It's October: Is Your Winter Pharmacy Campaign Already Behind?
It's October. The evenings have already turned, the first flu clinics are filling up, and every pharmacy counter in the country is about to get a lot busier. If flu uptake, staying well messaging, or support for vulnerable residents is anywhere on your , this is the moment, not a date circled somewhere in November when half the audience has already made up their mind without you.
The season doesn't wait for your campaign to catch up
Flu vaccination is already happening, right now, in pharmacies up and down the country. Community pharmacies in England administered over 4 million flu vaccines in the 2024/25winter season, according to Company Chemists' Association analysis, and that number keeps climbing year on year, with uptake starting earlier each autumn. A message that lands at the counter now sits next to a decision someone is actively making.
You're not fighting for attention here, you're borrowing trust
84% of UK adults walk into a pharmacy every year, and it's the older adults and carers who go most often, exactly the people winter hits hardest and exactly the people most likely to act on a message delivered somewhere they trust. 95% of people trust pharmacists. No paid media placement buys that. You're not competing for a glance here, you're arriving inside a conversation about health that's already happening, carried by someone the public already believes.
And it doesn't stop at the counter. 60% of bags go home, reaching someone who never queued for a prescription, often the person actually making the call on whether the household books a jab or shrugs it off. Reach them now, while the decision's still open, and the message actually gets to do something.
What to do with the rest of October
Don't wait for the season to arrive before you talk to it. A pharmacy bag campaign started now reaches people while the conversation about winter health is still live, not after it's moved on without you. Coverage can be built by local authority, region or individual postcode, shaped around whatever your community actually needs to hear.
Talk to us about reaching your community, borough or region this winter, while there's still time for it to matter.
