On 2 April, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) organised a Projects Communication Event, which brought together more than 70 representatives from many IMI projects responsible for communications. Several members of the EPAD project travelled to Brussels to take part in this exciting event and shared their experiences within our WP6 on Dissemination.
The aim of the workshop was to provide information and networking opportunities to help delegates improve the way they communicate about their projects to diverse audiences throughout the project life-cycle.
The first session addressed topics on IMI communication resources available to IMI projects and digital communication. Con Franklin, Managing Director Health of Ketchum London provided a keynote speech on the communication strategy including some trends, developments and ideas.
The second session included case studies and best practices from three IMI projects: HARMONY, European Lead Factory (ELF) and EPAD. It was a great opportunity to discuss best tactics and ways of communicating. The EPAD team was delighted and honoured to have been invited at this event to present EPAD as an example of good practice of communications. Our WP6 leads Sean Knox (Biogen) and Jean Georges (Alzheimer Europe) shared some practices and experiences on communication and gave an overview of the different tools we are using to promote the EPAD project.
One of the highlights of the day was a brainstorming workshop organised at the end of the day where attendees had the opportunity to exchange on shared challenges and potential hurdles in communication. The workshops were centred on three key questions related to communication-specific situations that a consortium may face:
- How to motivate individual partners in a large consortium to engage in communication activities? How do you assure message consistency?
- Dealing with criticism: how to approach crisis management when negative opinions of your projects reach the public domain and social media?
- How to build a communication strategy to prevent strong public opposition to the objectives of your project?
You can find details of the event and the presentations on the IMI website here.
