Obtaining best value for money in commissioning marketing support

When you’re launching a new public sector marketing campaign, at some point fairly soon you’re going to need some marketing collateral. After going through some of the earlier steps in the marketing cycle, there’s a few ways of achieving this.

You can ask us here at Touch to step in and work with you, maybe carry out some additional audience research, all with a view to producing the attention-grabbing graphics. We always love to hear from existing clients and potential new clients. You could also sidestep us and get some posters, leaflets and other artwork for free! And who doesn’t love a freebie?

We always like to remind those enquiring about health campaigns that the Department of Health and Social Care has a very useful resource centre where comms and marketing leads can find many great materials. There is also another way, a half-way house approach. You might have seen something somewhere else, possibly on the DHSC resource centre, and it may be nearly what you need but not quite. That’s where we have also stepped in for some clients, adapting and localising existing materials. You end up with very well thought out and beautifully creative products, but at half-the-price and in half-the -time. We recently spoke with a number of local authority and NHS comms leads and this offer of marketing material adaptation was always well-received. Great campaigns do not always have to start from scratch.

You can see this approach in the way we have recently worked with Essex County Council on one of their public health focused campaigns. The council is committed to reducing smoking prevalence and raising the profile of the harm caused by smoking, in support of the government’s National Smokefree 2030 ambition. Essex Wellbeing Service is commissioned by the council to deliver smoking cessation support to local residents. They provide a range of treatments and support, including nicotine replacement therapy and coaching to understand and manage triggers, online and face-to-face. We worked with the Wellbeing Service in supporting the NHS’s national Stoptober campaign last autumn, an annual mass participation smoking cessation campaign. We took the national stop smoking campaign and adapted it for the local Essex County Council audiences. It means national and local campaign planning and key messages are all joined up, a consistent approach, based on evidence that delivers more enquiries to the stop smoking service.

Whether your campaign need is bespoke or can involve a degree of recycling and re-working from creative elsewhere, we’re here to support all your specific needs and budget. Our campaigns are all designed to benefit society and we’d love to work with you on improving the lives of your local population.