Healthcare Agencies Celebrated at Med Ad News’ 2016 Manny Awards
LIVINGSTON, N.J., April 22, 2016 – Med Ad News, the leading pharmaceutical business and marketing publication, announces the winners for the 2016 Manny Awards, celebrating the best in healthcare advertising. The black-tie gala affair took place last night at Pier Sixty in New York City with 500-plus people in attendance. Twenty awards were bestowed throughout the night to healthcare agencies achieving excellence in a variety of categories.
Med Ad News launched an additional level of judging to the voting process for the 2016 creative awards with the MedAdvocate panel of jurors. The first round of voting took place online through the Manny Awards site with lead creative directors and presidents from eligible healthcare communications agencies casting their votes for the best creative work. From that process, three agency finalists were determined for each creative award category. A panel of experts called MedAdvocates were assigned specific campaigns and tasked to initiate meaningful dialog amongst the jurors in a casual working-dinner environment. From those discussions, the MedAdvocates scored each finalist campaign using a point system that, combined with the popular vote conducted online, arrived at the eventual winners.
Ed Mitzen, founder of Fingerpaint, was recognized as Med Ad News’ Industry Person of the Year. Ed has successfully launched three healthcare marketing companies totaling more than $300 million in combined revenue. Fingerpaint is a full-service marketing agency with about 135 employees, three locations and nearly $30 million in annual revenue. Breaking from the typical ad agency paradigm, Ed launched this employee-owned company with the mantra, “No titles, no offices, no egos.” The collaborative work culture has generated award-winning creative and explosive growth, with Inc. magazine ranking Fingerpaint on its List of America’s 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies for the past three years. Before starting Fingerpaint, Ed founded two other healthcare marketing firms – Palio Communications and CHS.
Category I Agency of the Year honors went to Intouch Solutions. Category I is for agencies with annual revenue exceeding $50 million. Leadership from Intouch Solutions summed up the agency’s 2015 performance as “high growth, high- tech, and high science.” The independent firm celebrated reaching a major milestone of more than $100 million in income for the year. Intouch Solutions added 86 employees in 2015, representing an impressive 43 percent growth in staff in just three years. The agency additionally captured more than 40 creative awards and landed 32 account wins last year.
Concentric Health Experience was recognized as the Category II Agency of the Year, which is for those advertising shops generating annual revenue between $25 million and $50 million. 2015 shattered all previous records for Concentric, with overall growth of 75 percent, an increase in global staff of 65 percent to 226 employees, and a 75 percent new business winning percentage with nine of 12 pitches won. The agency deployed 13 integrated creative campaigns and launched four brands throughout the year. Concentric has now won Agency of the Year for two consecutive years after claiming Category III honors in 2015 for agencies with less than $25 million in income.
New York-based Centron was awarded Category III Agency of the Year status in 2016. Centron celebrated its 10-year anniversary during 2015, and agency leadership said that milestone was used as an opportunity to reflect on how to best position the agency for the future of healthcare. With an evolving landscape, management recognized the need to realign leadership, vision, and resources to maximize emerging opportunities. Centron’s successes during last year – launches and new business wins – were fueled by the strength of the agency’s fully integrated approach.
AbelsonTaylor, HCB Health, and Juice Pharma Worldwide were jointly presented the Med Ad News Heart Award. The award is designed to recognize agencies’ social responsibility and agency cultures that embody a high commitment to philanthropic and social causes. Those three healthcare communications agencies came together to create a wide new range of possibilities for the ever-growing Health and MedTech Track at South by Southwest. This experimental program required all of the agency partners, along with MIT Hacking Medicine, to work as one team to rethink healthcare. Juice Pharma’s Robert Palmer and Alec Pollak were organizers and speakers at the MIT HackMed Health House at SXSW Health and MedTech 2016 – along with partners Mark Bard of the Digital Health Coalition and fellow independent agency collaborators AbelsonTaylor and HCB Health.
This year’s Vision Award recipient was Harrison and Star. The Vision Award recognizes the idea, concept, or initiative that best exemplifies the healthcare communications agency of the future. The Med Ad News editorial staff reviewed which new idea, concept, or initiative launched by an agency during the past year could have the greatest potential to transform the industry in a positive way and what was the most interesting and insightful step forward of the year. Harrison and Star partnered pro bono with neurologist Stephen Krieger, M.D., to develop a new model of MS disease course for educational purposes. Dr. Krieger’s novel hypothesis maps disability accumulation to patients’ underlying disease topography. Harrison and Star created a customizable app using gaming technology to dynamically simulate MS disease activity and progression.
