Area 23

622 3rd Avenue

3rd Floor

New York, NY 10017

Phone: 917-265-2623

Facsimile: 917-265-2610

Website: area23hc.com

 

Accounts

Account wins                        18

Accounts resigned  1

Active business clients       21

 

Brands by 2015 sales

Brand product accounts held        37

$25 million or less in sales            1

$25 million to $50 million   3

$50 million to $100 million 2

$100 million to $500 million          11

$500 million to $1 billion    2

$1 billion or more    2

Products not yet approved/launched: 16

 

 

Services Mix

Digital            65%

Advertising    35%

 

Client Roster

AbbVie

Bayer

Becton Dickinson

Boehringer Ingelheim/Lilly

Daiichi Sankyo

Depomed

Eisai

Genentech

Gilead

GlaxoSmithKline

GlaxoSmithKline/Janssen

Indivior

Insmed

Lilly

Merck

Merrimack

Synergy

 

 

According to its leaders, over the years, Area 23 has built a name on its courage to challenge the status quo, its relentless drive to stay ahead of the curve, and its track record of pushing clients out of their comfort zone and into the spotlight. And 2015 was no different. Last year, the agency’s passion and entrepreneurial spirit led it to most successful year in its history, breaking all previous records for growth and creative recognition, executives say.

 

This year’s accomplishments

For the prior three years, Area 23 was able to deliver consistent 25 percent growth. Never happy with being predictable, the agency beat its own record last year, adding a whopping 35 percent in revenue, executives say. The agency emerged victorious in a number of competitive pitches, finishing the year with a formidable 85 percent pitch-win rate. Key wins included the new shingles vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline; Eli Lilly and Co.’s much-talked-about disease-modifying agent for Alzheimer’s; Indivior’s treatments for opiate-use disorder and alcohol-use disorder; Eisai’s treatments for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting; and two oncology pipeline products from Bayer, in prostate cancer and in hematologic malignancies.

All told, Area 23 won 18 new AOR product assignments and struck up relationships with five new clients. “So how does an agency pick up 18 new accounts yet only onboard 5 new clients?” executives say. “Two words — organic growth.” According to agency leaders, this past year saw organic growth and client referrals making a much bigger contribution to the agency’s overall growth number.

When asked for the secret to the agency’s growth, Co-Managing Director Renee Mellas replied, “It’s not complicated. We do world-class work for our clients and manage their business as if it were our own. As a result, they want to do more work with us, then they tell their colleagues, and their colleagues want to work with us.” Mellas was also proud to point out Area 23’s “grand total of zero” account losses for 2015.

In 2015, Area 23 received more public recognition than it had in all of its eight years, executives say, with its creative work dominating the healthcare award circuit. The agency was named Most Creative Agency and Category II Agency of the Year by Med Ad News at the 2015 Manny Awards. Area 23 also picked up Manny Awards for creative campaigns in four other categories. At the Medical Marketing & Media MM&M Awards, Area 23 stole the show, winning Mid-Sized Agency of the Year, and yielding 10 trophies from a total of 13 nominations for creative campaigns. The agency also won six Clio Healthcare trophies, three Global Awards, and five Creative Floor Awards (UK), bringing its total for the year to 35 trophies. Does this make Area 23 the most awarded healthcare agency in the U.S.? According to Co-Managing Director Tim Hawkey, “Technically yes, but we don’t spend a lot of time counting our trophies. For us, it’s not about the quantity of the accolades, but rather the consistent quality of the work. Being the most awarded agency is not a sustainable goal, but creating work that is consistently surprising, beautiful, effective, and newsworthy… that’s something that we can do every year.” Mellas added, “Probably the most important benefit of this kind of recognition is the talent that it attracts. The resumes are plentiful, which is critical when in 12 months’ time you expand staff from 200 to 300 people!”

