The Hub has been invited to speak at an international social marketing conference in America this August.
Following the success of its ‘Be A Star’ breastfeeding initiation campaign, the agency as been asked to present the project as a best practice case study to an audience of academics, healthcare professionals and social marketing practitioners at the National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing and Media in Atlanta, Georgia.
The conference is designed to bring together social marketing and health marketing professionals from academia, public health and industry from across the US and beyond. The gathering will provide a scientific and professional forum for researchers and practitioners to share insights, research findings, and best practices to advance the fields of health communication, social marketing and media.
“At the moment, innovation in social marketing is largely being driven by academia, not industry,” said Steven Johnson, Creative Director at The Hub, “and - as a private sector creative agency - we’re delighted that our work is being recognised as best practice in these circles. We’ll be using this opportunity to share our approach to breastfeeding initiation, but also to demonstrate that a rigorous, systematic social marketing approach and cutting edge creative can and should go hand-in-hand.”
After being developed as a breastfeeding initiation campaign for a tightly targeted audience of 16-24 year old young mothers in a number of hard-pressed wards in North West England, The Hub is now rolling out ‘Be A Star’ through PCTs across the country and is receiving requests from health care agencies around the world.
“The response to the ‘Be A Star’ breastfeeding campaign has been overwhelming”, said Helen Johnson, Managing Director at The Hub. “However, we developed it in response to a highly specific, tightly segmented audience and we won’t be licensing use of the campaign for general breastfeeding initiation or awareness audiences.”
“Saying that, given the level of interest in this campaign from healthcare agencies in the US, we are due to meet with creative industries representatives at the British Consulate in New York with a view to finding a route to market this campaign and The Hub’s social marketing in general.”
The Hub will be presenting with Michelle Atkins from Little Angels, the third sector breastfeeding peer support group that worked with The Hub to implement the campaign.