The Best Launch Campaign distinction went to TBWA\WorldHealth for Harvoni, which is marketed by Gilead Sciences. With an idea that nodded to the Sovaldi campaign of “Advancing what’s possible,” the new Harvoni campaign was at once empowering and activating; it asked healthcare professionals to be the one to change what is possible – be the one to cure patients with the single-tablet regimen Harvoni. In 2014, what was then known as CAHG (and then became Corbett, which recently was combined with LLNS into the new agency TBWA\WorldHealth) won the Best Brand Team Manny Award for Sovaldi. Gilead’s hepatitis C treatments Sovaldi and Harvoni represent two of the top-selling pharmaceutical product launches in industry history.
The voting community for the 2016 Manny Awards strongly agreed that Area 23’s creative work was worthy of numerous accolades, including Most Creative Agency for the second consecutive year. The New York-based shop captured Best Professional Campaign for the cancer medicine Alecensa “Go Beyond Barriers” work. Area 23’s “Never Stop Improving” campaign on behalf of BD was voted the best in the Medical Devices category. Winning the Best Interactive Patient Campaign was Area 23 for “The Silent Era” in recognition of prostate cancer. The agency’s “N=You” work about making lifestyle change for diabetes was the winner for Best Interactive Physician Campaign. Area 23 was also recognized in voting by its peers as the Most Admired Agency Manny Award winner.
There were plenty of other agency winners for the creative award categories, including GSW for Pradaxa “Redfish” as the Best Consumer Campaign. GSW was also awarded the Best Philanthropic Campaign for “Sexy Men of Technology,” which encouraged men to do something about their health in a fun and memorable way.
McCann HumanCare was the recipient of the Best Nonbranded Campaign for “Keep It Pumping,” focused on heart failure patients.
Klick Health came through with the Best Self-Promotional Campaign Manny Award for MUSE, a modern-day salon and exciting alternative to traditional industry conferences. MUSE unites the worlds of science, art, and technology to inspire and connect business professionals in a way that is as inspirational as the advances that technology has been making in health.
There were two new Manny Award categories introduced for this year’s show: Best Managed Markets Campaign and Best Point-of-Care Campaign. The Bloc won the Managed Markets category with its “Regeneron: Driving Member Activation” campaign in support of diabetic patients. Juice Pharma’s “Level With Me” work for hemophilia was the recipient of the Best Point-of-Care Campaign accolade.
The gala affair concluded with the Best Video Submission, which was voted on via text messaging by the Manny Award attendees for their favorite video compiled by all of the agency finalists for every award category. GSW was recognized for the agency’s creativity.
The 2016 Manny Awards sponsors included Platinum sponsor McCann Health; and Gold sponsors: The Bloc, Calcium, Centron, Concentric Health Experience, Dudnyk, Guidemark Health and Intouch Solutions.
Press inquiries, contact:
Andrew Humphreys at 215-860-2106 or [email protected]
About the Manny Awards
For more than 25 years, the Med Ad News Manny Awards have paid tribute to the creative work of agencies serving the healthcare market, their people, and their contributions to the industry. Each year at this gala awards ceremony, Med Ad News and agency professionals come together to celebrate creative excellence in pharmaceutical and medical device advertising and to acknowledge those making significant contributions to healthcare communications. On this special evening, 500 industry peers join Med Ad News in honoring winners in a range of award categories.
About Med Ad News
The pharmaceutical industry’s publication of record since 1982, Med Ad News provides broad coverage and incisive analysis of the issues, events, trends, and strategies shaping pharmaceutical business, marketing, and sales. More than 30,000 readers – comprising corporate executives as well as marketing, sales, and product managers – receive Med Ad News, which is a publication of Outcomes LLC. For more info, visit www.medadnews.com
About Outcomes LLC
A marketing and media company built to quench the evolving consumption habits of B-to-B audiences, Outcomes supports the healthcare communications industry via industry leading brands Med Ad News and PharmaLive, leading events including the Manny Awards, and content marketing services. For more info, visit https://www.outcomes-marketing.com.
##
