NHS cancer alliance

The client

The East of England Cancer Alliance (EECA) is a collection of organisations and people with a single aim – to improve cancer services.

Delivering the national cancer programme locally, they engage with healthcare professionals, charities and policymakers, as well as patients and the general public.

It’s critical that their message is clearly articulated to these very different audience types so that people understand the value of their work in improving cancer care.

The challenge

Like so many NHS organisations, this collection of dedicated healthcare professionals are doing vital work which needs to be communicated clearly to different stakeholders – but there isn’t an abundance of time or budget to help make this happen. Good internal communications are also essential so that everything runs smoothly behind the scenes, to reduce the mental load and enable staff to find out about news, events and opportunities for training.

It was felt that no one truly felt able to sum up succinctly the mission, vision or goals. There was an ongoing challenge about how to communicate to very different audiences, from patients and the general public, to the workforce, the third sector, government bodies, and medical research institutions.

This lack of clarity fed through to the website and social media activity, which led users to feel confused about how to find the information they need. There was a real opportunity to tighten the position, sharpen the messaging, and improve processes behind the scenes.

The services

Working in partnership with Priority Digital Health, who were leading on the project:

• Audit and analysis

• Messaging framework and refreshed tagline

• Communications toolkit featuring templates for case studies, blog posts and press releases

• Communications masterclass with the team

The numbers

• 10 insights gathering calls

• Analysis of 2 websites, 4 social media accounts, 1 email newsletter plus competitor communications and National Cancer Strategy documents

• 1 full audit report, with visual appendix and spreadsheet breakdown

• 1 competitor review with visual appendix

• 3 x SEO reports

• 1 communications masterclass for 15 people

Having clarified the organisation’s challenges, channels and priorities through our audit questionnaire, we carried out 10 one-to-one interviews with team members to capture their insights and opportunity for change.

We conducted a channel-by-channel review, and looked at three competitors at their healthcare marketing activity. We also looked at team workflow, to spot opportunities to improve communications across the team and in the way they work.

From this, we produced a report which set out the strategic branding and marketing priorities and recommendations.

• Developing a messaging framework defining the three pillars of content and the messaging that would work for each audience

• Redesign recommendations for the website to simplify the user journey and follow best practice in SEO, accessibility and NHS Digital content guidelines.

• Develop a content strategy to reshape the weighting of each channel in line with the different audiences

• Demonstrate impact through case studies, infographics, video and podcast content

The report was presented to the wider team in person, including a draft of the messaging framework and starter suggestions for the tagline. Working collaboratively, we agreed a tagline that afternoon – and this will be rolled out across all communications.

The in house team took forward the implementation of a new social media channel aligned to the recommendations from the workshop.

Phase two

• Communications masterclass to embed the approaches across the team and share best practice, in accordance with NHS Digital content guidelines and the European Accessibility Act

• Ongoing support if needed, to develop branded digital channels website and video content, and produce case studies and similar collateral

• Recommendations for website redesign, with input into content and navigation if needed.