Starting an awareness campaign is a great way for your brand to gain exposure, interest, and credibility, but only if people are interested in it. Before you attempt to gain media coverage, there needs to be a strong, emotive message, and interesting hook, and a call to action. This will make people sit up and take notice. Once you have this, you can begin to approach the media to amplify your reach and elevate awareness of you.

The best way to get media attention is to have a story that’s interesting and time-sensitive, and is relevant to their audience. This ensures you’re providing quality content that provides a service to both the media outlet and its viewers, but at the same boosts your profile.

From there, you should work to make the story as interesting and appealing as possible. Do you have a spokesperson? Are they a celebrity?
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One of our awareness campaigns, Work From Home Week was featured on ITV, highlighting a topical issue that is relevant and interesting for a wide and varied demographic. The feature told a story, which is the key to ensuring audience engagement: working from home can help the economy by cutting down on commutes thus increasing productivity, it can help workers by giving them more control over their time, and it can help employers by giving them a happier workforce. 

The feature is intrinsically tied into the key message of the campaign itself: the UK should embrace working from home as it beneficial for everyone involved. Whatever campaign you’re running, for whatever reason, it should have an easy to digest message that people can understand and, ideally, identify with.

The story above was so strong because it had interest from different areas. You want to inspire people to find out more, and get in touch with the campaign itself. If you offer people something for their time, they’re more likely to be receptive to what you have to say, and will remember you. This is of course one of the primary objectives of any awareness campaign, and you can build on this year on year.

By being on TV or radio, or featured online, your campaign gains credibility by association with the outlet, as well as increased authority through the story itself. Being in the public eye, even for a brief time can help you get your message to millions of people who might never have heard of you otherwise.
​You can also use the coverage you receive across social media to further amplify your reach, making sure your audience sees you doing things and spreading the message. Consistent, quality content is the surest way to gain traction and maintain interest from your core audience, as well as the media.

Kin Communications is the UK’s leading awareness campaign specialist, we can create a campaign for you, implement it, run it, maintain it, and generate interest around it that can be converted into media coverage of your brand. Get in touch with us for more information. 

Public health is an important issue. It can affect everything from the productivity of the workforce to the quality of living. Health awareness campaigns can help motivate, educate, and inform the public about various health issues.
Through a variety of creative and engaging methods, these campaigns provide information about particular causes and encourage the public to take action to improve their health and the health of others.  Here are five successful health awareness campaigns.

National Smile Month
Any post talking about the top health awareness campaigns has to include the Oral Health Foundation's National Smile Month, which occurs between May and June every year and took place between the 15th of May and the 15th of June in 2017. Created in 1977, it is the world's largest campaign focused on raising awareness about the importance of oral health and it is also one of the UK's longest running health awareness campaigns. Beginning life as a UK-based week long campaign to focus on preventative care, National Smile Month has grown into a full month of oral health care attention and reaching out to over 60 million people in multiple countries around the world.

One of the primary messages of the campaign throughout its forty year history has been about preventative oral care; encouraging everyone to brush their teeth, avoid an excess of sugary foods, and make regular visits to your dentist. National Smile Month facilitates a great number of events across the month – from school visits by oral health professionals to sponsored events and competitions -  meaning that there is a wide variety of ways to engage with the cause. The local community is therefore able to engage with a campaign in a way that suits them and meets their needs accordingly. This great flexibility, along with the passion behind the message and its longevity, makes National Smile Month a force to be reckoned with.

With so much variety within the campaign, the Oral Health Foundation's National Smile Month has facilitated a great number of projects across the UK. This has included giving resources to teachers in schools to make oral health part of the learning experience and providing assistance to staff in care homes to improve the oral hygiene of residents. There have also been numerous road shows, free check-ups, and training sessions devoted to educating the public about preventative care and improving oral health.

