What we love about... Future Proofing The ABHI

We are excited that four of our projects are shortlisted to be Finalists in the Communique Awards 2019. We’ve written a series of short blogs sharing what we loved about each of these pieces of work. #LoveWhatYouDo

ABHI (Association of British HealthTech Industries) has represented the interests of the UK medical technology industry since 1988, but its position as the leading voice in the sector was under threat. 

Conscious that their reputation was of a traditional, old-fashioned trade association, valued primarily for their regulatory expertise, the Executive Committee and Board decided that action was needed to “future proof” ABHI to broaden their appeal and membership base and position them more strongly as a forward-thinking force in healthcare. 

Our brief was to reinvigorate the ABHI brand and positioning and use this as a platform to promote future growth and influence in the sector. We achieved this by gathering insights from ABHI members, stakeholders and the wider environment, changing the organisation’s name to reflect the focus on HealthTech, creating a new visual brand – with our friends at Nu Creative - and developing a new story, tone and lexicon that would underpin everything ABHI does internally and externally. 

As a result ABHI is experiencing a higher level of engagement with influential stakeholders, including Secretary of State Matt Hancock. Membership is growing with a strong representation from the digital/app/data sector and online and social media followers have increased significantly.

Jon: What I loved about this project…

I really loved working on this because everyone was so open-minded and ready to challenge their preconceptions based on the insights gathered from members, stakeholders and the internal team. We didn’t end up where we thought we would end up and that, for me, shows that the process worked and that the client was ready to challenge the old ways of doing things to give themselves the best chance of success in the future. Watching how they have built on the new brand to grow members, influence and their appeal is really inspiring and makes me feel proud to have played a role in helping them to define their future.

Kirsty: What I loved about this project….

This was a true team effort between us, the ABHI team and Nu Creative. We gathered the insights and helped everyone to make sense of them so together we could shape the direction. Nu Creative created a fabulous new logo and brand that would propel ABHI forwards, and the ABHI team took these ingredients and ran with it, creating a whole host of materials and activities to bring the brand to life. Working in that way is fun, rewarding and allows everyone to bring their strengths to the table – I loved it!

What we love about... Launching and Building Engagement for the ‘New’ RMS Business

We are excited that four of our projects are shortlisted to be Finalists in the Communique Awards 2019. We’ve written a series of short blogs sharing what we loved about each of these pieces of work. #LoveWhatYouDo

The Medtronic Respiratory & Monitoring Solutions (RMS) team had been through a turbulent year of change and engagement scores within the team were low and trending down. An all employee meeting to mark the launch of the New RMS business was an opportunity to unite the team behind the Vision and the Purpose of the business and kick off an internal communications campaign that would engage, inspire and motivate them throughout the year.

The purpose – Patient Safety in Our Hands - which we brought to life through the meeting was personal, meaningful and authentic. The agenda we put together fostered a sense of emotional connection to the business and the work they do, and the programme promoted collaboration and ownership at all layers of the organisation. The momentum from the meeting was maintained through an Awards programme that recognises the achievements of teams delivering projects that promote Customer Partnership, Medtronic Collaboration and Patient Safety.  

A positive shift in understanding and confidence in the RMS strategy was seen pre and post event, alongside an improvement in employee engagement scores to a record high for the division and a corresponding uplift in sales across the region. 

Kirsty: What I loved about this project…

Patient Safety in Our Hands is a simple concept, but incredibly emotive. It was something everyone could get behind and bring their own meaning to. That’s what a Purpose needs to be – relevant, meaningful and relatable.

Jon: What I loved about this project…

I love shaping an agenda that meets what the client wants to communicate but with the freedom to shape it in an exciting and engaging way. The RMS Leadership Team were so cool to work with: open-minded about different ideas, up for trying new ways of presenting and happy to be personal and authentic with their teams. You could feel the buzz in the room and outside, in the side discussions and breaks – everyone was energised and excited about the future. 

Looking Back on 2018

2018 was our first full year of Mearns & Pike. It felt like it went by in a blink. It is easy when life moves so quickly to forget to take time to reflect on where you have come from.  We think that celebrating our accomplishments is just as important as looking forward.

Join us in reliving some of the things we have loved doing in 2018.

Three things we've loved over the past nine months

Blink.

Yep, that’s the first nine months of Mearns & Pike flying past! They have been jam-packed. Here are three things we are most proud of that live up to our mantra of Love What You Do.

The future of HealthTech

You know when you picture a cool destination in your head, and when you get there it is better than you imagined. That’s how we felt working with members of the Board and the awesome team behind the Association of British HealthTech Industries on a rename and rebrand of their organisation. Challenged to help ABHI think about the future of their industry, we undertook in-depth interviews with 20 opinion leaders in health technology and industry, surveyed ABHI membership and analysed the environment to recommend a future focus and direction for ABHI. Working with the fabulous team at Nu Creative we were able to help ABHI bring their new name and vision to life. The result was a bold new look and a focus on the shaping the future of HealthTech. Check out where we ended up and what ABHI is all about at www.abhi.org.uk.

A BBC exclusive for a little talked about health timebomb

We’d never heard of Fatty Liver Disease before. It gets little mention in the media despite the fact that it is thought to have a higher prevalence than type 2 diabetes and has serious health consequences. Putting Fatty Liver Disease in the spotlight felt like a challenge we’d love to get our teeth into. Working with the passionate team at Perspectum Diagnostics, UK Biobank, the British Liver Trust, Southampton University Hospital NHS Trust, the BBC and, most importantly, an amazing patient case study, we were able to tell the story of Fatty Liver Disease and show how early diagnosis and intervention can, in fact, reverse the disease. Best of all was working with Frances to tell her positive story about reversing Fatty Liver Disease. She was a superstar – eloquent, passionate and can totally lift more weights than both of us combined!  

