American College of Cardiology | CURA Strategies

The Challenge

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) is one of the largest cardiovascular associations in the world with a mission to transform cardiovascular care for the benefit of patients around the world. One pillar for achieving this mission is ACC’s Annual Scientific Session, where thousands of medical professionals, advocates, scientists and media gather to network, share the latest research and discuss new approaches to the field’s most pressing issues. Seeking a communications partner that could help maximize media coverage of the important research released annually at their scientific sessions, the ACC media relations team selected CURA Strategies as their strategic partner to create unique approaches to promotion that would reach the broadest group of reporters possible.

The Solution

Year over year, CURA continues to help ACC achieve, and exceed, its media attendance and coverage goals

For the past five years, CURA Strategies has successfully brought new, fresh ideas, and strategies to maximize media coverage of, and reporter attendance at, ACC’s Annual Scientific Sessions. The strategies CURA implemented include launching a new and improved press website, crafting creative pitches for a wide range of media outlets and reporters, and creating new visually appealing and interactive content such as infographics, GIFs and videos.

Year over year, CURA continues to help ACC achieve its media attendance and coverage goals through the following strategies: 

• Assisting in drafting and distributing more than 30 press releases
• Running an embargoed pre-meeting web briefing to give reporters a sneak peek at studies that ACC and CURA selected for promotion due to their broad appeal
• Conducting embargoed pitching outreach prior to the meeting, targeting specific groups of reporters and outlets based on the topic of the promoted research – which varied widely from the benefits of breastfeeding to football players’ heart health
• Developing infographics and social media graphics on the top research being released at the conference
• Planning and producing five onsite press conferences
• Developing brief video interviews with study authors to promote on social media
• Revamping and continually enhancing ACC’s online press kit—the hub for all resources exclusively available to reporters who registered for the conference

Additionally, when COVID-19 hit the U.S. in early 2020, CURA supported the ACC media relations team in navigating the organization’s shift to its first-ever all virtual annual meeting in a matter of weeks (ACC’s 2020 annual meeting was scheduled to take place mid-March 2020, just after the nationwide shutdown). Despite the media’s nearly exclusive focus on COVID-19 coverage at that time, CURA helped secure over 400 original articles for ACC’s 2020 annual meeting and helped ACC serve as a model for other medical associations who now had to face transitioning to virtual annual meetings due to the pandemic. 

The Results

1,500

+

original articles secured for ACC.19, including in Good Morning America, CNN, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC News, AP and Reuters—a 74.6% increase from ACC.18

350,000

+

Twitter impressions and 500+ mentions of ACC’s media center handle in 2021 – a 76% increase from ACC.20

Expanded ACC’s presence in media outlets that don’t traditionally cover ACC news,  including health IT and technology publications, mommy blogs, mainstream lifestyle blogs and magazines, and international outlets

Testimonials

In CURA Strategies, we found not only a top-notch creative, organized and results-driven PR firm, but also a true extension of our team. It’s invaluable to work with people who anticipate the needs of your organization and are quick and willing to meet changing goals in the exact same way internal employees are. Thanks to CURA Strategies, year after year we’ve delivered new, creative ideas for our annual conference and seen increases in engagement across the board.

Nicole Napoli

Director of Media Relations, American College of Cardiology (ACC)

Awards

Media Relations Campaign of the Year

Services

Strategy Development & Execution

• Integrated communications strategy development and planning
• Communications analytics

Creative & Branding

• Branding and messaging
• Multimedia production
• Graphic design

Communications & Public Relations

• Media relations
• Social media
• Website development support
• Speaking engagements/executive visibility
• Media training
• In-person and virtual press conference support