Dry January​
From one of the oldest health awareness campaigns to something newer, Alcohol Concern's Dry January officially began in 2012 with the aim of opening up conversations about the British drinking culture and bringing about a change in alcohol behaviour by encouraging people to take a month off from drinking. It grew from one person's experience giving up alcohol for a month in preparation for a half marathon to 5 million Brits - and even more participants around the world – choosing a month of sobriety to improve their relationship with booze.

For the month of January, Alcohol Concern offers online and email support to help participants work through the challenges of moving against the British drinking culture by choosing soft drinks instead of their usual tipple. The perks of Dry January, both from a health perspective and financially, are numerous, and the campaign has had a great amount of positive feedback. Along with providing some recovery time after the holiday indulgences of December, Alcohol Concern suggests that a month without alcohol can give the participant better sleep, increased energy, weight loss, and a lower likelihood of overindulgence after the Dry January challenge is over. The success of the Dry January health awareness campaign has lead to the creation of a Dry January & Beyond app, with over 36 thousand downloads globally, to give participants a clear idea of the impact giving up alcohol has had on their health and their wealth beyond the initial month challenge.

Though the campaign has only been running for the past five years, there are already some clear indications that Dry January really does fulfil its aim by helping participants change their behaviour in regards to alcohol consumption. Along with feedback from participants and social media praise, recent studies have also lauded the after effects of this health awareness campaign. An independent evaluation by the University of Sussex found that 72% of participants in their study had noticeably reduced levels of harmful drinking – meaning drinking above the recommended limits – six months after the month long challenge had ended. Another study, this time from the Royal Free Hospital in London, found that participation in Dry January by moderate drinkers showed improvements in sleep and concentration, along with other health benefits such as lower cholesterol, improved blood pressure, and a 40% reduction in their liver fat. Any health awareness campaign with such powerful results so early in its run definitely belongs in this list.

World Immunisation Week
Headed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), World Immunisation Week is a world-wide health awareness campaign that aims to build awareness and increase the immunisation rates of preventable diseases on a global scale. Established in 2012 as the beginning of part of the ten year Global Vaccine Action Plan – the “decade of vaccines” - World Immunisation Week occurs in the last week of April each year across the 194 member states of the World Health Organisation.

There is a different theme each year, with the World Immunisation Week 2017 campaign message being “#vaccineswork”. The focus of this year's theme revolved around showing the impact that vaccination has had on the world – a prime example being that the number of countries that are polio-endemic (meaning countries where polio occurs regularly) has fallen from 125 countries to only two in under thirty years. Through the World Immunisation Week campaign, the World Health Organisation hopes to highlight vaccination as a cost effective form of preventative healthcare and make deaths that could be avoided through immunisation less common.

Health Information Week
Top health awareness campaigns need access to accurate and important information to ensure that they are spreading the right message to their audience and the collaborative approach of the Health Information Week campaign makes sharing facts their mission. Beginning in only a few communities in 2005, the Health Information Week campaign has continued to spread across the country and seems set to keep growing bigger and better. NHS staff, local authorities, and volunteers have worked together to raise awareness about the health resources available to the public through events and informative displays. The aim of the campaign is to improve health and understanding through the provision of greater health resources, with the hope that this will result in patients that are better informed about their treatment options and more comfortable with making good choices to improve their well-being.

The flexibility of the Health Information Week campaign has allowed it to work according to the needs of the local area, and results from previous years that it has run have found that it facilitates further collaborations across sectors to benefit patients. They have also found that better provisions have been made for hard-to-reach communities in response to the health awareness campaign. Library registrations have risen following Health Information Week, increasing the engagement in well-being focused reading groups and  improving the overall health understanding of the communities involved.

One You Couch to 5k
A collaboration between BBC Get Inspired and Public Health England's wider One You campaign, One You Couch to 5k focuses on motivating non-runners to get moving to improve their future health. With a nine week plan - structured by a downloadable app that lets you choose between BBC Radio DJS, comedians, and Olympic gold medalists to talk you through your running training – this health awareness campaign aims to get couch potatoes to work their way up to running five kilometers in half an hour.

