Ramsay Health Care

Happy Clientversary: Ramsay Health Care UK

This month the Sunny Bird PR team is celebrating our three-year clientversary, and most successful year to date, with private healthcare provider Ramsay Health Care UK.

The healthcare provider first began working with SBPR back in 2015 with the primary objective of positioning Ramsay as a trusted voice of authority in the field while securing backlinks directing readers to the website; increasing Ramsay’s SEO and ultimately boosting sales and patient numbers.

The SBPR team have used creative campaigns to ensure we smash our KPIs year-on-year and achieve national coverage on a monthly basis. This year we have seen a 90% increase in our coverage from the year previous including exclusive features in the likes of the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph as well as interviews on Sky News Radio.

To achieve maximum coverage every year, SBPR devise a detailed 12-month strategy which includes a mixture of long-form features, surveys and expert advice to ensure we have something to talk to journalists about over the coming 12 months.

We kicked off this year by tapping into the media’s ‘New Year, New Me’ ethos to promote Ramsay’s weight-loss procedures on a national level. With the media saturated in weight-loss stories, we knew we needed some hard-hitting statistics and relatable case studies to be heard above the noise.

To do this, we surveyed 2000 women who had experienced difficulties with weight loss and discovered that 75% of them were ashamed or embarrassed by their weight gain. The shocking figure was just the hook we needed to take the story to the media. We pitched the feature to national radio stations along with a leading weight loss surgeon from Ramsay, and a case study who had undergone weight loss surgery with Ramsay. Both were available for radio interviews and happy to comment on procedures, statistics in the survey, as well as their own personal experiences to produce some informative and relatable pieces for radio.


Dr Halstead and case study Plaxy on the air

Dr Halstead and case study Plaxy on the air

The campaign was a phenomenal success with a total of 14 radio interviews including Sky News Radio, talkRadio and regional stations in key hospital areas. Overall, we reached almost 4 million listeners spreading news of Ramsay weight loss procedures across the country.

Our second targeted media outreach of the year was Bowel Cancer Awareness Month in April. For this, the team utilised assets made in previous years including an eye-catching graphic, which ran with the headline ‘What Does your Stool Say About You?’, highlighted the often-overlooked symptoms of Bowel Cancer.

Our bowel cancer awareness campaign reached over 2.8 million people with 12 pieces of coverage including The Daily Telegraph, Express Online and Yahoo!

This summer, SBPR took on a new challenge away from the national limelight in the form of Ramsay’s regional PR. We were asked to support with the launch of its nationwide Speaking Up for Safety Initiative. Ramsay are the first hospital group in the UK to launch the initiative which encourages and empowers staff to challenge anyone, including senior colleagues, who may be putting patients at risk with their behaviour.

SBPR had just one week to secure as much coverage as possible across the country in advance of the initiative going live in each of Ramsay’s 38 hospitals. Over the course of just one week, the team created targeted media lists of the publications in each of the hospital’s regions, and through intensive calls to regional journalists the team achieved 22 pieces of coverage from Yorkshire to Wiltshire.

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Our final campaign of the year focused on sports injuries and the importance of warming up to avoid serious injury - a campaign designed to feature in women’s magazines and more specialist sporting titles.

To deliver this campaign we gathered several assets including shocking survey statistics. The carefully-conducted survey asked 2000 people how they injured themselves while playing sport, as well as their recovery time, age and gender. The survey produced newsworthy results such as 70% of people over 55 have been to A&E with sports related injuries and that sports injuries account for more than 13.5 working days lost per person.

These results were presented to journalists along with heartfelt case studies from women who experienced serious sports injuries impacting their lives who then went on to receive corrective surgery from Ramsay allowing them to return to their sport. Simple warm-up exercises with instructions and corresponding photography were also provided along with expert comment from a Ramsay consultant on the importance of warming up.

This gave the team an array of material and assets to pitch to journalists depending on which were most suitable for their audience and publication. Consequently, we achieved numerous feature length pieces, and backlinks, in key titles such as Top Santé, Runner’s Radar, My Weekly, Trail Running and many more.

Thanks to the team’s carefully planned PR Strategy and great media contacts within the national health press, we managed to secure a huge 64 pieces of coverage for Ramsay Health Care UK over the past twelve months. That coverage has reached over 23 MILLION people, and if the equivalent space was bought in advertising would have cost over £640,000!

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How We got 4 Million Listeners for our Client

If you’ve tuned in to your local radio station recently, or perhaps been listening to some of the national breakfast shows, you may have heard of Ramsay Health Care UK.

The health care provider tasked Sunny Bird PR with promoting its surgical weight-loss procedures throughout the UK. Not a team to do things by halves, we set to work orchestrating a national radio day to get the message out to millions of listeners up and down the country. Here’s how we did it…

Mr James Halstead and Plaxy Budzinska on the air 

Mr James Halstead and Plaxy Budzinska on the air 

The Creative Process

As soon as our client Ramsay Health Care UK asked us to promote weight loss surgery on a national level, we knew we would require some hard-hitting statistics and relatable case studies.

The first step was to survey 2000 women who had experienced difficulties with weight loss. The survey results revealed that 75% of women were ashamed and embarrassed by their weight gain, a shocking figure which was ideal for attention-grabbing headlines.

After brainstorming how the story would resonate in print and on television, we finally settled on radio as the most appropriate platform for two reasons. Firstly, because of the phenomenal audience reach and secondly, due to the sensitive subject area, we thought case studies would be more comfortable with the prospect of radio meaning they would come across more confident and genuine on the air.

Orchestrating the Radio Day

Before we could begin pitching the story to the stations, it was vital we had all our assets in place. This included a press release highlighting the most shocking statistics, and a regional break down, and most importantly a selection of interviewees.

To give an expert opinion we used a lead consultant weight loss surgeon from Ramsay Health Care who was happy to talk about his work and pass comment on the statistics from a professional perspective.

From our survey we sourced three case studies, one for each key region we were targeting, and were careful to research their background and ensure they were a good fit.  

Prior to the radio day we agreed three core messages with our client and briefed all radio spokespeople on the objectives before going on air. These were to highlight Ramsay’s weight loss procedures; the high quality of care Ramsay provides and the website address.

We embargoed the survey results for a chosen date meaning we were able to conduct all the radio interviews on the same day from one central London location.

 

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The Results

Throughout the course of a morning we had 13 interviews set up. This included two national stations, Sky News Radio and talkRadio, along with 12 regional stations in areas where Ramsay hospitals are based.

The interviews were a mix of live breakfast shows and pre-recorded slots for the afternoon drive shows. Well-briefed and confident spokespeople ensured every interview ticked our key messages including directing listeners to the Ramsay website.

Overall, we reached 3,980,000 listeners, which if the same air-time was bought in advertising would have cost £75,272

If you would like to know how to get your company or brand message heard by millions, contact the Sunny Bird PR team on 01202 293095 or hello@sunnybirdpr.com.