Celebrating comms excellence

In our relatively small world of healthcare PR, things are changing. Budgets are getting tighter, artificial intelligence is getting smarter and compliance is, well, still compliance. But one thing that never seems to go away is appetite for creativity.

That word ‘creativity’ can make our eyes roll, light up, or widen in panic, depending on our mood and workload. Thanks to new channels, diminishing attention spans and our ever-competitive agency spirit, the need for creativity is alive, well and sometimes scary.

When we talk about creativity in healthcare, it can all sound a bit big, a bit abstract, a bit like something we want to hand over to someone with ‘creative’ in the job title. But, at risk of sounding like a schoolteacher (not that I’ve anything against schoolteachers), we are all creatives. Why? Because we have to be.

As health PR pros, our job is to make complex illnesses, NICE appraisals and preclinical drug discovery meaningful to ‘the outside’. And it’s hard! Only our most creative selves can turn a 52-page medical journal publication into one pithy press release that still gets through approval. We must think differently to make busy politicians care about a little-known condition that urgently needs funding. And we need to come up with something good to get a journalist to listen to this pharmaceutical executive, above all the others.

Creativity in healthcare doesn’t have to mean big campaigns, award-winners, that one stellar idea that pops into your head the day after the brainstorm but it’s too late, the slides are done. It’s in our everyday tasks and how we respond to the challenges work throws at us.

You’ll know best how to tap into your creative mind. For some, it’s getting outside and walking it out. For others, it’s in a meeting room, shouting out word associations to someone frantically writing on a whiteboard. For me, my best thinking happens on my own, at home, pumping out Berghain Techno 2025.

Remember, it doesn’t need to rhyme, be a pun or win an award. The best ideas are the ones that make sense and make you proud.

Lisa Cave is Associate Director at M+F Health