Case Study: Pharmacy Outlet
The Electronic Prescription Service, or EPS, is a method for people in the UK to receive their medical prescriptions directly to their homes. It’s all managed, as the name suggests, by giving each patient an electronic version of their prescription, which they use to handle the whole process online. It was launched several years ago to save both the NHS and the British public time and money.
Pharmacy Outlet is an online pharmacy that provides EPS medication. Back in 2017, it needed a helping hand to “get its brand out there”.
Fundamentally, the business’ leaders needed to tell people that Pharmacy Outlet exists. What’s more, they also needed to educate UK consumers about the fact EPS was now available to them and that they could sign up to Pharmacy Outlet if they wanted to receive this service.
Enter City Road Comms. Throughout 2017 and 2018 we worked with Pharmacy Outlet to get the company a vast amount of mainstream, consumer-facing media coverage. Most notably, we looked to position the company as a go-to source of advice and help in the world of health within national newspapers.
After all, for virtually any B2C brand — indeed, for many B2B firms, too — getting your company in the national newspapers is the holy grail of PR. For Pharmacy Outlet, we achieved this a whopping 40 times in a 15-month period. That’s right, on 40 different occasions Pharmacy Outlet were mentioned (positively!) in one of the UK’s national newspapers.
In total, we notched up 83 pieces of media coverage for Pharmacy Outlet in our time working together. It took them from a brand that very few people had heard of to one of the most-covered EPS providers in the country; it made their head pharmacist, Hitesh Dodhi, a prominent spokesperson in the consumer health space; and it made sure millions of Britons read about EPS and why they should use it.
The HealthTech industry places a high premium on scientific integrity and so we were careful to structure our PR strategy around quantitative research. We regularly commissioned independent surveys among thousands of UK adults to quiz them about their health and broader lifestyle habits — we took the insights gleaned from the surveys and created press releases in which Pharmacy Outlet could comment on the common issues people were facing when trying to avoid illnesses and lead healthy lifestyles.
Our work with Pharmacy Outlet illustrates several things. Firstly, it shows how our research-backed PR strategies help brands get much-coveted exposure in the national newspapers. Secondly, it proves the value of educating potential customers about new products and services in a manner that does not aggressively sell your business but rather exposes common issues and how they could be solved. And thirdly, it demonstrates how consumer-facing brands can dramatically improve their reach by taking a positive and proactive approach to media relations (even if this means outsourcing the task).
Get in touch with our director, Dominic Pollard, if you want to learn more about how City Road Comm’s services could work for your organisation: dominic@cityroadcomms.co.uk