While the concept of couch to 5k has been around for a number of years, the One You Couch to 5k campaign launched in 2016 to add a dash of fun to a beginner's running journey and to spur them on to a healthier lifestyle. With three runs a week for nine weeks (or longer if needed), the campaign's app builds up the stamina of the runner through a combination of walking and running until they are running more often than not and completing the promised five kilometres in half an hour. The wider One You campaign also offers other health advice to improve a person's overall well-being, such as ways to stop smoking, improve diet, and work towards better mental health.

The One You Couch to 5k encourages running as a form of fitness because of the health benefits associated with it. Regular running is thought to improve the heart and lung function, facilitate weight loss, and even improve bone density. It has also been shown to have great effects on mental well-being by increasing confidence and decreasing stress, making this one awareness campaign that is great for your overall health.

From teeth to tetanus, these health awareness campaigns use a variety of methods to engage with their audience and provide information to improve the overall well-being of the public. Through creativity and a wealth of information, they encourage everyone who takes part to take action and become more aware of their health.

While there have been many great charity awareness campaigns – raising funds and sharing information about everything from flood victims to farm animals – there are some that stand out above the rest. These are often the ones that you remember from your childhood and find yourself getting ready for as they come around for another year, getting bigger and better as time moves on. Here are some of the best charity awareness campaigns.

The World's Biggest Coffee Morning
What could be more British than having what is effectively a giant tea party as a way to raise money for charity? As one of the biggest annual campaigns run by Macmillan Cancer Care, the World's Biggest Coffee Morning is a top health awareness campaign that aims to raise money for the services the charity provides, including local information, support services for patients and their families, and cancer specialists across the country. The first event was held in 1990 as part of a local fundraising committee, before a nationwide launch in 1991. The World's Biggest Coffee Morning has since gone on to become MacMillan's biggest fundraising campaign and the charity now holds the Guinness World Record for the Largest Simultaneous Coffee Party.

While the official date of the coffee morning for 2017 is the 29th of September, Macmillan encourages participants to hold their event on whatever date works best for the host and their guests. The basic premise of the coffee morning encourages atendees to make a donation in exchange for the coffee and cakes provided at their event but there is a great amount of wiggle room for hosts to truly make it their own, whether this is by adding a dress-up element, world record attempts, or simply including raffles and games to increase engagement and fun.

The World's Biggest Coffee Morning campaign has raised more than £75 million since its first event in 1991. This money has contributed to the funding of 6900 Macmillan nurses and other healthcare professionals by the end of 2016, to help make a difference for people with cancer. Additionally, the money raised by the World's Biggest Coffee Morning and other Macmillan Cancer Care health awareness campaigns has allowed the charity to provide grants and support to help people face the added costs of cancer.

 Comic Relief
Any discussion about successful charity awareness campaigns must include Comic Relief. Through the alternation annual telethons (Red Nose Day and Sport Relief) taking place in March each year,  this well-known British staple declares its purpose to be about driving positive change through entertainment, with a particular focus on improving the lives of disadvantaged people. Since its 1985 beginning on Noel Edmonds' Late, Late Breakfast Show in response to the widespread famine in Ethiopia at the time, Comic Relief has gone on to support more than 2000 projects throughout the UK and the world. Addressing issues such as education, mental health, and immunisation, the campaign tackles some serious subjects with the full force of the British comedic sensibility.

Taking place on alternating years, the two telethon flagships of Comic Relief attract a wealth of British celebrities to help raise money for their causes. Red Nose Day takes place on every odd year, including this year's 2017 event, and is well-known for the wacky foam or plastic noses that appear in supermarkets and charity shops in the lead up to the television show. This event encourages its audience to bring out their inner clown to raise awareness and have a little fun while doing some good in the world. Its sister event, Sport Relief, takes place on every even year and focuses on getting the British public active to raise money for people in need. During their telethon's, the BBC is taken over for an evening. The CBBC starts things off with their own reports, events, and celebrity gungings, and then the regular BBC programming is suspended from 7pm to allow for the various comedy sketches, clips, and activities to take place. The audience is encouraged to make donations and they are kept informed of the night's running total throughout the course of the event. Together Red Nose Day and Sport Relief have brought great success to the Comic Relief campaign and, following the 2017 event, they have raised over £1 billion.

