1 December 2007
GlaxoSmithKline, one of the worlds leading pharmaceutical companies, has appointed Health Squared Communications to consult on their flagship UK healthcare corporate social responsibility programme, the GlaxoSmithKline IMPACT Awards.
GlaxoSmithKline has contracted the agency for a three-year period following its initial work in 2007. It was appointed to increase the national profile of the scheme and spice up the 10th annual award ceremony.
The GlaxoSmithKline IMPACT Awards, run in partnership with leading heath care organisation The King’s Fund, recognise and reward the work of small to medium sized charities that are carrying out outstanding work to improve the health of their communities. Over the last 11 years, GlaxoSmithKline has recognised 220 community healthcare charities in the UK, with awards totaling more than £2 million.
The London based full-service agency will be working with the corporate contributions teams at GlaxoSmithKline and the funding and development team at The Kings Fund to assist in the selection process, produce promotional literature, garner maximum press coverage for the scheme and the winning organisations. Health Squared is also involved in all areas of the event management for the ceremony as well as the production of video footage of the organisations at work for the event and for their own promotional use in the future.
Katie Pinnock, Director of UK Corporate Contributions for GlaxoSmithKline said: “We wanted to give people a full and strong sense of the impact that our chosen charities have on their service users. Health Squared came up with the idea of visiting each of them in their own environment and creating audiovisual glimpses at what they achieve. They proved an extremely moving addition to the 2007 award winners’ event and has marked a change in the way the awards are perceived both within GSK and the charitable sector as a whole.”
Following the work of Health Squared in 2007, not only did the number of applications from local healthcare organisations increase significantly, but publicity for the winners augmented by fifty percent, as did attendance at the ceremony. National media coverage was also obtained in 2007 for the first time in the history of the IMPACT Awards.
Heading the Health Squared team is Communications Manager Alastair Cartwright. Formerly an Account Manager at Eloqui PR and Citigate Communications, Alastair joined Health Squared in April 2006.