How We Think/Marketing Communication

NATIONAL ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE EDUCATION CONFERENCE

THE OBJECTIVE

The National Alzheimer's Disease Education Conference is the largest, most comprehensive source of programming and caregiving information on Alzheimer's disease. The Rodgers Group has provided public relations counsel for several conferences. Our role has been to use it as a forum for generating media coverage - particularly trade media - for the conference itself and the topics presented there. We also have used the conference as an opportunity to increase general awareness of the Alzheimer's Association.

IMPLEMENTING THE PROGRAM

Our approach has been to take advantage of the conference's greatest strength: the superb quality of experts from the Alzheimer's caregiving and research fields who present more than 80 topics. Working with the media to develop many different story angles, depending on their interests, we have offered easy access to these experts. Based on trade and consumer health media requests, we set up interviews with conference speakers as well as top association spokespersons. We have generated numerous feature stories for articles that appeared throughout the year.

RESULTS

We have significantly elevated the caliber and quantity of publicity generated for the event. In addition to gaining excellent publicity for the conference by both consumer and trade media, we initiated strong relationships for the association with a wide variety of key trade publications. Following the event, we provided strong trade and consumer contacts as well as a list of story interests expressed by editors who were not yet ready to tackle a story during the conference.

How We Think