Alongside the televised aspect of Comic Relief, people are also encouraged to set up their own events to raise money for people in need. Fundraising packs are available for both Red Nose Days and Sport Relief events to allow schools, businesses, and communities to get involved with the Comic Relief causes. The red noses of the campaign themselves are also another way for people to get involved with Comic Relief as, along with acting as a successful promotional tool, they are given in exchange for donation to the charity. With a number of easy ways to engage with Comic Relief, it is clear to see why it belongs on this list of charity awareness campaigns.

The Poppy Appeal
November is known as a period of Remembrance, thinking of service men and women who were killed in times of conflict, and the red poppy is the symbol that epitomises this time. It is a symbol that is instantly recognisable and lends itself to one of the top charity awareness campaigns. The British Legion's Poppy Appeal was set up in 1921, making it one of the oldest campaigns on this list, with the primary aim of raising money to aid veterans find housing and employment after World War 1. Red silk poppies, inspired by the war time poem In Flanders Fields, were created and sold rapidly to raise over £106, 000. The Poppy Factory, which is still running today, was created in the following year to provide employment for disabled veterans and to create the poppies for subsequent annual appeals.

The red poppies of the Poppy Appeal, now made of paper rather than silk, are given out in exchange for donations throughout the year but particularly in the lead up to the Remembrance period. By wearing the poppies, people are able to show their respect for those who have been involved in the conflicts since the First World War and there are a number of events held throughout the period of Remembrance. In recent years this has included the sea of poppies outside the Tower of London and the “Weeping Window” at Caernarfon Castle. Any money raised by the Poppy Appeal charity awareness campaign goes towards causes supported by the British Legion and the creation of the poppies provides employment and support for disabled ex-servicemen.

Movember
From one of the oldest annual charity awareness campaigns to one of the newest, Movember started  with a group of Australian friends deciding to take on the facial hair challenge to raise awareness about men's health and prostate cancer. It has gone on to become a global campaign, reaching the UK in 2007 in association with The Prostate Cancer Charity and growing over 5 million moustaches.

On average men die earlier than women, are three times more likely than women to commit suicide, and instances of prostate and testicular cancer are on the rise. As “the face of men's health” the Movember campaign encourages men to make a statement with their moustaches for the month of November, growing it out and styling it creatively, to raise money and awareness about men's health causes. In 2016, the Movember Foundation brought in a new way to raise money and awareness for their campaign by creating Move for Movember. This aspect of the campaign encourages everyone – the hirsute and the hairless – to get more active for the 30 day period and keep up the conversation about men's health.

Though it is a young charity awareness campaign compared to some, Movember has already garnered some success for its associated causes. With funding raised through Movember efforts, the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Centre made a great research breakthrough when they found that there are over 25 different kinds of prostate cancer. It has also raised well over £443 million since its 2003 creation.

Race for Life
While there are various ways to raise money and awareness, with a wealth creative and very different ideas, the sponsored run has remained a staple of charity fundraising. Cancer Research UK's Race for Life is one of the most well-known of this kind of campaign, with over 8 million people taking part in its twenty year history – impressive for women-only events. The Race for Life is another charity awareness campaign that has grown markedly from its 1994 inception, growing from one run in Battersea Park to multiple kinds of runs all around the country, all working towards raising money for research on all types of cancer.

Runners for Race for Life events – whether it be a 5 kilometre walk or a full marathon run, Pretty Muddy or one of the new hiking challenges – receive fundraising packs and information on how to gather sponsorship while they train for their race. The money raised through the Race for Life campaign and other events, helps Cancer Research UK work towards the prevention and treatment of the 200 types of cancer. This top charity awareness campaign has successfully raised over £547 million for its cause and contributes to numerous on-going research projects to understand how cancer works in the hopes that they can find a cure.

