How NFPs can transform awareness campaigns into action
Not For Profit (NFP) awareness campaigns are typically centred around educating individuals and boosting public awareness about a particular health issue or cause. In almost every instance, they should:
- capture your target demographic;
- educate potential supporters about an issue or cause; and
- mobilise consumers to take an action
But while many NFPs successfully shift public sentiment and increase dialogue around particular health-related causes, very few consumers believe that the NFPs they support will ever have any first hand relevance to them.
In a recent HealthShare survey of health-focused Australian consumers, of those who said they had supported a health campaign through donations, purchasing merchandise, coordinating a fundraiser themselves or helping to ‘spread the word’, 73.5% believed they weren’t at risk and didn’t follow this up with a visit to their doctor to screen for the same condition.
Starting the conversation with awareness
This stunning campaign from Movember Foundation is a perfect example of using advertising to elicit an emotional response and help raise awareness for Men’s Health. The creative is sensititive, relatable and helps consumers ‘get behind’ a cause that makes a real impact to people’s lives.
Movember is a global charity that addresses some of the biggest health issues faced by men: prostate cancer, testicular cancer, mental health and suicide prevention. Their primary calls to action encourage supporters to grow a moustache, get active and host events to raise funds for the cause.
But how do we expand the public dialogue to being inwardly-focused as well as outwardly-focused? How do we encourage consumers to acknowledge their own mortality, get tested regularly, and one-by-one help us make a real difference to decreasing the prevalence of these life shattering illnesses?
Source: Movember Foundation
Finishing the conversation with action
HealthShare’s National Health Practitioner Database is visited by almost half a million Australian patients per month. It features GPs, Allied Health Practitioners and Specialists across more than 160 different job titles, details of practice locations, health fund participation, practitioner qualifications, languages spoken and much, much more.
If, as an industry, we can extend the conversation from raising awareness and fundraising to also encouraging regular screening and early diagnosis, we have a real chance at transforming the NFP landscape in Australia, decreasing mortality rates, and making a notable difference to the health of all Australians.