The Foundry creates marketing strategy for Diabetes UK

It’s estimated that 10% of the NHS budget is spent on managing diabetes, equating to a staggering £286 per second. Diabetes UK aims to reduce the pressure on NHS resources and patients by facilitating self-care and improving compliance.

To achieve this, the charity has invested in a free online education platform, The Learning Zone, developed in partnership with patients and healthcare professionals. It is designed to offer personalised information and support, from initial diagnosis to the long-term management of the condition.

Diabetes UK has set themselves an ambitious target of signed-up patients for the educational platform in 2020 and have appointed The Foundry to help them develop a strategy and campaign proposition.

To maximise budgets, The Foundry focused on HCPs on the Type 2 treatment pathway and conducted a series of 60-minute telephone depth interviews with GPs, Dieticians and Diabetes Nurse Specialists, to gain a deeper understanding of how the educational platform fitted with existing offering.

The insights from the research fed into the development of a working session, where the agency and charity came together to develop a campaign strategy and creative messaging proposition for the educational portal.

With a clear strategic direction, Diabetes UK will be able to encourage more healthcare professionals to make space for the Learning Zone in their patient education programme and meet their target for patient recruitment.

Head of Healthcare at The Foundry, Anna Scott, added: “Every campaign we create at The Foundry is built on insight. We ran a very successful research project and strategic workshop with the Diabetes UK HCP team, the output has provided them with the strategic direction they need to promote the Learning Zone successfully”. Take a look at some of the other online learning programmes we've created for our clients in the health, wellbeing and vitality sectors.