While each of these appeals tackles very different causes in a variety of ways, their focus on spreading awareness about their charity and engaging their audience through creativity and passion is what makes them successful charity awareness campaigns.

An effective awareness campaign brings necessary information to those who need it, raising the public profile of a cause, and getting people talking. In the age of social media, however, it can seem like everyone is trying to spread their particular message and this can make it difficult to set your campaign above the rest.
​For that reason, we have gathered the top ten tips to establish an effective awareness campaign for your cause.

1. Know Your Cause
It may seem obvious but one of the most important elements of a effective awareness campaign is the strength of the cause. This is built by having a robust set of statistics and case studies that people can connect to.
Running a campaign to raise awareness about anatidaephobia is all well and good but eventually someone is going to ask you what it means (note: anatidaephobia is the fear that a duck somehow is watching you). If you can't make them understand what your cause is about and why they should care then there isn't much hope for your campaign.

The purpose of an awareness campaign is to bring more knowledge about your cause to the public, so the more you know, the better. It puts you in an authoritative position, increasing the likelihood that you will get further opportunities to talk about the subject beyond the life of this particular initial campaign.

Do your research to ensure that you know what your cause is all about. Talk to experts, read up on it, make sure you've got someone you can defer to if questions come up that you can't answer – whatever you need to do to make sure that you are able to access the necessary information to make your message come through successfully.

2. Set Goals
As you research your cause, ideas for your awareness campaign will probably begin to bubble, making it easy to get carried away. After all, you could be planning what the stickers look like and you should really be calling the local council to see if you can hold an event in the first place.
Unfortunately, as the ideas escalate so does the cost, and it can be hard to reign yourself in when you haven't set yourself any clear boundaries. The best way to ensure that your ideas stay focused on creating the most effective awareness campaign possible is to set yourself specific goals and objectives.

Is your aim to bring greater understanding of a lesser known illness to as many people as possible? Or is the priority to attract the attention of specific media platforms? Answering these questions can help you work out what techniques will be most effective at raising awareness among your audience and will therefore inform your plans further down the road. Most importantly, creating clear and realistic goals for your awareness campaign will help you determine what success means to you.

3. Determine your Target Audience
While it would be great for every campaign to appeal to everyone, that's unlikely to happen. Even the most successful awareness campaigns will have some people who just aren't interested because that's the way people are. What appeals to a 50+ inner city business woman is likely to be quite different from a stay-at-home dad living in the country, or a teenage girl working towards her A-Levels. Trying to create a campaign that is universally appealing will not only be a massive rod for your own back but it's also likely to be less effective.

Narrowing your focus will give you a clearer idea of who you are speaking to and therefore will most likely influence how you choose to speak to them, linking back to your established goals. If you aim to motivate young women between 15 and 25 to go running, social media might be a great tool for spreading your message. Targeting men after retirement age, meanwhile, will probably require something quite different. An understanding of your audience will increase the effectiveness of your awareness campaign by talking directly to their needs whilst still leaving room for others to enter the conversation if they so wish.

4. Take Inspiration from Previous Awareness Campaigns
​You may have lots of vague ideas about how you want to execute your campaign but sometimes, when it gets down to the actual planning stage, you can find yourself stuck. The aim is to have an effective awareness campaign that distributes the appropriate information to your target audience and maybe call them to complete a specific action (eg. give blood). But how do you get that message out there? If in doubt, check out awareness campaigns you've admired to see what they did right and what you feel you could learn from their example.

​Do you still catch yourself singing the tune from an anti-smoking advert years ago or do you have fond memories of a Race for Life? Work out what it is you liked about those particular awareness campaigns – whether it was the camaraderie you felt with others engaged in the activity or simply the clever hashtag that stayed with you – and consider how you can capture those responses from your target audience.

