• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, July 3, 2014

Don't adjust your sets, but it might just turn out that the Government does, in fact, actually get it. Yes, I know that newspaper and digital columns are written by the only people who know how to run a country and pick its World Cup team, but today's announcement from Public Health England (PHE) makes a lot of sense.

From now on, you won't see it launch any major campaigns that are not co-created in partnership with a well-known brand. A case in point will be its upcoming health and fitness Change4Life initiative, which will use Disney characters, and its massive media reach, to encourage children to take an hour's exercise per day in ten-minute bursts. This partnership approach allows it to cut marketing budgets because partners provide media opportunities, and yet achieve greater awareness.

I'm not sure where PHE gets its numbers, but it claims to have 214 national and 70,000 local partners through which it can popularise health campaigns. In the coming year these will focus mostly on Change4Life, the anti-smoking initiative 'Stoptober' and dementia awareness.

The body also claims it has realised it needs to rely on content and be more agile and responsive to outside events. In other words, real-time is on the cards with, it says, content ready to feed in around stories concerning unhealthy snacks and drinks and other health issues, such as lining up stories from celebrities about quitting smoking. 

The great thing is -- for brands that take part in PHE activities it's the ultimate win-win. They will be associated with a drive to make people more fit and healthier, curb smoking and help people living with dementia. We all know that people now like to deal with companies that share their values -- just look at what happens to the public's perception when they dodge tax -- and so what better way to do it than improve the nation's health?

I coach junior football and in the past couple of years, major brands have been signing up coaches to run skills sessions for local kids from Samsung in electronics to Tesco in groceries. This is clearly seen as a way to show the public you are being a good corporate citizen, and to provide a way to show you are making amends, or at least that the public perception of your wares is due for reevaluation -- I'm specifically thinking of McDonald's and Coca-Cola here. 

So, there's the very real potential for the partnership initiative to provide a doubled-edged sword if partners are not carefully selected -- I'm not too sure what people would make of a health drive message about fizzy drinks being sponsored by Coke?

However, such conflicts are pretty easy to spot. The general message here is that PHE has truly seen the benefits of dealing with partners to slash its own budgets yet achieve more as well as the promise of real-time content marketing.

From an organisation you might well think would still be knocking out public education videos hosted by Harry Enfield's Mr Cholmondley-Warner, an agile real-time content-driven partnership marketing strategy would seem a refreshing, positive step in the right direction.