When planning your campaign it is important to define your message. If you try to be all things to all people, messages will become confused and impact will be lost. To illustrate this, look at the patient information board in your local GP practice. Spend 60 seconds looking at it, count the messages and then turn around. How many messages can you remember? Make sure you have a small number of simple messages that can be clearly seen and understood.

Think about how you can use the different approaches to health promotion. Planning to use a range of approaches within a campaign on a particular theme will influence a wider range of people.

Establishing a timeline for the campaign, and being clear at the outset how long it will run, is important. It will provide clarity for the team, and ensure that campaigns in the pharmacy are kept fresh.

Planning ahead will help ensure a campaign is effective and takes advantage of local and public health initiatives running at the same time. Develop a public health campaign calendar at the start of the year to facilitate this.