5. Get Recognisable People Involved
While an awareness campaign can work well with only a good message and the right technique to share it, many campaigns can attribute a good portion of their success to the face attached to it.
Would the healthiness of school lunches have garnered quite as much media attention without Jaime Oliver? A well-known name - particularly one with a good reason for their involvement in the cause -  can bring some familiarity to a lesser known subject and therefore increase the effectiveness of your awareness campaign.
​As mentioned above, contacting experts in the area of your cause can ensure that you are well-informed and bring some much needed authority to your campaign, but it can also give you the opportunity to draw in some media attention and widen your audience.

6. Expand your Network
An effective awareness campaign needs people to get involved. An individual shouting alone in a crowd can achieve very little. A large group all shouting together, meanwhile, can really attract attention. For this reason, the success of any campaign hinges on its ability to bring people together and get them involved. Attaching well-known names to garner media interest is great at the beginning but one of the most effective methods of passing along any message is definitely word of mouth.

Social media can be a successful and cost effective way to raise awareness about your cause. A simple tweet or Instagram post, with links to a website with further details, can be effortlessly shared across great distances and will therefore be able to reach more people than you could hope to in any purely paper-based campaign. The easy connectability of social media also allows your audience to feel like an active part of your chosen cause, increasing the likelihood that they will engage with your message and create a more effective awareness campaign.

7. Get Creative
With so many awareness campaigns out there, all searching for the perfect way to share their message, there are a lot of examples out there to follow as you aim for success. Unfortunately this can also make it difficult to make your campaign stand out; a necessary component if engaging a large audience is a key objective. This means you need to get creative and get people excited to be part of your cause.

In an ideal world, you'll come up with something that has a burst of creativity to draw people in and set your campaign apart from the all others. This needs to be something that ties in with your message well, keeps everyone who is involved passionately engaged with the campaign, and draws people in to learn about your cause. Think of the ice bucket challenge: it garnered great viral and media attention because it felt fresh. You may, however, choose to follow one of the familiar patterns of other awareness campaigns – a catchy hashtag, a fun run, a dress-up day, ect – but the important thing is to come up with a new spin on it to draw that much needed attention.
​The Wear It, Beat It campaign for the British Heart Foundation is the perfect example of this because it follows the typical dress-up day outline but sets itself apart in a way that ties in well with its core message by asking people to wear all red. Create something that makes people feel excited to be a part of it and you will have an effective awareness campaign.

8. Timing is Everything
The timing of your awareness campaign can make or break it, particularly if you're running an event on a specific day or are hoping for some big media attention. As anyone who has tried to have a barbecue in the delightfully changeable British summer, everything from weather to traffic conditions can impact your otherwise perfect plans. 
It is impossible to plan for all these eventualities – especially the occurrence of unexpected big news stories – but careful timing can make it more likely that your awareness campaign will effectively achieve your established goals. There are numerous online calendars that outline events and campaigns that are happening throughout the year, allowing to schedule yours appropriately, and some consideration of the season should make it possible for you to organise any weather-impacted aspects you wish to do.

9. Keep it Catchy
The most effective awareness campaigns are those that stick with the public long after they're finished. You might hold a great event, with all the media attention you could ask for, and a well-known guest that loves it, but if the public doesn't leave with an understanding of your cause that will stick with them then it can't truly be called a successful awareness campaign. What you need is something memorable and meaningful.

Television advertising has some great examples of messages that have stayed with their audience long after they were aired. An effective awareness campaign needs to have that same memorability. Whether it's a great campaign name, witty tagline, or a catchy Twitter hashtag, giving your audience an easy way to remember your cause and engage with your campaign is a key part of its success.

10. Keep it Going
Between running your campaign, answering questions, and reacting to those unforeseen obstacles, it can be easy to get lost in it all and this becomes all the more difficult as you approach the finish line. You can't let the passion you have built for your cause go, however, as information about it still needs to be available for the public.
Whether this is adapting your website or social media pages to point users in the direction of further information, encouraging social media users to adopt your hashtag to keep the message going, or handing over to a new team to create an annual event, put plans in place that will keep the level of awareness you have achieved through your campaign. After all, an effective awareness campaign is one where the message stays with the public.