Client: Lancashire Vaccination Centres was the first community pharmacy led mass vaccination centre in the UK. It is centred around Preston, Lancashire. There are now multiple permanent sites, pop up sites and a range of mobile sites providing NHS Covid and NHS flu vaccinations.
Services provided: Co-founding, concept development, strategy, naming, brand identity, verbal identity, copy writing, collateral design, interior design, patient flow, standard operating procedure development, patient flow development, website development, integrated marketing communications planning, media booking, marketing activation, feedback gathering etc.
Testimonial
‘The Lancashire Vaccination Centre has been one of the most exciting and challenging projects to work on in recent years. It has tested our creativity, commitment and tenacity as a team. We are very pleased with the results, proud that community pharmacy has been seen to be able to deliver innovation, quality, scale and most of all with wonderful feedback from patients who used the centre. It was a real team effort and I am very happy that I had the chance to be part of the team that made this happen.’
Gavin Birchall, Development Lead, Lancashire Vaccination Centre
A long standing collaboration between Gavin Birchall and Michael Ball saw a fateful conversation where Michael shared his latest ‘curve ball’. The spark for the Lancashire Vaccination Centre came from Michael’s entrepreneurial mind and I was able to agree that this grand vision should be one idea that was made real. We set about making it happen.
Timescales were tight (as always) with the decision being made to go ahead in late Summer for commencement in September. Over an 8 – 10 week period, working with a wider team of capable, motivated people we developed the concept and opened to care for patients.
We wanted to showcase the capabilities of community pharmacy and saw a need for a facility that overcame the restrictions of the existing healthcare estate and the increased challenge that the Covid pandemic was placing on healthcare professionals.
We needed more space. A location was found and our premises partner started work on developing the footprint for the centre. Our aspirations to develop a facility for the county saw the naming process aim to align with our planned geography while being simple and descriptive. The visual identity was developed to communicate professionalism, authority and relate to existing services that the population trust and turn to when they need help.
Without the benefit of collaboration with other healthcare practitioners or active support from the NHS locally we developed an integrated marketing communication plan across a range of channels to drive awareness. Bespoke marketing collateral ranging from social media banners, print adverts, postal letters, bespoke video footage, press releases and more were created to carry news of the centre to the population.
Each panel of the interior of the centre was designed with consideration given to way finding, accuracy and patient flows while ensuring the highest standards of infection control.
To learn more about the centre, build process, patient journey, promotion and patient feedback visit the Lancashire Vaccination Centres website.
