep BP Owl’s name in the media, further boosting awareness and demonstrating its sense of humour.
We’ve spent years working with health academics and translating complex scientific papers into easy-to-understand information, so know what a goldmine of existing studies there are for scientifically literate PR’s to draw on - as long as they have the right creative angle.
For this story, we set about analysing Santa’s lifestyle and using existing scientific literature to estimate what his life expectancy would be if he were a regular human.
We identified a few red flags for Santa - a high calorie diet, too much alcohol, raised BMI, stressful job, lack of sleep and a lifetime of smoking are all key areas where Santa is risking his health, and so we pulled the scientific literature on each of those aspects to see what impact they had on life expectancy.
The data revealed that, put together, these elements would reduce the average male’s life expectancy by 15 years and so, with the average man worldwide living to the age of 69, we used that to determine that if Santa were a human he’d only make it to aged 54.
We added further credibility to the story by working with some fabulous GP’s - Dr Jeff Foster, a men’s health specialist and Dr Youssef Beaini, the Clinical Lead for Cardiovascular Disease for West Yorkshire and Harrogate HCP, who each provided wonderful quotes.
The story got a great reaction from the media and featured in/on MSN, The Scotsman, Daily Star, Digital Journal and Bluewin among others - reaching an audience of 30m people.
It just goes to show that with the right creative angle - and a good understanding of the health landscape - it’s possible to produce a great story on minimal outlay. And we all know that coverage is the perfect gift for any PR professional!