As the wet weather and darker days set in, it’s easy to feel pessimistic about the month of October. Sadly it means summer really is well and truly over, but it’s a great time of year for health brands to inspire the country to make wellbeing a priority.

October is one of the most popular health awareness months around. As well as Stoptober and Go Sober for October - which encourages mass participation in making positive health changes - October is also a time to raise awareness around other health conditions such as ADHD, cholesterol and breast cancer. Awareness weeks around dyspraxia, back care, brain tumours and arthritis as well as World Mental Health Day, Sight Day and World Osteoporosis Day all play a big part in raising awareness of all aspects of our health this month.

While these calendar hooks provide an opportune time to get key messages out there through offering tips, expert advice and even specific events to engage audiences, it is wise to be cautious and ensure you have a plan in what can often be an oversaturated market with everyone fighting for the most column inches.

A great way to ensure your voice is heard and drive behaviour change is to have some great case studies up your sleeve.

At Only Health we find that getting celebrity ambassadors and influencers on board who have a genuine interest and great story to tell, can work well too.

We ensure case study gathering is paramount, whether it is through celebrity or real people, nothing makes a more empowering and relatable story than someone sharing their own story.

For instance, our recent work for Specsavers Audiology saw us team up with actress, Sherrie Hewson, where she shared her own experiences of hearing loss and how hearing aids have changed her life. As a result of the collaboration, the brand saw an uplift in people coming in to store to get their hearing checked – a great result in their mission to remove the taboo often associated with the condition.

The same can also be said for the optics side of the brand where we’ve shared the stories of dozens of people whose lives have been saved through a sight test.

But remember while the awareness day can often provide the news hook in order to enable journalists to write about a specific condition, it is not the story, and among everything else going on in the world, calendars can be cluttered. What ultimately makes it onto our TV screens and in the pages of newspapers is what the brand is doing to mark the occasion.