The Greatest Show – well, a pretty good one by our reckoning

There is a great line one of the Muppet Movie songs (Gonzo’s ‘I’m going to go back there someday’): There’s not a word yet, for old friends who’ve just met. Whatever word that would be, we would use to describe the team from Medtronic’s Respiratory Monitoring Solutions (RMS) business and their event partner Contour. They asked us to help spice up their internal launch meeting after a period of change for the business and were the perfect clients. The planning and conversations with them went something like this:

Us: We’ve had an idea for this section of the meeting – how about we do ‘this’?

Them: Cool, love it. Let’s do it.

It was brilliant to have that level of trust and to be able to decide together different ways to engage their team.

We, in turn, were lucky enough to work with a brilliant events team from Contour who made the meeting run seamlessly.  With them the conversation went something like this:

Us: Hey, we’re going to need to get hold of some penguins dressed in tutus (not really, but that would have been cool)

Them: Of course, they are already ordered in anticipation. They will be here at noon. Tutus come as standard with these penguins.

We have to admit to shedding a couple of tears at the end of such a positive and amazing meeting – and when the client shares a few tears of joy too then you know it was a great event to be part of.

We feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to work on projects like these, and many more that bring something different to our clients and mean that we can genuinely say we Love What We Do. 

Origin Stories

Every superhero needs an origin story – where they came from, the life events that turned them into the (super) human person they are today.

It’s the same for every PR – there’s an origin story. The thing that showed you were destined for a career in communications.

So on the day of the launch of Mearns & Pike we thought why not share ours (movie rights available on request).

Jon

I thought my origin story was going to be dull – about me blagging my way onto the Shire Health graduate scheme. But when I told a good friend of mine, James, about our new business he reminded me that I’d always been a ‘PR man’ even back at school.

So my origin story goes all the way back to 1990. It’s Red Nose Day and my friends and I have decided that in order to helping starving kids in Africa (and in an attempt to impress the female half of the school) we would spend our break times serenading girls and either get paid for our efforts or get paid to go away. The plan to make it Red Nosey was to sing into a rubber chicken. Unfortunately the local joke shop was out of rubber chickens so we had to improvise and one of the guys stopped at a local butcher on the way to school and purchased a string of sausages.

In the meantime, I had sent off some details about our escapades to the Red Nose Press Office – essentially, that was my first ever press release although I didn’t know what a press release was at the time – and they got in touch to see if we would be willing to do a breakfast interview on BBC Somerset Sound. The PR-machine kicked into gear and I spent the evening coordinating with mates and their mums to get them to the radio studio for early the next morning.

Our radio interview went well – I was nominated as the spokesperson and managed to get a few key messages across with limited nervous giggles. And we thought that was that.

Later in the day I was summoned to the Headmaster’s office. The local BBC TV planners had been in touch wanting to arrange an interview with us. The Headmaster (it was a stuffy private school) was not convinced that the publicity was a good thing – so I gave my first ‘pitch’ and with a few promises about not missing lessons etc convinced him to go for it. Next came the project plan – we needed to find a location for filming, someone to meet-and-greet the film crew, permission to bunk off some of the lesson from our teacher (the headmaster didn’t need to know this bit) and to make sure the sausages (the real talent) were well cared for.

The plan was executed perfectly and at 18:21 there was a 30 second clip of us murdering ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ on local telly with a lovely backdrop and mention of the school.

And a PR man was born (even if the girls were less impressed than hoped for).

Kirsty

My story is a little more political in nature and, unlike Jon’s first foray into the media, had a serious intent behind it (those of you who know me would expect nothing less!). Aged 12 I attended the local comprehensive school in the small town of Denny, somewhere roughly in the middle of the Scottish Central belt. On a particular cold, miserable day I decided that I would like to wear trousers to school rather than the standard issue black skirt. I knew this would not be approved of, and that it was pretty likely I’d get into trouble. So my lobbying began.

I got a few friends on board, some motivated by teenage feminist opinions, others by a desire to stir things up a little. Together we rallied a small group of girls to stage a short sit down protest in one of the main corridors of the school. It was quickly dissipated by the deputy head, but the movement had started. The next day we did it again, this time with more girls joining us. Then the next day we were there again, and now girls were actually coming to school in trousers. There were enough of us involved now to have safety in numbers – the establishment couldn’t punish every single one of us.

On the fourth day of our campaigning the papers came. I can’t take credit for calling them. In fact to this day I have no idea how they found out. But they came and the result was a photo on the front page of the local paper – 100 or so girls photographed outside the main school block. The following week the Scottish Sun ran the story with the headline “School girls get skirty”. Needless to say the school was not happy about the publicity, and neither was the local authority. The Director of Education informed the head teacher that in fact he had no right to prevent girls from wearing trousers and the rule was overturned.

That week I went to school wearing trousers. That deputy head who had broken up our protest on day one sent me to the head. When I walked into his office he took one look at me and sent me back to class. We had won.

So maybe that first taste of grassroots campaigning was what gave me the motivation to work in PR. Or more likely it is my natural desire to challenge injustice and inequality that makes me good at what I do. Somewhere in there that 12-year old anarchist is just dying to get out.