 

Structure and services

Over the past few years, one of Area 23’s main goals has been to avoid the growing pains that come with the leaps-and-bounds growth it has been experiencing, executives say. Leaders went into 2015 with a particular focus on this goal, knowing that Area 23 would be crossing the $50 million mark, which officially signifies an agency as “Large.” To this end, leaders have taken several steps to strengthen infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing agency.

In the fall, Area 23 made four key hires to augment its consumer capabilities. Chet Moss was brought on as executive VP, creative director, to head up a number of consumer-based accounts. Moss’s name may be familiar to Med Ad News’ readers, as he has held leadership positions at Havas and IPG agencies over the past decade and has been well-known on the awards circuit as well.

On the account side, the agency hired two account managers with deep consumer experience. Tom Culhane and Rob Esposito will be heading up DTC accounts in the GI and CNS categories, respectively.

Understanding that consumer insights are central to effective DTC marketing, agency leaders wanted to augment the consumer capabilities of its strategic planning department as well. They found the perfect person to do that in James Coghlan, who will be reporting to Yokoi and will be leading the consumer planning capabilities as senior VP, strategic planning director.

According to Mellas, “We can’t rest on our laurels as a top HCP shop. We need to elevate our DTC capabilities to meet the demands of our current clients who want to expand their business with us. We believe we have successfully accomplished this. Recently a DTC client of ours asked us if we would be comfortable working in the HCP space. For Tim and me, this was the ultimate compliment!”

In 2015, Area 23 continued to invest in innovation. Two years ago, the agency introduced the “What If” model, giving every employee nonbillable time to work on their own creative projects. Two years later, this model continues to thrive, becoming a staple for a number of clients, and making its way to other business units within the FCB Health network. “I think a lot of bottom-line-oriented people look at us like we’re crazy,” Hawkey says. “And on paper they are right, because you don’t make money off of nonbillable time. But there’s an X factor at play here. When you give your people real autonomy and a sense of purpose, it’s a huge motivator, and they are going to give you 110 percent in everything they do. And ironically, our bottom line is the proof that this works. We continue to grow like crazy and our profitability has never been this high. Frankly, I wish more agencies would wake up and commit to this level of innovation.”

 

Philanthropy/citizenship

Agency leaders can’t look back at Area 23 and 2015 and not mention the words “Free Killer Tan.” This philanthropic campaign, created for the Mollie Biggane Melanoma Foundation (Mollie’s Fund), was able to springboard this small, family-run charity into the worldwide spotlight. Free Killer Tan and Mollie’s Fund were written about in 20 countries and covered by news programs on more than 200 networks.

Continuing its commitment to philanthropy, Area 23 was able to take on additional pro bono assignments during the year for NY Blood Center, Global Handwashing Day, and the Be The Match National Bone Marrow Registry. For Be The Match, one team was tasked with finding a high-value target audience to increase performance of bone marrow donor drives. Their research revealed that comic-book fans were statistically more likely to be organ and blood donors. So to test their hypothesis, they launched the Hero Gene Laboratory at New York Comic Con in October. Attendees were able to take a DNA test to find out if they had the Hero Gene, and the results were impressive. In four days, the program registered more than 500 committed donors, which exceeded all previous efforts.

According to Abby Stellpflug, the creative who led the project, “It was incredibly touching to see all these people come out of the woodwork and make this huge commitment, all for someone they’ve never met. This was a crazy dream for a lot of us. I’m just so happy that I can be part of an agency that supports this kind of work every step of the way.”

 

Future plans

Recognizing the FCB global network’s strategic evolution toward driving behavior change, Area 23 managers are developing plans to leverage FCB’s Institute for Decision Making. According to Hawkey, “There is a wealth of information out there on behavioral economics and theories of decision making. We really want to synthesize all of this into a practical approach to driving behavior change in our customers.”

And with 240 employees, and enough open positions to hit the 300 mark, the most pressing issue facing Area 23 right now is dwindling space. So a major priority for this year is securing the right space for this growing agency to flourish, in 2016 and beyond, leaders say.