With 12 care homes located across the West Midlands and South of England, Berkley engaged Bridgehead to promote the group and its homes as providers of all-inclusive luxury care among the local and regional media. The primary objective was to drive occupancy rates, while also boosting recruitment and retention of staff by showcasing Berkley’s homes as positive work environments characterised by a strong team spirit.
We were also retained to provide crisis communications support as required and to establish the group as thought leaders in terms of the advancement of nursing care and neuro-diverse recruitment.
To drive local and regional media engagement, we first established good working relationships with each of the homes and their teams. We worked with general managers and activities coordinators to determine a programme of creative events and activities that would be of interest to residents and the local and regional media. We also mapped out relevant local and regional journalists most likely to report on events and activities at care homes. We would draft and issue press releases to promote events as they took place.
Throughout the process, we also worked closely with homes to help inspire ideas and hooks for different events and activities. To share ideas and to help encourage a vibrant events and activities programme across the Berkley group, we established ‘B: In the News’, a monthly e-newsletter distributed to all of the homes.
Importantly, we also worked hard to cultivate good working relationships with relevant local journalists by regularly meeting them in person to discuss upcoming events and to better understand stories of most appeal to their specific audience.
Finally, we worked with the care group’s executive team to highlight innovation and thought leadership and to establish the group as a pioneer, particularly in terms of advancing nursing training in the industry via the Berkley Nurse Programme as well as the group’s neurodiverse recruitment strategy.
From the start of our engagement in April 2022 to date (March 2024) we have secured a total of 220 pieces of coverage across local, regional, specialist and trade media. We have also secured national media and broadcast coverage for them, including publications such as the Daily Mirror, the BBC, and ITV. At the time of writing, Berkley’s occupancy rates are high and on target, while retention and recruitment are well above the industry average.
Furthermore, we have achieved significant success in terms of thought leadership, having secured four in-depth feature interviews: two with Caring Times and two with Care Home Professional for the Berkley executive team. This is in addition to extensive news related coverage in both publications. We also secured coverage promoting the Berkley Nurse Programme in both Nursing Times and Nursing Standard.
We have also secured speaking opportunities for Berkley's senior leadership team at key industry conferences to further establish the Berkley brand.
View the full Berkley Care Group coverage book here. The graph below offers a visual representation of the cumulative growth in coverage we have secured for the group from April 2022 to January 2024.
