Leveraging viral topics to land national PR for clinical trials company

We set out to position MAC doctors as thought leaders and industry experts within the media, all with the secondary mission to promote their current trials.

Research and insights:

• From the beginning of November 2023 to the beginning of December 2023, we noted the influx of search terms relating to ‘coughs’ had doubled during the winter months, and ‘100 day cough’ searches became a breakout term on Google.
• Our research identified that users were actively seeking advice for symptoms of these common winter illnesses so we utilised this data, alongside the keywords we identified, to structure our tailored outreach approach.

Media monitoring:

• Due to the saturation of articles and features based around the broad term ‘coughs’, we knew we had to stand out from the crowd with press to set our doctors apart as industry leaders and experts.
• We created a bespoke media list of journalists covering relevant topics during the past 12 months and utilised our existing media relationships to land national coverage.

Reactive pitching:

• We kept our finger on the pulse constantly monitoring the news agenda through our various tools so we never missed a related story and a further opportunity to land coverage.
• Due to our continued pitching throughout January, we received 36 pieces of coverage in national, regional and trade titles with mentions for both the brand (MAC Clinical Research) and the doctor quoted.