We don’t take the credit for Change4Life
Your leader (MW February 18) about how Conservative leaders say they will slash the Government’s advertising budget, inaccurately attributes the healthy living campaign, Change4Life, to the Central Office of Information (COI), when it is a Department of Health initiative in support of the broader policy agenda on obesity.
The COI’s role is to assist our government and public sector clients with their initiatives at their request. For example, the Change4Life campaign is strategically led by marketing experts in the Department of Health, and supported by specialists within COI.
Thus there is no such thing as a COI budget overall; there is a collection of departmental initiatives which are aggregated through COI for maximum efficiency of buying.
We believe that this arrangement serves government well. By bringing together spend across government in 2008/9, we helped save £290m against recognised industry benchmarks.
Mark Lund, chief executive, COI
