Coronary heart disease is the single biggest killer of women in the UK, and affects more than a million women. Our objectives were to:• raise awareness that heart disease affects women and is their biggest killer.• drive people to take action to prevent and/or get treatment.Our target audience were at risk post-menopausal women, usually with lower incomes.

The unique insight was that women don’t want to hear about another health scare. So we decided to engage with women by doing the opposite of most health campaigns – using humour to spread a serious message, to engage with their biggest killer.We enrolled the nation’s funniest women, led by Victoria Wood, and created The Angina Monologues, a comedy event at London’s prestigious Theatre Royal Haymarket, to raise awareness of heart disease amongst women.A TV broadcast of the show was produced to run on Sky1 in highly visible time slots from December onwards, including Christmas Day primetime. And 440,000 DVDs of the show were distributed around Mother’s Day in Woman’s Weekly magazine.

We enrolled the nation’s funniest women, led by Victoria Wood, and created The Angina Monologues, a comedy event to raise awareness of heart disease amongst women. Before the event itself, the PR strategy worked with paid for advertising to create a buzz, sell tickets, and simultaneously let women know that heart disease kills three times more women than breast cancer. Victoria Wood and other comedic talent were utilised pre and post-event to talk about the purpose of the event and why they want to be involved. The PR strategy began prior in November 2010, a month prior to campaign launch, and continued for a month post-event to support the Sky TV broadcasts. Mainstream media, as well as blogs, health and comedy media outlets were targeted.

Media coverage totalled £1.5m in value, effectively doubling the campaign budget, and providing 130 million extra OTS.Phenomenal media coverage was received, including in the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, BBC Online, The Times, The Mirror, Belfast Telegraph, radio 5 live, Sky news, Sky radio, Women’s Weekly and Yours magazine, to name a few.Most importantly, there was a 44% increase in agreement that heart disease is the biggest killer of women, and 1 in 20 women have since consulted their GP about heart disease.