Engage with your local and national media to promote your activities and messages.
Media is a powerful tool for advocacy and fundraising.
Getting started
Why engage with the media on World Cancer Day?
World Cancer Day provides a global platform to make your organisation known and offers a unique opportunity to showcase your life-saving work in cancer. By engaging with the media as part of your communication activities, your organisation can gain news coverage — helping you to boost your fundraising efforts, amplify your advocacy messages, gain more volunteers, or grow your profile.
How to engage the media
Every year, World Cancer Day focuses on a global story, which is sent to media worldwide, and is made available to UICC members a month ahead of World Cancer Day (and available to everyone in February).
We encourage everyone to use this opportunity to amplify the global story while ensuring it resonates locally by including your own timely news and work in the area as well as data, insights and case studies. In conjunction, you may also plan to send out your own press story to coincide with World Cancer Day.
Plan your media approach
Think about what message you want to share to mark the day.
Choose your World Cancer Day messaging
- Adopt the global World Cancer Day press story by updating UICC’s template press release with localised data and insights that reflect your recent work and your local context. (The global press release will be available to UICC members under embargo from January and available publicly in February on worldcancerday.org).
- Announce a new cancer campaign or promote your plans to mark the day.
- Report on the progress being made in your existing campaigns with new data or personal stories.
- Call on your national governments to do more (i.e. increase national cancer funding, create a National Cancer Control Plan, act on cancer commitments already made, etc.).
- Raise awareness on a current topic or issue that your organisation is focused on.
Target journalists as well as other media influencers
Target especially media contacts with whom you have particularly good relationships. If you don’t already have a list of media contacts, you can start by researching contacts with an internet search or looking through relevant newspapers and magazines. Think about all types of media: print (newspapers and magazines), radio, TV and online news outlets.
It might be helpful to start your search by looking for:
- Health, lifestyle, and science journalists, bloggers, and editors in your city and/or country.
- News planning desks of all national and local outlets.
- Social media influencers or local celebrity ambassadors with relevant connections to your organisation or to cancer.
Start your media outreach 2-3 weeks ahead of World Cancer Day
A media advisory sent to your media list will be the first opportunity to flag that World Cancer Day is approaching and to inform the press of your plans for marking the day.
A media advisory is intended to provide journalists with detailed information on an upcoming event or action, and is not intended to be ‘ready-for-publication’ like a press release.
Include in your media advisory a background note that provides more information about your
organisation, the current local and global cancer context, and World Cancer Day.
Your advisory can highlight actions you are taking on 4 February, invite the press to an event that you are hosting, and suggest interviews with a spokesperson of the organisation and/or with a person living with cancer, a doctor, a researcher or other specialist who is connected to your press story.
Haven’t heard back?
After sending your first media advisory, wait a few days and then feel free to get in touch again
by phone or email.
Have a short and simple script at hand outlining the key messages of your story.
1 week ahead of World Cancer Day
To ensure your journalists have all the information they need, consider preparing and providing the following materials:
- Press release – a press release is like a news story from your organisation’s perspective. It can be published ‘as is’ by news outlets and provides key information at the top, with technical information explained, and should include a quote from your organisation’s CEO or equivalent. You can use the template World Cancer Day press release or create your own. See last year’s World Cancer Day press release here as an example. Send it out 1-3 days before 4 February, indicating an embargo time/date of 4 February 00:01 in your local time.
- Readily available case studies – these help to outline the work you do and the success you’ve had to support your press release.
- ‘Chatter sheets’ – these short factsheets include interesting, timely and brief information on topics relevant to World Cancer Day, current events, and your organisation’s work, successes and policy asks.
- Readily available visual content – photographs or video material of your World Cancer Day involvement, past or present. These can be useful for social media as well.
Speaking about spokespeople
It’s a good idea to have multiple spokespeople available for the media to interview ahead of and during World Cancer Day.
Tips to prepare your spokespeople:
- Make sure that your spokespersons are well aware of the message you want to get across.
- Provide them with talking points.
- Feel free to ask your media contact for the interview questions in advance so you can understand the focus of the interview and prepare possible answers.
It is also helpful to have short biographies or CVs and headshots or other pictures of your spokespeople ready to send to the media.
Media monitoring
It’s a good idea to monitor the news coverage your organisation receives for World Cancer Day. If you don’t already use a media monitoring tool, some free or low cost tools include ANewsTip and Mention.
Top Tip: Create a Google News alert to help you monitor when key topics (like your organisation’s name) are mentioned online.
Remember, don’t be afraid to ask your media contact to share with you any video, online or print coverage they publish or broadcast following your collaboration, and ask for their permission to re-publish on your own website and social media platforms.